Slippery Rock University was faced with more than an 18 percent budget cut to state and federal funding this summer, which caused tuition to go up seven and a half percent.
Even with the tuition increase, that still left a budget gap of $5,725,139, which the president of SRU, Dr. Robert Smith, said they weren't completely unprepared for.
"People did a really amazing job last year, knowing that we were going to be facing a budget difficulty, of really not spending," Smith said.
President Smith said that once the initial proposal was made by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett to cut 51 percent of funding to higher education, a lot of institutions started looking to see where they could make those cuts.
SRU had a lot of time to search for spots in the budget they could cut back on.
One way the university plans on saving $1 million is through energy costs, and the university is also planning on receiving performance funding for $500,000.
SRU undertook a new initiative this summer to go green, which not only saves money, but also helps the environment.
The rest of the gap will be filled by moving $2 million from reserve funding to operation costs, making cuts to personnel, and reducing spending on printing, supplies, travel and more.
One thing President Smith said the university wouldn't sacrifice to help with the budget difficulties was the quality of the students accepted into SRU.
"There are a lot of students that we didn't admit because they didn't have the high school qualifications," Smith said.
He also went on to say that based on previous years, he expects that SRU will enroll 600 transfer students for the spring semester, which will also help with the budget gap.
Other options that the university is looking into, according to Smith, include the cutting of some programs entirely.
"We're going to have to agree on what we're going to give up," Smith said. "For example, this last year we gave up Life Long Learning, we just closed that entire division. This coming year, we might have to look at some graduate programs that we can't afford to do any longer."
Smith was adamant about making sure that students already enrolled in those programs would be able to finish out their degrees.
Another way the university is trying to save money is by better utilizing technology.
He admitted that while the new Banner program is hard to learn and get used to, it has the potential to save the university a lot of money.
"There are all sorts of self-service aspects of it (the Banner program)," Smith said. "You can pay your bill on it, you can check your financial aid status and you can do all this other stuff. You used to have people who had to do that."
Another issue that students were worried about was how financial aid would be affected by the new budget.
President Smith said that SRU's dedication to financial aid actually increased this past year.
"We probably invested $750,000 in financial aid to help offset the cost of tuition and other fees," Smith said.
Smith did say that the budget is still in a very fluid situation, and will continue to change for a while.
SRU has made a lot of changes to adapt to the new budget, and more changes appear to be in the future.
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