As the University of Hawai'i system prepares for millions of dollars in budget cuts, Hawai'i's private institutions of higher education also are implementing plans to deal with the slumping economy.

Hawai'i Pacific University plans a significant reorganization of its academic divisions over the next seven months, with the first phase of the restructuring to begin this month, officials said recently.

Officials at the state's largest private university said they plan to consolidate their seven colleges into four, thereby reducing HPU's bureaucracy and the number of administrators.

The university also plans to merge its Center for Distance Education and its Military Campus Program into a new department, the Office of Off-Campus Programs.

"Colleges and universities across the country are already responding to the immediate economic impact of what has happened to global markets, and HPU is not alone in preparing for potentially very difficult times ahead," wrote Chatt G. Wright, president of HPU, in a memo to faculty and staff.

LOCAL RECRUITMENT

Across town at Chaminade University of Honolulu, officials say there are no immediate plans to restructure its academic divisions. But the university plans to beef up recruitment locally because of a decline in students arriving from the Mainland.

"We really have to intensify efforts on the Mainland," said Brother Bernard Ploeger, acting president. "Our second effort has really been to up our profile in Hawai'i. It's obviously the market in which we are best known."

The efforts by Hawai'i's private universities come as the 10-campus UH system deals with its own budget tightening. Gov. Linda Lingle has sent her executive budget to lawmakers, which included $13.5 million in budget cuts a year for the next two years.

Phone calls to Brigham Young University-Hawai'i were not immediately returned.

HPU officials say they have not felt any severe effect from the economic slowdown yet, even as last fall's enrollment dropped by 1.8 percent compared to the previous year, to a total of 8,293 students.

The restructuring was planned with anticipation that the effects of the sagging economy will be felt very soon, said John Kearns, vice president of academic affairs.

So far, the university has not planned any faculty layoffs. Instead, those who held dean or administrator positions within consolidated colleges are being given an option to return to the faculty.

HPU plans to merge its College of Business and its College of Professional Studies into one school. The School of Nursing and the College of Natural Sciences will remain as they are.

Three other colleges — the College of Communication, the College of International Studies and College of Liberal Arts — will join forces to become the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

The university also plans to consolidate two departments, one of which handles online education and another that deals with the school's satellite military campuses. Kearns said the merger of those departments makes sense since they both deal with distance learning.

ENROLLMENT DECREASE

Chaminade, significantly smaller than HPU, has a relatively lean operation, Ploeger said, so there are no plans for layoffs or a reshuffling of its departments.

Ploeger did say that the university is concerned by the decrease in its enrollment of students from the Mainland. Last fall, Chaminade had about 240 Mainland students enrolled in its undergraduate program. That's down from about 280 three years ago.

Chaminade has an enrollment of 2,500 students.

"My rule of thumb is for every student lower, that's $10,000 a year" that the school does not receive in tuition revenue, he said. "If we have to make up for 100 students, that's like making up $1 million."

The university hopes to make up for that by aggressively going after local students. Chaminade is running more newspaper ads and plans to air a TV spot in the next few weeks, he said.

HPU already is seeing more interest from local students seeking to stay home for college, rather than go to the Mainland in the midst of a recession.

Scott Stensrud, vice president for enrollment management at HPU, said the university has seen a 20 percent spike in local applicants to its undergraduate program. In addition, applications from Mainland students are up 10 percent and applications from international students are up 8 percent, he said.