OU will take year to rebuild budget

NORMAN — University of Oklahoma President Jim Gallogly will report on the millions of dollars in inefficiencies his administration has found to date when the OU Board of Regents meets Thursday on the university’s Tulsa campus.

“We have found very, very significant opportunities to save money,” Gallogly said. “There are lots of things we can and will do better.”

OU won’t have a budget for the Norman campus this academic year because so much more needs to be done, he said.

Regents in June approved a $2.12 billion 2018-19 budget — $1.02 billion for the Norman campus and $1.10 billion for the Health Sciences Center campus — with the understanding Gallogly would rework it once he took office July 1.

The budget was projected to have operating losses of $14.5 million on the Norman campus.

In the two months since then, the executive staff has made a lot of progress but not enough to draft a completely new budget, Gallogly said.

“We are operating in many, many silos in our university,” he said.

Instead of submitting a new 201819 budget to the regents, Gallogly said his team will use the year to rebuild the budget.

In a town hall meeting last week, Gallogly told students his top concern is making sure OU is affordable for them. He mentioned a number of ways costs can be reduced.

Those include eliminating overspending for equipment, moving from paper to electronic time sheets for employees, and reducing the fleet of 450 university vehicles.

He praised one costsaving initiative implemented by the regents and former President David Boren a year ago — the reduction in the number of National Merit Scholarships, which was growing each year.

“The cost was astronomical, millions of dollars,” Gallogly told the students.

That money was going to a few students, which left less scholarship money available for everyone else, he said.

Tuition and fee increases year after year mean students end up paying 30-plus percent more than they expect when they enter OU, Gallogly said.

“That’s a heavy burden on you and your families,” he said. “That keeps our university out of the reach of so many students.”

OU didn’t raise tuition this fall for the first time since 2013.

[PHOTO BY STEVE SISNEY, THE OKLAHOMAN] University of Oklahoma President Jim Gallogly speaks at the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber’s annual State of the Schools luncheon last month.