BANGOR, Maine — The University of Maine System’s campuses are getting old and most of the buildings on those campuses will start showing their age soon if they haven’t already, according to a company that reviewed statistics on each UMS building.
Despite the deteriorating infrastructure, the system’s board of trustees approved a freeze on tuition for the next academic year and outlined a series of goals to control costs and improve educational opportunities — while still fixing up the aging buildings — during its meeting Monday.
It has been 25 years since tuition held steady from one year to the next, according to the board.
Jim Kadamus of Sightlines LLC, a Connecticut-based company that reviews finances at universities and colleges nationwide and analyzes where school facilities are losing money, presented the business’s findings before the board on Monday.
Despite recent renovations and the construction of new buildings, especially at the University of Maine in Orono, 69 percent of the university system’s square footage is more than 25 years old — about the age when buildings require more frequent, more expensive repairs — the review found.
“At some point in the next five years, there’s going to be a breakdown in the system,” Kadamus said.
More roofs will start leaking in the middle of winter under inches of ice and snow; more lights will start flickering or burning out; and general disrepair will start taking a bite out of the system’s and state’s pockets within the next few years if the system doesn’t invest in preventative care for its infrastructure in coming months, according to Kadamus.
Just 31 percent of the system’s buildings are under a quarter-century old, while 35 percent have been around for more than half a century.
Among the hundreds of public colleges and universities Sightlines has reviewed nationally, 50-year-old buildings make up just 21 percent of the average campus’s infrastructure.
“There’s a window of opportunity right now for the system and the state,” Kadamus told the board.
Chip Gavin, director of facilities management and general services for the system, said UMS could and should take advantage of that one- to five-year window to repair and improve buildings before they fail.
Emergency repairs often are more costly than maintenance and upgrade work, Kadamus noted.
With repairs and upgrades on the horizon, the board approved a set of goals in an effort to improve the financial standing, as well as the educational efficiency, of the university system in coming years.
The loftiest of the goals is to keep tuition at the same level this year as it was last year. The board endorsed the zero percent increase, with the caveat that Rebecca Wyke, vice chancellor for finance and administration, work out a draft budget for the system’s campuses to make sure that keeping tuition levels the same next year won’t force them to make too many cuts.
The board also approved a new policy that limits the number of undergraduate credit hours needed to obtain a degree to 121.
Another goal includes a directive to form more partnerships between the system and businesses around the campuses to assure that academic programs will meld with the state’s work force needs.
Michelle Hood, chairwoman of the UMS board, called the directives a “nice road map for the future of the University of Maine System.”
Chancellor Richard L. Pattenaude said the system would push hard to be sure these goals are pursued by campus leaders.
“We cannot stop; times don’t allow it,” Pattenaude said. “I’m enthusiastic about what we’re considering here today.”
The board also approved:
• The demolition of 10 of the 36 apartment buildings at University Park apartments in Orono. The buildings were built in the 1960s and some have degraded to the point where repairs would have cost $85,000 annually, according to Janet Waldron, UMaine’s vice president for administration and finance. The savings, as well as $1 million in auxiliary university funds and the remainder of state bond funds to replace sprinkler systems on campus, will go toward repairs at the remaining 26 apartment buildings. Demolition is slated for this summer, Waldron said.
• The expansion of the Wise Lab of Environmental and Genetic Toxicology at the University of Southern Maine’s Portland campus. The project will include two new lab spaces funded by $900,000 from the Maine Economic Improvement Fund.
• A new Master of Laws one-year professional degree program at the University of Maine School of Law in Portland aimed at teaching foreign lawyers and law school graduates.
The next meeting of the UMS board of trustees is scheduled for March 19 at the University of Maine in Orono.
The subtext of the story is the hiring of yet another administrator–this one to oversee campus bldgs. despite each campus having its own bldgs. chief–and the expenditure of tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, on another consulting firm. The Trustees marginalize the seven real campuses, grow their own campus above Epic Sports, never visit any real classrooms or visit any real classes, and set ever more unreachable goals without a clue as to what can be achieved under their boots.
Where did you get that? From your crystal ball?
My thoughts on UMO: The rec center was added… 100 dollars a semester taken out per semester to pay for that automatically, now no one really uses the old pool and the fieldhouse. They want to build a new observatory, when the one they have now works just fine and is right next to the union. The composite arches that collapsed a couple years ago, that was 45k that the university will never get back. There is a lack of leadership there that does not reign these things in, the University is big but its not that big, there needs to be some discipline there. Why aren’t the maintenance people handling these things? Like bunyan1 said, why are they hiring people from out of state to do this simple work for them? We have smart and able people here, I have the same problem with Bangor hiring an out of state firm to run the new arena.
The 90 year old observatory does NOT work. And you can no longer look to any direction because of the lighting on the Collins Center, combined with the Memorial Union addition blocking the west. It also isn’t handicapped accessible, and can’t support modern electrical code. The new observatory requires NO FUNDING from students: it’s funded by a major anonymous donor. You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about.
