‘A matter of right-sizing’: A look at St. Cloud State’s plan to cut 46 degrees

Facing a budget gap of $5.5 million, administrators at St. Cloud State University, a public institution in Minnesota, unveiled plans this week to cut dozens of programs and 13% of its faculty in a wide-ranging restructuring effort. 

Officials flagged 46 degree programs for potential elimination as part of broader plans to reduce the university’s expenses over the next two fiscal years. That would leave the university with 90 degree programs, down from 136 today. The proposal also recommends paring down available minors from 85 to 35.

The plan follows dozens of budget meetings and presentations around campus over the past two years attended by Larry Lee, acting president for the university, who joined the institution in 2022 as vice president of finance and administration. The proposal grew out of what Lee described as a “broad-based working group” that included all of the university’s deans as well as top administrators. 

“No one should be surprised by the extent of the challenges,” Lee told Higher Ed Dive. 

Growing expenses, ongoing losses

The recommended budget revamp, detailed in a presentation to campus Monday, notes that St. Cloud State’s projected deficit for fiscal 2024 — the $5.5 million figure — actually understates the depth of the institution’s financial challenges. 

That’s in part because projections include $9.8 million in one-time funds from the state for lost enrollment, masking a much higher loss of $15.3 million, according to the presentation. And that’s after the university lost $18 million last year. 

St. Cloud State has also faced steeply falling enrollment, which declined roughly 44% from 2010 to 10,420 students in 2022. 

Even so, Lee said the university still has a strong revenue base. Its primary challenge is on the cost side. 

“The problem we have is, our expense base that we’ve been carrying forward for a long time is too large for our revenue base,” Lee said.

Monday’s presentation offered a long list of moves already taken to chip away at the university’s budget, such as reduced facilities cleaning, sidewalk maintenance and campus mail frequency, as well as cutting back overtime work and ending removal of trash from personal offices. 

Still, the university continues to lose money. The main trouble with St. Cloud State’s expenses is a mismatch between faculty numbers and students, according to Lee.

“We have a very large number of faculty members on reassignment because we don’t have enough courses for them to instruct in,” he said. 

On the chopping block

In recommending cuts to programs, the proposal zeroes in on enrollment. It noted that fewer than 10% of current students are enrolled in the 46 programs on the chopping block. And 40 of the 46 degrees recommended to be cut enroll 19 or fewer students.

Not all 46 programs will be permanently nixed. Officials might pause some programs to revise their curricula to make them more relevant to students, Lee said. 

He couldn’t say how many programs will be paused rather than permanently ended because conversations with deans and faculty are ongoing. 

Program cuts are dispersed throughout the university’s colleges. St. Cloud State’s liberal arts college, for example, would go from 35 programs to 18 under the proposal. Music-related programs as well as sociology, Spanish teaching and linguistics are among those that may not continue. 

All told, changes in the budget would eliminate the equivalent of about 57 full-time faculty members. Along with program and faculty cuts, the proposal calls for eliminating 42 staff positions and four administrative positions. 

“While any decision is meaningful, any one individual is substantial, by funding too much of our expense — meaning having too much expense — it takes away from the operation of the entire campus,” Lee said. “So it’s really a matter of right-sizing our programs.”

Too many square feet, too few students

It’s not just teaching resources that are out of balance with enrollment numbers. St. Cloud State also has more classrooms and building square feet than it needs for its student population. Only a third of open classrooms are being used, compared with the Minnesota State system’s recommendation of 85%.

As Lee explained, that means St. Cloud State is paying to repair more roofs, shampoo more carpets, inspect more elevators and change more equipment filters than it needs. 

“We have 3.2 million square feet of facilities on campus,” Lee said. “If we had 2.6 million square feet, we’d probably be spending about $2 million less to maintain those facilities.”

The fiscal 2026 proposed budget projects savings of $300,000 from a building closure and $125,000 in other space management savings. 

Despite those challenges, Lee maintains that St. Cloud State is fundamentally sound financially.