Layoffs are coming, too. Can you say higher ed bubble?

Alaska Dispatch News reports.

University of Alaska is planning big tuition increases and hundreds of staff cuts

University of Alaska President Jim Johnsen presented two revised draft budget proposals Thursday, both cutting hundreds of staff jobs across campuses and adding new tuition increases in an effort to close a projected budget gap for next fiscal year, which starts July 1.

But without an agreed-upon budget from the Legislature, the proposals remain preliminary, Johnsen told the UA Board of Regents at their meeting in Anchorage. One budget scenario, based on the Senate budget, accounts for a $52 million budget shortfall. The other, based on a budget from the House, anticipates having to trim $77 million.

If the smaller Senate-version gap sticks, the university system would lose 200 to 300 full-time employees. If it is the larger cut, that range increases from between 400 and 500, according to Johnsen’s presentation. On top of that, Johnsen said, between 25 and 34 full-time senior-leadership jobs would be eliminated out of a total 167.

“We’ve got to take a significant piece of our higher-level administration out,” Johnsen told the regents.

The budget scenarios also included midyear tuition boosts of either 10 percent or 15 percent, depending on the gravity of the budget shortfall. This increase would come in addition to the 5 percent tuition hike already approved by regents in November for fall 2016.

The midyear tuition increases would also come on top of a separate proposal already under consideration to raise tuition by 10 percent next year for students at the College of Business and Public Policy at the University of Alaska Anchorage. The plan, which needs Johnsen’s approval, would add another 10 percent increase the following year, said Samuel Gingerich, UAA provost and executive vice chancellor.

That boost would match a “tuition surcharge” in place at the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Management. There are also increases proposed for the engineering schools at UAA and UAF, Gingerich said.