A four percent drop in enrollment this semester has cost MSU about $500,000. In addition, state comptrollers have told administrators not to expect an increased payout from the state for at least four years.

MSU President Dr. Jesse Rogers continues to scrutinize how the university manages its funds. His solution: to raise tuition next year.

“We need to take a hard look, once again, at where we’re spending our money,” Rogers said.

“We need to take a hard look at our budget.”

The university operates on an approximately $50 million budget. Over the past four years, about $12 million in expenses has been sliced from the budget. More budget cuts are inevitable, Rogers said.

“We’ll look and see where money was left over last year,” Rogers said.

“We’re going to look at every one of our auxiliary services, academic programs, everything. Everything needs to be looked at.”

Rogers said the university has money in reserve, but he would rather find other sources of funding before using it.

“We set back some reserves, but I don’t want to go into them,” Rogers said.

Instead, he foresees a tuition hike.

“It will be modest,” he said. “The students are not going to bear the brunt of our economic difficulties. We’re all in it together, and I think we’ve done a good job of holding off our cost and not putting it off on the students.”

Last year, tuition and fees rose by four percent. The next increase should be about the same, Rogers said.

“We’re going to stay below five percent,” he said.

Any more that’s left over, he said, needs to go to faculty and staff raises.

“We’re getting to the point where the decisions we have to make will be very difficult,” Rogers said. “We need to see what happens in the spring.”

Currently, the state funds about 20 percent of MSU’s operation. Though comptrollers have told university administrators not to expect any new money, they haven’t said the state will be paying out any less, either.

In past years, the story was a little bit different.

“We had already been told, ‘don’t be surprised if you have to send more money back during this coming biennium,’” Rogers said.

But if funding from the state stays around 20 percent, it’s better than previous years. It also means MSU won’t have to send any more money back to the state.

“I’m relieved by that,” he said. “If we don’t have to cut any more state appropriations in four years, that’s a better deal. I hope that’s the way it turns out.”

Rogers will meet with the Board of Regents in May to decide how to best manage the university’s funds.