NSHE plans for worst

By: Jay Balagna

Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - 2:41 AM

Illustration by Jett Chapman/Nevada Sagebrush

Higher education students in Nevada could see the closure of entire colleges, the elimination of majors and the firing of tenured faculty if state legislators cut too deeply into education to fill a roughly $870 million hole in Nevada’s budget.

In case legislators pass such a cut in the special session set to start Feb. 23, the Nevada System of Higher Education’s Board of Regents is preparing for a worst-case scenario: financial exigency.

After the cut is decided, the regents must meet in either March or June to decide how to handle it, meaning students would likely see affects of a financial exigency declaration or other measures in fall 2010.

A declaration of financial exigency is essentially the system declaring bankruptcy, Dean Leavitt, the chairman of the Board of Regents, said. If NSHE does declare financial exigency, institutions in the system would be free to eliminate contracts early, not pay back loans and cut tenured faculty without providing them the required one-year notice.

“If (financial exigency) is declared, students can expect layoffs of faculty with very short notice and the elimination of programs with very short notice,” NSHE Chancellor Dan Klaich said.

Some of the actions NSHE leaders would be able to take to solve the budget crisis could create an even larger problem – a loss of academic accreditation for institutions.

If institutions use the declaration of financial exigency to eliminate too many tenured or tenure-track professors in individual departments, they could lose accreditation from the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. The NWCCU handles cases of accreditation on a case-by-case-basis.

Klaich said the risk of losing accreditation is real, but a long shot.

“It’s a little bit like crying wolf to say if we declare financial exigency, we’re going to lose accreditation,” he said. “It’s the actions that you take after … that could do that and I have faith in the (institution) presidents to keep that from happening. You don’t want to solve a problem and create a bigger one.”

Retaining accreditation would be one of the top priorities kept in mind when cuts are made, Milton Glick, the president of the University of Nevada, Reno, said.

“(Financial exigency) does make it harder to keep accreditation,” he said. “But it’s absolutely critical we do keep it. Without accreditation we lose federal financial aid. Degrees would be worth less. It would be a disaster.”

Even with university administrators working to keep the school accredited, Glick said the process would still not be easy and they would have few past cases of financial exigency to study for advice.

“There’s not a lot of precedent on this,” he said.

Associated Students of the University of Nevada President Eli Reilly said the risk of an accreditation loss, even a small risk, was one of the most important things facing students in upcoming budget cuts.

“The loss of accreditation, I mean, that’s it,” he said. “You can’t go to law school with a degree from a school that’s not accredited. You can’t go to dental school, you can’t go to med school.”

While the risk of an accreditation loss is real, Reilly said he is confident university leaders would be able to keep it.

“There’s just so many ifs; it depends on so much,” he said. “It’s a scary thing.”