University of Maine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy and Gabriel Paquette, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs & Provost, Giovanna Guidoboni, Interim Vice President for Research & Dean of MCEC, Jenny Boyden, Interim Vice President for Finance & Administration
& Chief Business Officer, and Jake Ward Vice President for Strategic Partnerships, Innovation, Resources, & Engagement, co-hosted a Budget Town Hall on March 23, 2026.
The recording of the Budget Town Hall meeting began late, the video commences with audience Q&As.
The slides presented at this event are available online.
Full transcript of event
Man 1: First of all, thank you so much to Jenny and the whole finance team for all the work that you’ve been doing. This cannot be easy, and so just thank you so much. I know it’s a lot of work, and you guys have been thinking very creatively about how to solve this crisis, which you inherited. Thank you.
I had a couple of questions. Maybe I just missed this information, so apologies if that’s the case. Is the plan to raise tuition for in-state students and out-of-state students, or is it just to raise it for in-state?
Jenny Boyden: It is for both in-state and out-of-state.
Man 1: Thank you. I was wondering if the finance office has taken into consideration potential differences in the price elasticity of demand between those two populations, and if the tuition is being raised proportionally for both, or if it takes into account that difference.
Jenny Boyden: The tuition is being raised approximately four percent…
Man 1: For both.
Jenny Boyden: …for both in-state and out-of-state. I can say that we’ve had conversations with enrollment management about what the impact could be on elasticity if the tuition rate were higher, but we’re at four percent.
Man 1: Interesting. It occurs to me that it seems like one of the major reasons for the structural gap with the difference in revenue versus expenses is that we have a different proportion now of in-state students than we had previously.
I wonder if not raising the out-of-state tuition would actually result in more out-of-state students attending UMaine, and therefore, maybe we wouldn’t have such a big structural gap. Just a thought for consideration. Obviously, I’m not an expert in this, but that’s been a thought that’s been going through my mind.
My final question, and then I’ll let others step up if they have any questions, is was there a strategic reason behind an across-the-board cut of seven percent for all units?
Jenny Boyden: That was the target. As I mentioned, we started with a target of seven percent, and there were some units that did not meet the seven percent. I’ll say within my group, I did not achieve seven percent in facilities. I couldn’t figure out with my team how we could do that, where we’re not really meeting the current needs of the campus, if we cut seven percent, how we would function.
There were some entities that had put forth a seven percent reduction that we felt would be more detrimental than the cut itself would be worth. We had to evaluate if the $300,000 cut was enough in order to meet that seven percent number. If that was so important, we would be willing to take a two-million-dollar loss in revenue, and that just didn’t make sense.
We were making those evaluations as we were going through the process.
Man 1: Absolutely. Thank you very much.
Gabe Paquette: William, want to add to that two points.
First is you’ve asked a couple of very good questions about enrollment management strategies. This is probably not the time to go into depth in that way, but I know that Kevin and the team would be very happy to describe in greater depth the various strategies we use to discount rate to maximize our use of financial aid, all of which take into account elasticity, essentially.
They can go into greater details, and I think probably we’ll build that into the budget 101 at the appropriate time. That’s a great question. Thank you.
The other one I wanted to clarify has to do with the seven percent. In academic affairs, we proposed actually more than an eight percent cut. In some units that was not as feasible. The key thing to say, and here I’m thinking mainly about academic affairs, is that the seven-percent expenditure reduction was given to an individual unit, like a college.
It was not to say that every single subunit within that unit should receive a seven percent cut. We have to rely on those who know those units well, in that case, the deans, but obviously beyond academic affairs as well. That’s an important distinction to be made. Thank you.
Will Biberstein: Kevin, please step up to the mic. If you can provide your name and the department you’re with as well.
Kevin Coughlin: [inaudible 4:53] anonymous.
Hi, I’m Kevin Coughlin. I’m the vice president for enrollment. It’s not necessarily a question. It’s just to add some nuance to the answer. When Jenny works…I’m sorry. When the interim CBO works with us to come up with some answer to a question, what would be the impact of certain levels of increases to in-state and out-of-state tuition?
We worked with several partners to come up with an estimate, for example, four or five percent. We’ve been looking at countervailing pressures to find out what would be the overall impact if we were to increase by four percent. Yes, we’re placing negative pressure on some out-of-state enrollments.
Out-of-state students tend to be less price sensitive than in-state. The four percent in-state was something that was also concerning us. Then you take all of the negative impacts and all the positive impacts, you sum them up to see what is the overall impact. In this case, it was not negative.
