The two universities are exhausting their remaining funds and warn that they will have to go into debt if the multi-year plan is not approved
The two public universities in the Region, Murcia (UMU) and the Cartagena Polytechnic (UPCT), are beginning to worry about their accounts. While waiting for the new multi-year financing plan to be approved (which is two years late, since the previous one expired in 2020), the two institutions have begun to cut costs and warn that next year they will not be able to balance the budget without getting into debt
The tight financial situation of the two universities has also worsened in recent months due to the increase in expenses as a result of the vertiginous increase in the price of the electricity bill, which has generated a hole of one million euros in the case of the UPCT and five in the UMU.
The foreseeable shortages have led the two universities to design cost containment plans. The UMU will address them today, and is studying, among other cuts, closing all campus buildings during the month of August and cutting off the tap for maintenance and renovation costs of the buildings, which amounts to more than two million euros per year . In the UPCT they also warn that if this situation continues, “further measures to replace equipment, repairs and essential infrastructures for the type of technological training developed by the UPCT should be postponed, and all this with the consequent impairment of many of the projects of research and transfer initiated’.
The University of Murcia will freeze the maintenance chapter and the Polytechnic will postpone part of the job offer
Staff costs
The origin of the financial problem must be found in the previous financing plan (2016-2020), which linked part of the budget of the universities to the expenditure of the remainder of the two institutions to meet the costs of personnel. Those remnants, which until then were not available, have been running out, completely in the case of the UPCT and only almost in the case of the UMU. With the remainder almost zero, the two universities only have the option of credit and indebtedness – which should be approved in any case by the regional government) for the preparation of the 2023 budget.
The Polytechnic, which has already agreed “the complete deactivation of the air conditioning systems in classrooms and laboratories until June, as well as the total closure of the facilities during the month of August”, also plans to restrict some of the calls of the plan research support itself. In the personnel chapter, “highlights the proposal to postpone the execution of the 2022 public employment offer in those cases where there is a net increase in the workforce, as well as the expansion of the teaching capacity of the current teaching staff to meet derived needs of the modifications of the academic offer of the next academic year».
“The UPCT’s budgetary room for maneuver is very limited due to the high cost of technological education,” warns the rector, Beatriz Miguel. The head of the UMU, José Luján, will study saving measures today with the deans, but he is clear that the approval of the new multi-year financing plan “is very urgent.” The meetings for its negotiation have been limited to date to technical meetings to evaluate the previous plan, already expired in 2020.
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