We’ve joined the Carnegie team! Find out more.
Alert Close close
Intelligence
Content in a Time of Budget Cuts

Intelligence

Content in a Time of Budget Cuts

Jul 01, 2003By Voltaire Santos Miran

Not long ago, a client had some difficulty identifying the exact number of programs her university offers to graduate and undergraduate students. The reason: successive budget cuts, many of them quite deep. The university is strategizing, realigning, reassigning—and fast. At some point, she actually took a walk across campus to verify that certain offices and programs were still in operation.

Washington State University-Pullman has taken a 5.2 percent budget cut, Illinois’ public university system is seeing its third straight year of cuts, and University of Virginia is looking at a $51.6 million cut—a 31 percent decrease in public funding. No wonder our client took that walk across campus and peeked in a few doors.

Meanwhile, constituent groups are using the web to organize, appeal, or explain. For instance, the graduate employees of UMass-Amherst organized today’s anti-budget cut rally via the Web, and Virginia is making an appeal to donors via the web.

In all this crossfire, it might seem a bit myopic to worry about the state of a university’s website. And yet you have to. The website remains the most important communication tool on campus—the heartbeat of the university, the primary communication channel for talking to prospective students. In these times—times of change and stress—it’s tough to stay current on fees, programs, and faculty, especially in cases where support-staff positions comprise the early lay-offs, and there’s no content management system to take on some of the work. And yet, it’s critical. I’m curious how others are coping. Anyone else take a walk across campus recently?


  • Voltaire Santos Miran EVP, Web Strategy I've developed and implemented communication strategies in education for more than 20 years now. I think my team at mStoner is the smartest, funniest, and coolest group of colleagues ever, and I can't imagine being anywhere else. Except Barcelona. Or Paris. Or Istanbul. To quote Isak Dinesen, "the cure for everything is salt ... tears, sweat, and the sea."