Am I super happy about saying, “Hey, let’s punch up tuition and, oh, by the way, while we’re at it, let’s add some costs to room and board?” No, I’m probably not. There are certain realities with which we must contend. This is what that looks like. Welcome to making the sausage. It is a little messy.
Now, the idea of overcoming some of the sizable portions of the budget with changes in the mix of students — of course, we’re full. How many more out-of-state students do you think that are coming to a rural R1 traditional excellent education, excellent opportunity? We’re going to bring all of them in that we can.
Ultimately, I think the question that the president was starting to approach and starting to push is in the SRE, we have to evolve. There are new markets of different types of learners we’re going to have to go and pursue in ways that historically we have not. Now I’m going to go away before I get in more trouble.
[laughter]
Will Biberstein: Thank you, Kevin. Other questions from the room?
MacKenzie Stetzer: Yeah. Hi. I’m MacKenzie Stetzer from the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
I had a question about how you’re modeling these budget cuts, because when I’m thinking about student support programs and proposals to cut them, I feel like, especially if they’re impacting retention, you also have to model further out and think about what are the potential losses in tuition etc., because I know that that’s been a critical factor in many of these programs.
I was wondering if anyone could comment on that? I recognize sometimes it’s hard to know these numbers, but it seems critical.
Gabe Paquette: Absolutely. Obviously those are considerations that are taken very seriously and in-depth conversations occur, for example, in academic affairs I have with the deans, I would have with other leaders. We have to take that very seriously.
For example, you’re talking about student support services, but perhaps the thing I would just mention is some proposals that we received have to do with cutting the instructional budget by a certain amount, but we knew that actually the loss in revenue would not only obviate those gains, which is not acceptable, given our revenue targets. Those had to be rethought.
Similarly, we want to take it into account when we think about various expenditure reductions to student support services. We’re desperately trying not to do that and certainly desperately trying not to do that in the area of personnel. We do need to make our targets.
I think the Vice President and CBO did a really excellent job of showing how the expenditure reductions that we’re currently making are going to have downstream impacts that are going to reduce the overall size of our deficit moving forward.
I appreciate you saying that. It’s definitely the forefront of my mind, and I know that it’s on the forefront of the minds of deans and others. Thank you.
[crosstalk]
Joan Ferrini-Mundy: It’s a great question. I would add that we have a number of very interesting pilots or relatively newly introduced approaches to student advising. For example, I would cite the Maine College of Engineering and Computing, which has created new space and new approaches to doing this. Those two become a part of that modeling.
How well is that working? I would add to that the outstanding work that’s been done by Scott Marzilli and his team on the student success pieces of the UMS Transforms activity, because ultimately the parts of those experiments that are showing progress and improvement will need to be built in then to our overall structure. Many moving parts, but it’s a great question.
MacKenzie: Thank you. Because I just recognize that it’s so hard to understand what all goes in that umbrella, like it’s things that impact classes, it’s advising centers, etc. Thank you.
Keegan Tripp: Hi, guys. My name’s Keegan Tripp. I’m now the outgoing student body president. I’m glad I could make it today. Mine’s just more about logistics in terms of how we’re going to get the word out about what the future of the university is to students.
Uniquely, right now, students are tuned into this question, and maybe this is a further conversation we should have in our upcoming admin meeting. The two things that I would like to look into is how we can…I see that the decision ultimately will happen after graduation, so a lot of it will be projected until we get to there.
Perhaps an address to the general student senate is in order. Maybe a more abridged simplified version of this to get that word out, but also what we can expect for a broader student outreach and while, like we’ve talked about, there are some students that are more tuned in than others, something that is bite-sized and consumable.
Joan Ferrini-Mundy: Thank you for being here, and absolutely eager to discuss that. A piece of that, too, maybe we can tie back to the various versions of student advisory boards that we have in the colleges, because a piece of it has to do with, as I mentioned earlier, in the academic portfolio review part of the work.
We want to be very sure we are hearing student voices going forward in terms of relevance, needs for certain programs, needs for certain kinds of instructional innovations. I’d like to figure out a way with you and your team to make that a part of the conversation as well. We’ll figure it out.
Keegan: Great. I want to put that on everybody’s minds, maybe before our meeting, so we can talk about it. Cool.
Will Biberstein: Thank you, Keegan. Kelly, did you have an online question?
