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UNT president announces budget cuts in wake of financial problems


Harry

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The University of North Texas will make cuts of 2 or 3 percent next year to cope with budget shortfalls, President Neal Smatresk told faculty this afternoon.

He also said that for the past six years, the Denton campus has spent money it doesn’t have.

That information comes from Jenna Duncan at our sister publication, the Denton Record-Chronicle. Jenna is live-tweeting from the Faculty Senate meeting where Smatresk is delivering the bad news.

Read more: http://educationblog.dallasnews.com/2014/05/unt-president-announces-budget-cuts-in-wake-of-financial-problems.html/

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To be honest I voted down the fee when I was in school. Now that I am older and better educated I realize I was wrong to do that. I am a real F the system kind of guy, even now. These upgrades only bring more minds into the fold. Academics should be broad and quality sports only help enforce that. However, when the programs get too large, academics can be thrown aside and too often then not academic issues are ignored. I feel like CUSA is a good middle ground. I have no doubt academics matter here and discourse between students is vital to the educationwe provided. The more the merrier as long as we have plenty of quality staff. Which, the vote did not affect that.

Edited by North Texas Shep
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The "flat enrollment" reference in the DMN today is disappointing for a school that has shown increasing enrollment for years. Are we about to be left behind by the likes of UTA and Texas State? I realize that selling a university is not the same as selling soap, but we are simply not projecting a very attractive image lately despite our recent success in football and other sports. Is there any one out there capable of producing an effective and attractive billboard for example? Are we so ashamed of our campus that we avoid showing pictures of it. We advertise ourselves as the most comprehensive university around here, but seldom seem to present any visual evidence that comprehensiveness. The visual promotions we do project are generic and lackluster while our slogans are uninspired and fall into the counterproductive "Were cheap, come here" category.

We are a wonderful university with a rich and unique history, but who would know?

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There's electronic billboards on 35, 380 and somewhere in downtown Dallas I've seen multiple advertisements for unt on. Maybe if they added pictures of facilities that would help. I'm just glad we are advertising!

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Green light to greatness is about 100 times better than above the rest for thousands less. Saw an electronic billboard on 35W that had that crap on it. I threw up a little in my mouth.

You will find as you get older, that this message of being a great value is what the university always sells to the general public at any chance it can.

Let's face it--our student body is drawn from the same demographics as UTA and UTD. UTA markets themselves in the Metroplex mostly on their science, engineering, and business schools. UTD markets itself on its excellent academic credentials and its great connetions to technology, engineering, and science. If you ask anyone in the DFW area what we are well-known for, they might be able to point to education and music, but even that is doubtful, because all we ever market is how much of a "value" we are.

"Value" is very subjective--yes, it covers cost, but it also should include experience, location, and stellar departments that your school excels in. I'm sorry, but we don't recruit students to Denton on the one huge advantage it has over the Metroplex schools, including SMU and TCU--Denton is a college town, first and foremost. Those types of locations provide a great experience for your college years. In Texas and Oklahoma, only College Station, Lubbock, and Stillwater can provide a similar setting for their schools. We have a football program that competes at FBS. We have an awesome, nationally recognized music program and we have the great history of starting off as a teacher's college, which shows a strong conviction towards helping to provide better education since 1890!! You can have that stuff here in Denton at UNT. Not at UTA, UTD, TWU, TCU, or SMU...

But, instead, we go cheap and market toward being cheap. You can commute here from home!! You don't ever have to come back after you graduate!! All of this is what gets conveyed to a lot of people when all you ever do is focus on being a great "value"...

Edited by untjim1995
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The "flat enrollment" reference in the DMN today is disappointing for a school that has shown increasing enrollment for years. Are we about to be left behind by the likes of UTA and Texas State? I realize that selling a university is not the same as selling soap, but we are simply not projecting a very attractive image lately despite our recent success in football and other sports. Is there any one out there capable of producing an effective and attractive billboard for example? Are we so ashamed of our campus that we avoid showing pictures of it. We advertise ourselves as the most comprehensive university around here, but seldom seem to present any visual evidence that comprehensiveness. The visual promotions we do project are generic and lackluster while our slogans are uninspired and fall into the counterproductive "Were cheap, come here" category.

We are a wonderful university with a rich and unique history, but who would know?

Get used to flat or even declining enrollment, the supply of college age kids is starting to fall and will do so for another few years, that supply is also being cannabilized by online and for-profit competitors.

There will be schools going under the next few years generally of three types. Small privates, small publics, and other schools that have taken on a debt load that is unsustainable if revenue falls. Nearly 40 schools have had their bond rating downgraded because their debt load is too high or they lack sufficient reserves to meet obligations when the enrollment declines hit.

