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PRICE, Utah (AP) -- A diminishing pool of college-age residents has the College of Eastern Utah facing a budget deficit and school officials searching for a way to get back on track.
The state Board of Regents and Trustees for CEU said Friday that the two-year college will have a budget shortfall of about $350,000 for the fiscal year ending June 30.
The amount is less than 2 percent of CEU's $16.4 million operating budget and is mostly due to an increased effort to lure out-of-area students into the Price school with scholarships and tuition waivers, CEU President Ryan Thomas said.
Currently, about half of CEU's students are from out of the area, and many of those have hefty tuition discounts.
"We've had fewer and fewer students each year. We knew eventually that would catch up to us, and this year our income has dropped below the line," Thomas said.
In the past 15 years, the college-aged population in Carbon and Emery counties dropped by 35 percent, leaving the school hurting for students and their tuition dollars.
"CEU was originally built to serve the students of this region," Thomas said. "With a substantial and constant decline in school-aged children, we face a serious challenge."
CEU officials began out-of-area recruitment in the late 1980s after recognizing a trend in declining population. Tuition discounts for out-of-state students and the construction of new facilities, however, failed to increase enrollment as hoped.
Thomas said the current situation is a concern because population estimates show the school-age population may not turn upward again for at least 12 years.
"The demographics are against you; there's no turning back," Commissioner of Higher Education Rich Kendell said. "You've got to have some incentive to get students to come here or the demographics are just going to eat you up."
But CEU's financial problems are not new, Kendell said, adding that deficit highlights the need to restructure the school's accounting practices.
A 2005 state audit urged the school to fix shoddy financial controls and understaffed accounting offices. Regents also recently set up a committee to study a possible merger between CEU and South Eastern Applied Technology College.
The results of the study are expected by summer and could result in a marriage between the two schools that would eliminate the competition for students and resources.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
