About 60 percent of NIU students will be unable to complete their schedules with degree-oriented courses this fall because of a hiring freeze necessitated by the $3.3 million budget reduction, said NIU President John LaTourette.

LaTourette said students might have to take more electives than general education or major requirements because some sections and whole classes might be cancelled. The end result might mean students will need more than four years to receive their degrees.

“When we talked about ‘up to 60 percent,’ we didn’t mean necessarily that students wouldn’t get 12 or 15 hours,” LaTourette said. “They may well be able to get 12 or 15 hours, but the selection of courses may not be exactly what they want or the selection may not cover as many requirements as they would like to have covered.

“The next question is, can they make up for that deficiency in the future? And if they can’t, will it extend their programs? It’s a little hard to tell right now,” he said.

With orientation for freshman and transfer students completed, LaTourette said the university has fall registrations that continuing students completed on July 17 plus those filled out by new students at orientation. He said the university is looking at the requests to determine where shortfalls and full classes exist.

LaTourette offered three possibilities for rectifying the situation with less temporary faculty. Those include increasing the number of students in classes, switching faculty to different classes or cancelling sections or classes.

Jim Norris, dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, said NIU might be able to add students to classes, but that plan has restrictions.

“It may help to accommodate the students, but it does not do much to help the quality of education,” he said. “You can’t put 50 people in a writing class. You cannot put more in a lab than there are lab stations.”

Assistant Provost Tony Fusaro said he does not know how many sections might be cancelled. He said the same number of students might not receive complete schedules as in previous years but those people will receive even fewer classes than before.

LaTourette said the university would try to keep upper division classes seniors need to graduate on time as first priority. Capable of being cut are 100- and 200-level classes and upper division courses students use only for electives.

“I think it’s going to hit the freshmen but also sophomores,” LaTourette said. “I know students delay or put off taking some courses—as they pursue their major—until their junior and senior year, and they will be hurt, too. We’re going to try to cover the needs of seniors, and we hope we can do it.”

LaTourette said students majoring in the College of Business and LA&S will be among the hardest hit by reductions in classes or incomplete schedules. Business majors will have a tougher time because they need some of the general education classes which might be cut for general education requirements and for tool courses.

Business Dean Richard Brown said the college cut about 400 pre-business majors from tool courses. He said some upper division courses were cut along with sections that had a capacity of about 350 students. The college also cut some electives, he said.

“We hope it doesn’t defer their graduation by a semester, but it will be tight,” Brown said.

LaTourette said the hiring freeze prevented about 50 to 60 faculty, temporary or permanent, from being hired. He said each department (NIU has about 40 departments) had to deal with about one or two less faculty for the upcoming semester.

“We’re going to try to add where appropriate, assuming the Board (of Regents) will take some action on increasing tuition,” LaTourette said. “I think the indication is the board will seriously consider an increase in tuition at the September meeting, but we cannot wait until then. We have to take action now to see how this will affect us.”