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Jon Collins
St. Paul, Minn.

St. Cloud State University facing up to $10M budget deficit

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The president of St. Cloud State University says the school is running a shortfall of $8 million to $10 million in the 2015 fiscal year.

Administrators are instituting a "flexible hiring freeze" in an attempt to stabilize the school's finances.

In a letter sent to students and staff on Thursday, President Earl H. Potter III said years of falling enrollment has taken a toll on the school's finances. He said enrollment is expected to drop by as much as 5 percent this fall.

School administrators have worked out a multi-year plan to get the school back on stable financial footing. The school's total operating budget for the 2014 fiscal year was $210 million. Positions deemed necessary will be filled, Potter said.

"The flexible hiring freeze will apply to all positions except for those positions that are fully externally funded by contracts and grants," Potter said. "The freeze also does not include student employment or graduate assistantships at this time."

Potter told students and staff that layoffs and retrenchment are not on the table right now, and that they'll only be considered if other means of addressing the deficit are exhausted.

St. Cloud State University is a four-year university in the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System (MnSCU), which includes 31 colleges and universities across the state.