Kelly STraub: Yes. I have some of the online questions here, so I’m going to relay a few of them, some of them in more general terms. The first is it’s clear that there is more work to do as we think beyond FY ’27. What are the next steps as we look towards future budget years?
Jenny Boyden: That’s work that we will start at the cabinet level right away, because, as I said, we know what our anticipated gap is for fiscal ’28. If we are going to follow our shared governance processes to address any of that, then we need to start that work now. I’ll be anticipating that work starts relatively immediately within cabinet.
Joan Ferrini-Mundy: Of course, our first step is to be sure that the board is OK with ’27, and that we have the work in place to move that ahead. Jenny’s right. ’28 needs to begin. There are always three budgets being worked on at any time in the university, including the current fiscal year, which we need to conclude.
Let me say that in addition to work in the cabinet, we’re very open to conversations with the Senate FIPC group with the president’s budget committee that Jenny chairs and leads, and student organizations to the extent that they’re interested as well, mostly at the high level what will strategy look like and what’s the place of SRE continuing to go forward as those analyses become more solidified.
It’s ongoing, but I’m happy to begin that discussion soon. I always am interested in a more robust focus on revenue generation. The wiser budget-related people say to me, “Yeah, no, yes, good. Thank you, president for that,” but we really need to be sure that we’re able…
I actually had a faculty member in the business school — I won’t identify them — who said, “You can’t make these reductions based on projections about revenue generation. You have to be able to see them in concrete ways,” which, of course, makes sense.
However, I believe now is we are ready as a campus to more robustly and in a more organized way develop revenue generation strategies and find ways to incentivize the work that it sometimes takes to get from where we are to implementing a strategy. I’m very interested in that conversation going forward as we have found some resources and gift funds that can help us to do that.
At the same time, it’s going to require really, when I keep saying robust, I do mean where the projections are pretty plausible. Where we will be able to say very likely that if we do X, that will lead to Y. If you’re starting to think about this, please think in those directions as well.
Will Biberstein: Anybody else have questions in the room? Otherwise, we’ll go to another online question. Kelly, please.
Kelly Straub: Yes. We’ve got a question about retrenchment. To what extent does it look like it’s going to happen in FY ’27? What items are being planned in ’27 going forward as we look further out in the budget?
Jenny Boyden: There are no faculty retrenchments as proposed as part of the FY ’27 budget. There are eliminations of some vacant positions, elimination of some positions where the incumbent is retiring or resigning, but there are no faculty retrenchments. We do anticipate fewer than 10 staff layoffs.
We are partnering with HR to move forward on those workforce management actions in compliance with our collective bargaining agreements, and approaching every decision with care and respect for the employees impacted, and that they’ll be provided support throughout the transition.
Kelly Straub: A follow-up that goes with that is the critical hire process. What percentage ballpark of positions put forward for the critical hire review process get rejected? Do you feel the extra administrative burden coming from the critical hire process is worth the cost savings and is seeing the results that you want to see?
Gabe Paquette: I just want to say something about ’28 because, while they’re not faculty retrenchments or layoffs, retrenchments are for tenured faculty. ’28, the situation cannot yet be predicted. In that, I mean Vice President Boyden showed how we have essentially exhausted our use of reserves.
As many of you know, because you’ve been part of this process, many operational expenses that could have been cut have been proposed to be cut, and so, since much of our budget is personnel-related, it’s inevitable.
Unfortunately, there will be significant personnel considerations that will go into the ’28 budget, much as I lament that. I know everyone else does. That seems unavoidable at the moment, unfortunately.
Joan Ferrini-Mundy: Thank you. I’ll start in on the critical hire and turn it to Vice President Ward to give more detail if you’re interested. It’s a good question. It’s a fairly labor-intensive process at all levels because the request needs to originate with the unit and then be reviewed at another level, and so forth.
Increasingly over the period that we’ve been doing this work, the descriptions of the need for the position, the data that would typically, in the old days, earlier on, we would have needed to ask for the data, that’s coming in now with these requests. The process has become more streamlined.
By the time they reach my desk, there have been so many layers that I can’t answer that question about the percentage that we decline because it’s fairly small. I might have one more question, but even less and less of that because they’re getting filtered out and decided at other levels on the way in, with a very careful look.
The questions that I typically raise have to do often with, would there be a way to partner with this unit that I just saw last week that was looking for a position here on this one? Would there be a way to delay the start, would there be a way to try something a little bit different?