Funded indefinately? I doubt it. How about when more buildings and lights are installed and you can’t see the sky anymore? It will be a wasted investment. I think I do know what I’m talking about actually, that was a little juvenile I think.
My thoughts on UMO: it hasn’t existed since 1986.
Anyway, the flagship school need to have the best facilities in the state. Anything they do to renovate the UM campus is well worth it.
Lol I hear that every time I say that, but people still call it that
Then those people would be wrong. But that’s ok because ignorant people make me look smarter.
How are people ignorant for calling it UMO? I’ve heard faculty even call it that. I’m not sure why you fellas get so uptight about a name.
NOTE: The one we have now doesn’t work just fine, BECAUSE it’s right next to the union.
In reply to bgrzsaco4me: MAYBE it would be helpful to hire people from out of state for some consulting and some projects. But the System probably spends hundreds of thousands EVERY YEAR on consultants on things like enrollment management, with each campus now hiring its own enrollment manager at a huge cost. The persistent refusal to hire more faculty to try to fill depleted ranks is the Board’s general policy, by contrast.
‘No tuition increase’ sounds good, but watch student fees, book store, dining hall and dormitory costs and so on. Cynic that I am, I suspect the flow of cash from the students to the University will increase at the usual rate, just under different labels.
Don’t forget the employees..who have not seen a cost of living raise in 3-4 years!
The cost of living hasn’t increased measurably in the last 3-4 years. Jobs at the universities usually pay quite well when compared with similar jobs in the private sector here in Maine.
“Jobs at the universities usually pay quite well when compared with similar jobs in the private sector here in Maine.”
That’s patently false, and I have a feeling you know it. Feel free to back up that assertion with numbers, though.
Literally every claim and aspect of your comment is false.
“The cost of living hasn’t increased measurably in the last 3-4 years.” Could you please back that up with facts or haven’t you been near an oil truck, gas station or grocery store in the past 3-4 years … ??
Re MikeCInMaine: I know what I’m talking about. You clearly don’t. Anyone who works at UMaine knows that the Trustees repeatedly visit the high-tech facilities and nothing else save athletics. Take a look at the falling plaster and paint in Stevens Hall, among other bldgs. The System’s plush offices above Epic Sports wouldn’t tolerate that for a nanosecond.
Where did you get that? From your crystal ball?
The University of Maine System Office.
Educates exactly no one, performs exactly no research, and performs excatly no public service.
Eliminate the the System Office, save millions.
LePage? Hello?
Yours is a tired argument; you couldn’t address the benefits of shared services the last time you made your ridiculous comment.
The millions in savings you speak of – document it, please. Back up those assertions with facts.
What happens when services that are centralized are duplicated (again!) across the system 7 (or more) times?
You must be poor with math.
Sure, perhaps you could post the UMS budget?
The benefits of consolidated services (payroll & purchasing, for example) are evident.
What has been duplicated is another layer of bureaucracy.
Congratulations to the University of Maine system for doing all it can to hold tuition rates. I wish other businesses and politicians would follow suit!
Sounds like a pincer action – hold tuition rates, to admit/attract/hold lower income students, or because the market won’t bear a tuition increase; reduce UMS revenues; allow further deterioration of infrastructure; facilitate corresponding decline in education; increase size of under-educated population; continue ongoing reduction of UMS revenues as declining entrepreneurial capability generates less economic activity for the state of Maine, in the form of reduced employment and taxation revenues to support UMS; start the cycle over again.
This isn’t readily comparable to businesses because they have more potential options available to increase revenues, using education, ingenuity and determination. Politicians could learn from what you are saying.
People, this is the end result of government subsidies and ‘soft-socialism’.
When will America awake from its slumber?
Here’s another wonderful idea…allow transfer of all credits throughout the UMaine system. As it stands now, not all credits transfer from one branch to the other, making advanced degrees more difficult and expensive to obtain within the same system.
Just an FYI, that is included in the list of goals the system adopted yesterday.
Stop duplicating degrees. For instance, a nursing degree at UMaine in Orono and a nursing degree at University of Maine in Augusta at the BANGOR campus. Orono and August is bad enough but to add Bangor just doesn’t make fiscal sense.
Chip Gavin, director of facilities management and general services for the system, said UMS could and should take advantage of that one- to five-year window to repair and improve buildings before they fail.
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The University of Maine can’t even paint walls in the classrooms of Stevens/N/S Stevens, and they are going to do major repairs? The paint has been peeling off those walls for many years. I haven’t been in any of those rooms in about 3 years, but I assume they still have not been painted. Maybe if tuition was just a little higher, the university could afford a few gallons of paint.
This fall I saw a rare piece of irony on campus. The UMO Facitlities truck for painting is practically rusted out with chipped and broken paint. I hope the building interiors are much better.