Excerpted from the Board of Regents, State of Iowa General Docket item #4, December 12, 2003. For the full document (40K pdf), click here.

The Board, exercising its governance authority:

Directs the university presidents to begin planning toward a potential significant FY 2005 state appropriations reduction and report how their universities would implement a potential reduction in state appropriations for FY 2005 consistent with the following priorities:

• Maintain quality in educational programs offered to enrolled students as the top priority even to the extent that enrollments must be reduced or otherwise managed to maintain that quality.

• Propose methods to achieve administrative efficiencies and other cost containment measures through enterprise-wide collaboration or the creation of enterprise-wide non-academic, administrative services.

• Propose the elimination of selected off-campus centers and outreach services where the revenues generated are less than the costs (such as extension activities, Small Business Development Centers, Lakeside Laboratory, the Des Moines Higher Education Center and other off campus educational and outreach centers).

• Propose removal of some or all general funds and/or increases in service fees for selected non-curricular campus-based programs and activities that mainly serve constituents other than enrolled students, with the goal of making such activities as self-supporting as possible (such as intercollegiate athletics, statewide diagnostic laboratory services and centers, and selective cultural activities).

• Propose strategic cuts in on-campus academic programs as necessary to achieve the budget reduction targets, focusing especially on high cost programs that serve relatively few students and on programs that may be duplicative.

• Propose internal budgetary allocations that will protect existing and/or create expanded revenue streams for University General Funds.