They are fairly specific types of questions and much less of the mass rejection positions. There’s not much of that now.
Jake, any more to add?
Jake Ward: Yeah. I would just add that really there’s been an evolution of the critical hire review over the last year. Certainly, when it started early on, we had the federal transition at the same time. You’re looking at positions that were either E&G or grant-funded, gift-funded, and blended.
At the same time, the targets for overall budgets were less well understood. Over specifically the last few months, anyways, we’re seeing less and less things actually come to the Critical Hire Committee that need anything other than verifying that funds are there and that the needs to fill at the dean’s level have been decided before they come there. Many of the other positions, same thing.
Based on a conversation that we had with the Faculty Senate a couple of weeks ago, the Critical Hire Committee has looked at the process and looked at cohorts of positions that may no longer need to come through there. We’re still in the process of trying to streamline and eliminate some of those.
I would add that building in the information upfront, the request for information upfront, has made it easier to make those decisions, especially positions that are crossing multiple sources of funds, E&G, gift, grant, etc.
Jenny Boyden: I would just add one more thing about Critical Hire, and that is, it’s one of the areas that came up during our President’s Advisory Committee on Administrative Excellence.
Some of the feedback that we received was, there are two sets of forms that people have to fill out. They have to fill out the Critical Hire form, and then much of that same information gets submitted on the other hiring form, the ORC form that comes after that.
Our group, which included Simon Ferland and MJ Cedric, that suggested that there could be a way to combine those forms, reduce the administrative work of the people who are submitting them, while still providing the same level of information to those who are making the decisions, and we agree.
They met with HR and finance last week to talk about what that process could be, and that will be part of the recommendation that we move forward to the president on what can we do? This is something that we can do to reduce the administrative burden of the hiring process on all levels of the organization, so we will advance that as a suggestion.
Will Biberstein: Kelly, if you would.
Kelly Straub: There have been several questions related to what is driving the decrease in student credit hours, and specifically, if we think the free two years of community college might have anything to do with it.
Gabe Paquette: Thank you. It’s a great question. I may have to invite Vice President Coughlin to come up again and say a few words that will be more granular than mine there. It’s no mystery that we are, as a state, and also as a region, facing what’s known as the demographic cliff. We’re graduating fewer high school students, and therefore, we have fewer incoming in-state students.
We’re also struggling to compete for students regionally, because those other states in our region are similarly struggling to maintain their enrollments. We’ve seen some unexpected declines in out-of-state students from the region, which have adversely affected our own position. That’s obviously a broad brush.
I don’t know if Vice President Coughlin would wish to say anything more to add more detail, or perhaps not, but he’s making his way to the mic.
Kevin Coughlin: It is something worth a great deal of internal study that we’re going to start. In some instances, what we’re trying to do is overcome barriers that continuing students may be encountering as they begin registering for credit hours. This is not new, but a little bit more organized, a little bit more aggressive over the past two terms and for upcoming terms than we have in the past.
A decent hypothesis to put forward is as we begin tying all of our aid, optimizing scholarship money as we had described, as we begin prorating that based on credit hour, cost becomes more of an issue for students as they encounter a term.
We would need to interrogate that type of a question more rigorously than a feeling I might have or a thing that we might see in an AACRAO report or something like that.
I’m sorry, AACRAO, American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, often enough does these general studies. Whether they’re applicable here or not is something to be seen. I would think cost would play a bit of a factor.
Gabe Paquette: Thank you, Kevin. I think this speaks to the need to incorporate enrollment management into a budget 101 session that we may have eventually.
Jenny Boyden: I would say that the budget 101 is scheduled. Thank you to William, and thank you to Amanda and Henry for suggesting a budget 101. I like budgets, so I appreciate that Faculty Senate and FIPC are interested in learning more of what goes into making the budget itself and what drives some of the numbers.
I’m looking forward to it. It is scheduled for April 22nd from 12:00 to 1:00 in the Memorial Union. I believe an invitation went out to all of Faculty Senate and all of UMaine faculty this morning.
Will Biberstein: Kelly, do you have another question, please?
Kelly Straub: Another more general topic of conversation based on several questions we’ve gotten is, what actions can be taken to address current employees’ reducing salary, whether it’s retirement incentives, whether it’s higher salaries being adjusted to be lower? Are there any mechanisms in place to try to address that as opposed to the critical hire side of things?
Joan Ferrini-Mundy: We have spent some time enumerating those possibilities and discussing them among ourselves as leaders, as well as in some initial conversations with the Board of Trustees and system personnel.
