Nicholls State University President Bruce Murphy is remaining positive regarding possible budget cuts.

Students, faculty and staff have been concerned with the idea of possible budget cuts to sweep across Louisiana’s higher education in the next few months. Murphy addressed the “elephant in the room,” or budget cuts, at the State of the University address at Faculty Institute on last Thursday.

According to Murphy, budget cuts are like hurricanes. The University has plans for them no matter what happens or who it affects.
“No one knows who it will affect, but we as a university need to have a strategic plan so that we can be prepared for whatever comes our way,” Murphy said.

Murphy plans to set up a committee to make those tough decisions on where the money should go and where it should stay, should budget cuts come our way.

“We cannot do everything, and worst case scenario would be that the committee would have to do a ‘pass through’ to crunch the numbers to see where the funds should be divided,” Murphy said.

According to Murphy, there have been programs cut in the past due to budget cuts.

“Nicholls used to have an agriculture department for a long time, and it got discontinued years ago. After the numbers were crunched, it showed that there were not enough students and faculty to keep it going. The University decided to direct its funds elsewhere,” Murphy said.

Murphy plans to keep as many programs as possible if budget cuts do directly affect Nicholls, but that will all come down to how the numbers crunch when the committee meets.

Murphy explained that the discussion of budget cuts should not alarm anyone and that the conversation should be shifted to what Louisiana wants in terms of education so that the product that education produces is valued.

“I would love to have a discussion forum with the students to get their feed back because this is their university, and budget cuts will affect them especially,” Murphy said.

Murphy believes that public universities are a public good and that graduates of those colleges form a better society. He encourages the community to support Nicholls because the University produces a better workforce for the community, and it goes back into the bayou region.

The final budget decision will not be known until late May or early June, but until then Murphy plans to help make this institution stronger as a whole to ensure Nicholls’ wellbeing, no matter what budget decisions are made.

“Take a deep breath. We will get through this together. We are a community, and we all want to make life better,” Murphy said.