UMaine “cost saving plan” spends additional millions

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With budget gaps at every turn, the UMaine Chancellor was tasked with finding areas within the system to save millions, $43 million in the next couple years in fact. Today chancellor Richard Pattenaude and the UMaine trustees offered their solution, a plan title “The University of Maine system and the future of Maine”.

In this plan they outling various ways to save money, including enrolling more online students, a three-year degree program, and some other cost saving measures. Also included in the text is the idea that tution will not rise more than 6 percent between now and 2013.

The most disturbing thing in the report, is an initiative that would “invest” $5.3 million to “Create strategic investment fund” as you can see in the picture below, pulled from the report.

UM investment.JPGThere is very little additional detail about what would be done with this $5.3 million to create long-term system savings.

I have a suggestion for the Chancellor…Before adding millions of dollars in vague “investment” plans to the UMaine system’s expenditures, and then raising tution on poor college students, why doesn’t he take a look at cutting his own salary of over  $300,000 a year?