There are system implications for pretty much any of those solutions, although we are seeing some various kinds of voluntary approaches to addressing that very kind of matter, including individuals requesting that their schedule go back to an 11-month schedule, for instance, where they’re able to support the rest of their time as needed in other ways.
Very live conversation about that topic with our trustees and our system leadership.
Will Biberstein: Any more questions from the room? If not, Kelly, do you have another online one?
Kelly Straub: People are curious, again, about FY28 and going forward and what things look like. What should they be doing now to prepare, in terms of if they’re negotiating contracts, if they’re looking ahead at their own budgets and longer-term plans? Is there any general guidance that can be given as people start adjusting towards the future?
Joan Ferrini-Mundy: I’ll start and turn that to Jenny. I think all of those kinds of things are wise to be doing all the time, anytime, but we’re certainly conducting a review of all contracts at this point that are run out of central administration to see where there may be savings or adjustments or off-ramps or different ways to do some savings there.
At the same time, I think we could, and I’m assuming this would be fine with Jenny, we could do, as soon as we’re through the board approval of this budget, we could plan an open session on getting ready for ’28 and taking a look at the possibilities.
By that time, we will be a little further along with some of the SRE work, some of the review work that’s been done so very carefully and thoroughly at the college level and within research centers and institutes where we would have a bit more direction and data that might be more suitable for folks to work from to say, “What could we do with a little bit more time in getting ready for the ’28 budget?”
Those numbers aren’t likely to be due to the system any earlier than they were for ’27. It’ll be January, and February, March. Happy to try to look at an early start on that. That work will need to be as strategic as we can possibly make it so that we are putting in place the kinds of changes that will continue to knock this structural deficit down further.
We’ve made very good progress. Want to commend all of the people who have made difficult cuts to the base, because that’s what starts to move us toward that reduction. At the same time, we have more to go. I’m encouraged by the interest in ’28 and the willingness to put our heads together early on to do what we can with that.
Giovanna Guidoboni: Can I add something, tailing on what you were saying? For what concerns the research side, I also would like to point out that the office on the base budget side of the house took a 9 percent reduction last year and a 7.6 reduction this year.
By the way, that was done with the priority, though, to support those services that are university-wide, specifically ORA, ORC, and so on, to support the whole research enterprise.
One way to engage in the process moving forward, especially for FY28, is to participate in the research community post tomorrow, and also in what will come next, because there will be an opportunity for the whole research community.
Community is in the title of the event tomorrow, because it is meant to be as inclusive as you want it to be, basically your participation, to provide inputs on how we want the evaluation process for research centers and institutes to look like.
As the President said, one of the main outcomes of the SRE research portfolio review is that we are not currently set up to gather and curate and monitor the data that are necessary to reform in a transparent and systematic way the evaluation of the resource allocations to various centers and institutes, so this is what we are working on to actually set up that process together with you.
Again, one way to work proactively for an FY28 that looks reasonable and feasible is to engage in the process.
Will Biberstein: Kelly, one more question, maybe, and then we’ll wrap things up.
Kelly Straub: This question is, are there any thoughts of strategically selecting capital projects to slow down or stop in order to make financial space for critical needs?
Jenny Boyden: That’s a tough question, because the majority of our capital projects are not funded with our E&G dollars or our auxiliary dollars. Really, what we’re funding out of our operating budgets are maintenance-type projects. Our large capital projects are really funded with external funds, either Alfond funds, gift funds, CDS awards…
Jake Ward: Maine Jobs and Recovery.
Jenny Boyden …maine Jobs and Recovery. Those are really the funding streams that are funding the large capital projects, and they can’t be redirected to support other activities. I understand the question, and I appreciate it, but it’s just not really feasible to redirect those funding sources to support other operations.
Jenny Boyden: Absolutely. The funds do have deadlines. For example, the Maine Jobs and Recovery Plan funds must be fully expended by December 31st of this year on what they were obligated to be spent on.
Joan Ferrini-Mundy: I’m not sure if you mentioned donors as well…
Jenny Boyden Donors, yes.
Joan Ferrini-Mundy…part of that.
Will Biberstein: Thank you, everyone, for attending in person or online. We apologize for any audio-visual disruptions that we had. This is being recorded, so if you’d like to go back and review any of the slides, we appreciate it. Please take the opportunity to join in the many sessions that we have coming up through the spring. Thank you, and have a nice day.
