Meeting subject: Joint Cooperation Committee (LSU) meeting
The chairman started the meeting by stressing that the material and the discussions to follow are strictly confidential, until Tuesday morning after the Dean’s presentation (to be announced Monday).
1. Comments to the agenda
No comments
2. NAT budget 2023-26, implications for CS
The total budget for NAT shows a large deficit in the years to come. There are three major structural reasons for this: a decrease in basic research funding, the “dimensionering” of some educational programmes, accompanied by the increase in energy prices and a critically low equity at the AU level.
NAT has seen an increase in the hometake of external funding, however a larger share comes from private funds who are more reluctant to cover the overhead costs.
The “dimensionering” only applies to some of NATs programmes, and fortunately CS programmes are not hit. Hence, we will continue our plans for increasing the intake of students and the corresponding increase in staff.
At present, the financial state of CS is healthy, so our contributions to the elimination of the deficit will be very modest. It could be added that CS has been contributing substantially to the “common pool” at the faculty level for many years.
The chairman presented the distribution of the contributions across departments. CS has been asked to improve the budget with 2 mio i 2023 and 1 mio i 2025. This will be handled primarily by postponing a couple of recruitments. This will probably mean that we will not be able to reach the target of 50 tenured VIP in 2026.
This financial situation makes it even more important to recruit more students, because more students will constitute a stable income. And we will still be looking into a scenario of growth in particlar if we get the permission to offer our bachelor’s programmes in English.
The committee had a short discussion of the distribution of the department contributions.
3. The process ahead
On 27 February the Dean will announce a staff meeting on 28 February where he will announce the need for cut backs. Head of department will call for a local staff meeting later the same day.
The committee discussed the different options of having the staff meeting and decided on having a physical meeting with Anders, Olav and Lene present to answer any questions from department staff.
4. AOB
No other business