NEW ORLEANS — Facing at least a $10 million budget shortfall, University of New Orleans leadership is preparing to cut $2.2 million in what faculty call “administrative bloat.” University President Kathy Johnson said she aims to achieve this by temporarily consolidating colleges and reducing the number of administrative positions, creating a salary savings. But the lack of faculty and staff input and the prospect of even more cuts has left the small campus unsettled. “We are still in a crisis,” Johnson said Tuesday at a campus town hall meeting. “Hopefully it goes without saying that this situation is nobody’s fault in this room.” UNO has made significant budget cuts in an attempt to rightsize its spending after nearly two decades of declining enrollment. Its student numbers have struggled to recover since the failure of federal levees after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The school had an enrollment of around 17,000 before Katrina, with an immediate drop to around 6,000. For the fall 2024 semester, its total student body  was 6,488. Cutting $2.2 million won’t get the university out of the crisis it faces — something Johnson and her budget chief, Edwin Litolff, were very frank about with faculty, staff and students at Tuesday’s gathering. For the coming year, the pair are focused on how they will make payroll and keep the lights on while still serving students and maintaining the school’s status as an urban research university. UNO is one of three universities in Louisiana with an R2 designation from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, meaning it has high research activity. That research serves as an important engine for economic growth for the state, higher education leaders frequently remind lawmakers who control their budgets. Johnson told a packed ballroom at UNO’s University Center that the school still has to chip away at significant debt. Litolff, who joined the administration in November, said the university is implementing a true spending freeze, implying that budget measures previous campus leaders implemented were not carried out. Exiting the crisis will come down to the university’s ability to enroll and retain students. Hard budget times for the state during Gov. Bobby Jindal’s two terms in office, from 2008-16, led to significant cuts for higher education, one of two large portions of the state budget unprotected in state law. Those cuts switched the burden of funding colleges and universities from the state to the students, leading to significant tuition hikes across Louisiana. In an interview after the meeting, Litolff declined to provide a specific number of students the university needed to add to its rolls to avert further budget cuts, but said it was more than 200. While not impossible, enrollment boosts will be a challenge for UNO. The university’s enrollment declined from fall 2023, and college enrollment nationwide is trending down. If university enrollment doesn’t increase significantly by next fall, faculty and staff are likely to be impacted. Salaries make up about 75% of the university’s budget, Litolff said. Johnson told the anxious crowd that layoffs and furloughs are possible. While faculty cannot be furloughed, even tenured professors can be terminated in the face of a budget crisis. UNO professors are paid more on average than professors at similar Louisiana institutions. UNO also has a higher percentage of professors at the highest rank, with salaries that are higher, compared with other schools. Johnson encouraged tenured and tenure track faculty to submit more proposals for research funding to outside sources and said the university is seeking to hire a lobbyist to pursue more money from Congress and federal agencies. Even faculty members outwardly frustrated at the situation expressed gratitude toward Johnson for making the hard decisions needed to keep the university afloat. Commenters spoke around the edges about decisions previous President John Nicklow made in the seven years he led UNO. Nicklow left the university last year to take a job as president of the Florida Institute of Technology. During his tenure in New Orleans, he sought to buoy the university and bolster enrollment through investments in athletics. In 2022, UNO students rejected a $300 per semester fee increase to finance a football team, a key part of Nicklow and Athletic Director Tim Duncan’s plan to boost enrollment. Nicklow announced he was leaving UNO five months later. Duncan left to be a senior deputy athletic director at the University of Memphis, his hometown alma mater, after Johnson took office and announced significant athletics cuts. Further athletics cuts are among the concessions faculty and staff are seeking. “Our cost of running athletics at this university is quite high relative to our overall budget, and that is not an issue that has been addressed in the plan,” UNO chemistry professor Matt Tarr said. “It’s just essential that we either increase our revenue or decrease our costs, one way or the other, to take that burden off of the general fund and academic and researching efforts.” Johnson did not directly comment on further athletics cuts but said she was working with the department on living within its budget. She also encouraged faculty and staff to purchase tickets to games to support the university’s teams.