The university, amidst significant budget cuts, honored salary contracts and classroom instruction obligations. Still, some administrators said the cuts left the various colleges scrambling to make ends meet.

Higher education in Illinois received $2.4 billion in appropriations for the fiscal year beginning in July, a $73.3 million reduction from FY 03.

Eastern draws finances from two areas, state appropriation and income revenue from tuition and fees.

In lieu of employee salaries, Mary Anne Hanner, dean of the College of Sciences, said the university cut operation costs, such as new computers, supplies and travel reimbursement by roughly 15 percent.

The college has become more “money efficient” than in past years, she said, buying only office supplies under the context of “use only what you need.”

Almost every general education class has full capacity, where as in years previous that may have not been the case.

Hanner used the example of how a political science class expanded by 51 seats. Normally the class capacity was 99 people, but since the lecture hall could physically seat 150, the increase was made.

Other examples of non-essentials taking a hit. Stipends for summer study, donations to outreach programs and payments toward the development of courses.

“Will there be problems?” Hanner said. “Yeah, there probably will be … but I think people are prepared to meet the challenge.”

Blair Lord, provost and vice president for academic affairs said, the financial hurdle first became visible in early April during Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s budget address.

The FY 03 budget was built from the ground up, Lord says. The old system established budgets by drawing from a large pool of state-allocated money. This year, the various colleges and departments requested funds only for the essentials.

Lord said aside from fulfilling employee salaries, Eastern did not lay off any workers, something other public universities avoided.

For students, class curriculum did not change, but Lord said, “instead of four classes with 10 empty seats in them, we now have three.”

The reduction has caused some problems to students who had to register classes in the last week.

“We confronted the reality that expenditure desires were greater than revenue expectations,” Lord said.

Eastern’s state appropriated money decreased $4.27 million from Fiscal Year 02 at $51.88 million to $47.61 million in FY 03. To counter, the university proposed and the Board of Trustees passed a 9.5 percent hike in tuition at their June meeting.

Public university appropriations equated to $1.3 billion, a 7.7 percent decrease of $108.2 million.