University of Louisiana Monroe President Nick Bruno is gathering the information he needs to fill what's expected to be a 5-million-dollar shortfall in the budget year that ends June 30.
Bruno arrived on ULM's campus March 31 after being installed as acting president by the University of Louisiana System Board. This is Bruno's third tenure at ULM after serving as vice president of Business Affairs in the early 2000's, then as president from 2010-2020.
Bruno stressed the importance of full-time student enrollment as his most important benchmark for measuring revenue. "You can be up in total enrollment, and your full time [enrollment] can be down. I don't have those numbers yet. If we're seeing a trend of downward full-time enrollment, that's a troubling thing, because that's where most of your tuition money comes from."
Last week, the University of Louisiana System announced tuition and fee increases for all nine UL-System universities, effective in the 2025-26 academic year. According to Bruno, the tuition increase may help raise revenue, but he is careful to balance the impact on the budget. "That's a two-edged sword. It'll produce more revenues, but how will it impact enrollment? We needed tuition increases, but generally, you always saw a decline in enrollment. If the decline in enrollment is relatively small, you can absorb it and still have more revenues. We'll just have to wait and see."
For the 2025-26 budget, he explained that the budgeting process will start using enrollment numbers from the past year. "It's going to be restructuring to see where we are," he says, including discussions with the deans about workloads, as well as balancing the number of employees to the number of students.
Bruno did not rule out layoffs. "Without being real specific, because I don't have specifics, when you've got an 80% budget in personnel, that's the first target. It's the hardest target, and the one that creates the most stress and the most heartburn."
Related to the interdependence of employees across the university, he explained that staffing cuts are among the hardest to make. "Everybody's important. We're kind of a woven blanket," he said. "You try to make sure you've considered everything before you do it."
Asked about short-term furloughs before June 30, Bruno says he's still gathering more data before he considers furloughs, "Are there some [other] expenses out there than we can pause?"
"If we can plug the hole without furloughs or anything, that's where I'm leaning."
Bruno says he expects to have much more data by the end of the week, but that it may be up to 30 days after his arrival before a plan is announced.
ULM has announced a State of the University address on Friday, April 11 at 8 a.m. The address will be held in Brown Auditorium on the ULM campus and streamed live at https://bit.ly/ULMLiveStream.