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The "flat enrollment" reference in the DMN today is disappointing for a school that has shown increasing enrollment for years. Are we about to be left behind by the likes of UTA and Texas State? I realize that selling a university is not the same as selling soap, but we are simply not projecting a very attractive image lately despite our recent success in football and other sports. Is there any one out there capable of producing an effective and attractive billboard for example? Are we so ashamed of our campus that we avoid showing pictures of it. We advertise ourselves as the most comprehensive university around here, but seldom seem to present any visual evidence that comprehensiveness. The visual promotions we do project are generic and lackluster while our slogans are uninspired and fall into the counterproductive "Were cheap, come here" category.

We are a wonderful university with a rich and unique history, but who would know?

This is the one time ever that I'll agree with every point of a Ragpicker post.

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The "flat enrollment" reference in the DMN today is disappointing for a school that has shown increasing enrollment for years. Are we about to be left behind by the likes of UTA and Texas State? I realize that selling a university is not the same as selling soap, but we are simply not projecting a very attractive image lately despite our recent success in football and other sports. Is there any one out there capable of producing an effective and attractive billboard for example? Are we so ashamed of our campus that we avoid showing pictures of it. We advertise ourselves as the most comprehensive university around here, but seldom seem to present any visual evidence that comprehensiveness. The visual promotions we do project are generic and lackluster while our slogans are uninspired and fall into the counterproductive "Were cheap, come here" category.

We are a wonderful university with a rich and unique history, but who would know?

The spoils of being conservative (not in the political sense).

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Get used to flat or even declining enrollment, the supply of college age kids is starting to fall and will do so for another few years, that supply is also being cannabilized by online and for-profit competitors.

There will be schools going under the next few years generally of three types. Small privates, small publics, and other schools that have taken on a debt load that is unsustainable if revenue falls. Nearly 40 schools have had their bond rating downgraded because their debt load is too high or they lack sufficient reserves to meet obligations when the enrollment declines hit.

50 years ago the state legislature operated on the assumption that it was in the long-term interest of Texas to keep tuition low and develop a well educated population. That idea went out the window about 20 years ago and college out of price for many middle class families and most graduates will spend much of their lives paying off their college debts instead of buying houses, etc. So, now, college is becoming difficult for all but the "my daddy is rich" crowd.

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50 years ago the state legislature operated on the assumption that it was in the long-term interest of Texas to keep tuition low and develop a well educated population. That idea went out the window about 20 years ago and college out of price for many middle class families and most graduates will spend much of their lives paying off their college debts instead of buying houses, etc. So, now, college is becoming difficult for all but the "my daddy is rich" crowd.

That's not a problem isolated to Texas at all. My freshman year of college I paid, for the entire year, $1,500. Now it's $14,000 in fees alone. Citizens didn't want to foot the tax bill anymore, reducing state funding, student loans became free and easy, so colleges started building Hilton Hotel quality facilities all across campus and charging accordingly. And with that, colleges became customer service operations instead of academic institutions, dropping standards of admission and caving to student and parental demands of grade inflation. It's all a pretty big mess.

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You will find as you get older, that this message of being a great value is what the university always sells to the general public at any chance it can.

Let's face it--our student body is drawn from the same demographics as UTA and UTD. UTA markets themselves in the Metroplex mostly on their science, engineering, and business schools. UTD markets itself on its excellent academic credentials and its great connetions to technology, engineering, and science. If you ask anyone in the DFW area what we are well-known for, they might be able to point to education and music, but even that is doubtful, because all we ever market is how much of a "value" we are.

"Value" is very subjective--yes, it covers cost, but it also should include experience, location, and stellar departments that your school excels in. I'm sorry, but we don't recruit students to Denton on the one huge advantage it has over the Metroplex schools, including SMU and TCU--Denton is a college town, first and foremost. Those types of locations provide a great experience for your college years. In Texas and Oklahoma, only College Station, Lubbock, and Stillwater can provide a similar setting for their schools. We have a football program that competes at FBS. We have an awesome, nationally recognized music program and we have the great history of starting off as a teacher's college, which shows a strong conviction towards helping to provide better education since 1890!! You can have that stuff here in Denton at UNT. Not at UTA, UTD, TWU, TCU, or SMU...

But, instead, we go cheap and market toward being cheap. You can commute here from home!! You don't ever have to come back after you graduate!! All of this is what gets conveyed to a lot of people when all you ever do is focus on being a great "value"...

I get what you're saying, but as I get older? What does that have to do with anything? I see that schools that can feasibly market themselves due to their value they are going to. As far as getting older, I am 27. That's old enough to see the manipulative ways that universities try to lure kids to their schools. Nevertheless, the thousands less above the rest is BS and needs to be put to bed quickly. It's awful. It is a sincere embarrassment to the university, current student body, and to the thousands of alum.

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