The University of Northern Iowa’s president says the state’s budget crisis hits the state universities hard because they’re “mature” institutions that don’t deal well with rapid change. U-N-I president Robert Koob says he’s had to change his school’s budget plan every quarter this year.Koob says in the beginning, they thought it would be a temporary recession, and they made “temporary fixes” in the budget, things like shifting funds around and delaying the hiring of some professors. Koob says now they’ve shifted to “long-term” changes to save money, as they no longer are looking at temporary fixes.Koob hasn’t decided yet where millions of dollars in cuts at U-N-I will be made, and he acknowledges he’s losing sleep trying to remain unemotional and make the correct decision on the cuts. Koob and the leaders of Iowa and Iowa State will meet this week in Iowa City with the Board of Regents to discuss their budget-cutting options.
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