NMSU: Leaner, but looking forward

LAS CRUCES – In the past seven years, New Mexico State University has reduced its workforce by almost 20 percent. Since 2011, NMSU has eliminated 727 faculty and staff positions at its Las Cruces campus, according to documents obtained by the Sun-News.

The reductions are due, in part, to a steady decline in enrollment and state appropriations. However, Chancellor Garrey Carruthers said the need to examine the staffing levels and “right-size” the university was apparent before enrollment and appropriations became an issue.

“Our objective, really, was to design a university for the 21st century, and recognizing that, as a business, we were going to have to become more efficient,” Carruthers said Friday.

The university in 2015 contracted Deloitte, a consulting firm, to examine staffing levels and organization structures on the campus. The study found the school to be top-heavy — with too many managers overseeing too few employees. A campus-wide reorganization is nearing completion, according to Carruthers.

“This really began before all of the news about declining enrollments and declining appropriations occurred,” Carruthers said. “This has been a problem we’ve needed to address for several years.”

All told, the university has eliminated 64 faculty positions and 663 staff positions since 2011 — a reduction of more than $17 million per year in payroll.

Jim Peach, regents professor of economics and international business at NMSU, said that reduction has a ripple effect in the local economy.

“It’s an easy thing to explain,” Peach said. “If university employees receive a wage, they spend a portion of it locally. So eliminating positions at the university also hurts local businesses, and it likely has an impact on housing sales. You can walk into just about any business on University Ave. during the summer, when many of the students and faculty are out of town, and immediately see how much the local business community relies on the university.”

Peach said that for every job NMSU eliminates, there are 1.4 jobs lost in the local economy.

While the university has reduced permanent and temporary faculty positions by 64, NMSU is paying its faculty more.

“That resulted from a study we did several years ago, the Mercer study,” Carruthers said. “We spent about three years in making sure we adjusted the salaries of all of our faculty member, tenure track faculty members, to what we call a market band — we wanted to be more competitive with our peers.”

Carruthers said that decision was made by the NMSU regents prior to his taking the job as chancellor, but the final two salary adjustments were made on his watch.

As a result, the university is paying about $3.7 million more in faculty salaries than it did in 2011, despite having 64 fewer faculty members.

The university is spending nearly $21 million less on staff, however, than it did in 2011.

Carruthers said he is optimistic that the university is on track to become more efficient moving forward.

“We’re really approaching a time when we’re going to be very sustainable,” he said. “While it has been very difficult, we’re in pretty good shape. Many of the hard decisions have been made. Now, when oil prices go up, or appropriation or enrollment goes up, we’ll be able to make some incredible, strategic investments in some new programs, which we would desperately like to do but haven’t been able to.”

Peach said NMSU’s decline in expenditures is only part of the city’s problem.

“The sad thing about the local economy — it’s not just NMSU,” Peach said. “Las Cruces Public Schools and White Sands are not expanding, either.”

Carruthers said many in the university community will be paying close attention to the upcoming legislative session, which begins Tuesday.

“It’s going to be a very difficult session,” Carruthers predicted. “The legislators have one idea, and the governor has another. There are going to be a lot of difficult meetings.”

Peach said the budget proposals put forth by both the legislature and Gov. Susana Martinez indicate that the worst of the state’s budget crisis has passed.

“What I would hope is that we are about at the end of the major state budget crisis,” Peach said Friday. “It doesn’t look near as bad. I’ve looked at the governor’s proposal and the legislature’s proposal, and neither are of an order of magnitude that we experienced last year.”

Damien Willis may be reached at 575-541-5468,dawillis@lcsun-news.com or@damienwillis on Twitter.