Georgia Southern President Brooks Keel said that proposed cuts to the university’s budget “takes us back to 1998” – when only 13,904 students were enrolled, only four national championship flags flew over Paulson Stadium and the university only received $66 million in state funding.

The proposed cuts could possibly take the level of state appropriations down from approximately $100 million in 2009 to $62.3 million while the university population knocks on the door of 20,000 students. How then, can GSU maintain progress in 2010 with a budget that looks like it came from 1998?

“The Legislature is still debating exactly what that cut could be,” Keel said at a faculty forum on March 1. “Now, that’s the bad news because we don’t know what it’s going to be. The good news is that they are debating. They have not decided yet. This should be a call to action for all of us.”

Keel has called the cuts “devastating” and that the proposals are only in preparation for the “worst-case scenario.”

“This is a massive cut by anyone’s imagination,” Keel said. “To put this in perspective, this takes us back to 1998 and the budget when we had 14,000 students here. If this does come to pass – and let me emphasize that this is a worst-case scenario – if this does come to pass, it sets us back 10 years; a decade in terms of the progress this university has made.”