News 12 at six o'clock -- March 2, 2010

AUGUSTA, Ga. --- Education amounts to sixty percent of Georgia's state budget. So when that budget needs to be cut, the ax falls hardest on schools. The university system is feeling that blow, and MCG held a town hall Tuesday to discuss potential cuts.

Tensions ran high at a packed town hall meeting at the Medical College of Georgia. Students and faculty heard for the first time what a 25.6 million dollar budget cut would mean for them.

"How can you come in here today and be that unprepared?" exclaimed one student, noting that the administrators could not give students a plan for graduation should their programs be cut.

"We're just supposed to sit and wait for a decision that you can't even tell us when it's going to be made?"

With MCG being one of the 20 largest medical schools in the nation, another audience member noted that cutting programs could lead to fewer doctors.

"We are having a severe impact on the health of the citizens of Georgia," she said.

One by one, MCG's vice-president of finance broke down the recommended cuts: millions of dollars in graduate education, cancer research, and student outreach, departments downsized and entire degree programs eliminated.

Among those is MCG's nursing anesthesia program, where Meagan Brass is set to graduate in December.

"I have 70,000 worth of student loans," she said. "If they close my program five months before I graduate, I have nothing to show for it. I have no degree."

In all, it means 63 jobs lost and more than 150 students affected -- those students now making calls to legislators in hopes of getting results.

Administrators also expressed frustrations and anger at the cuts, and the speed with which the recommendations had to be submitted.

In a joint conference, MCG and Augusta State University leaders talked about the impact on both the schools and the state.

"What makes this process very painful and very difficult is that we're being asked to put together a plan without knowing if it will even be implemented," said William Bowes, MCG's Vice-President of Finance.

Bowes says he expects to receive more guidance this week, but still no concrete answers until the legislative session ends in April. And for Maegan and a campus full of students like her, all they can do now is wait.

"We don't have back up plans right now," she said. "Everyone is just very scared."

None of the recommendations have been implemented yet, and won't be until the state says exactly how much money will be cut. They would be put into effect July 1st, at the start of the next fiscal year.

For now, MCG says it's business as usual; they're still accepting applications and admitting students.

The school admissions director did bring up that concern at the meeting -- that it would be difficult to admit new students and have them enroll over the summer, knowing that it is very possible their program won't be there in the fall.

These education cuts are part of the state's overall reduction of more than one billion dollars.