COD financial outlook improves

A drop in the enrollment of foreign students is believed to be a contributing factor in creating College of DuPage's budget shortfall.

The situation has COD staff working to find answers to both the money and student recruitment problems.

College officials already have reduced the anticipated shortfall for the current fiscal year, ending June 30.

Originally, the budget deficit was expected to hit about $2.5 million this year. Officials now anticipate the deficit to be about $600,000.

The college saw better-than-expected savings in health care costs and cuts to classroom and teacher supplies, making up for much of anticipated deficit.

COD also continues to see savings by slashing staff positions. That process began when enrollment dropped by about 10 percent after the college switched from a quarter system to semesters a few years ago. By next year, the college will have trimmed 18 full-time faculty positions since 2006 and a total of 37 classes.

Those staff cuts may continue if the college doesn't get a handle on the decline of its out-of-state and out-of-district full-time student population. Such students tend to be from other countries and pay significantly higher tuition, resulting in a notable revenue stream for the college.

There were 205 out-of-state and out-of-district students at the college last year. Now there are only 128 such students. That's a drop of nearly 38 percent.

Tom Ryan, the college's vice president of administrative affairs, said the disappearance of foreign students is a snowballing problem. The program for those students basically is self-funded. Thus, having fewer foreign students results in higher costs for the remaining foreign students, making it more likely that they'll also leave the college.

"That kind of exasperates the problem," Ryan said.

Ryan now is focused on trying to figure out where the foreign students are going if not to COD. He suspects part of it stems from increased difficulties in getting student visas since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"But even with that, the reduction in enrollment is much more than I'd expected."

Budgetwise, Ryan said it may be possible to eliminate the remaining $600,000 shortfall the college still expects for this fiscal year.

"In a $130 million budget, when you get down to $600,000, things can get down even further pretty easily," Ryan said.

To that extent, college staff already have promised trustees to have a balanced budget in the next fiscal year.