Since the Great Recession, the amount of money states invest in public higher education has dropped dramatically. That, coupled with a steep drop in enrollment, has led some state university systems to cut faculty and some academic programs altogether. In Maine, where Republican Paul LePage secured a second term as governor, those cuts are unlikely to be restored. Kirk Carapezza and Mallory Noe-Payne report at On Campus:
“I knew that the University of Southern Maine was in a financially unsustainable position,” said University of Southern Maine’s new president, David Flanagan.
Flanagan, a former energy executive, was brought in by the school’s Board of Trustees to make these hard choices.
“It was going to be necessary to balance the budget in order to have any kind of future as a higher education institution,” Flanagan explained.
