By Neil Offen

and Greg childress

news@heraldsun.com; 419-6500

DURHAM — As endowments shrunk, gifts declined and state support ebbed, the belts got tighter at local universities because of the economic downturn.

After boom years of major growth and expansion, the schools spent 2009 learning to deal with less.

Duke University, President Richard Brodhead said, had “entered a new world” and had to grow smaller. It had to cut $125 million from its $2 billion operating budget over the next three years.

Plans for massive construction on Central Campus were been put on hold. The university made a series of early retirement buyout offers to employees, trying to trim its largest expense — personnel. So far, Duke has reduced its work force by around 500 full-time equivalents, saving millions of dollars.

But still more is needed. Duke says its needs to eliminate about 1,000 jobs over two years to meet its budget-cutting goals, but officials continue to say no major layoffs are planned.

And the 17 schools in the UNC system were unable to escape the brutality of the current recession in 2009.

All schools were ordered by the UNC board of governors to tighten their belts like never before as the state battled to make ends meet.

For many colleges, that meant a 10 percent state budget reduction that forced universities to do with millions of dollars less in their coffers this academic year.

N.C. Central University had to trim 21 administrative positions as part of a budget reduction totaling $8.7 million for the academic year. Chancellor Charlie Nelms said the job cuts have forced NCCU to rethink the way it does business.

At UNC Chapel Hill, the system’s flagship school, the 10 percent reduction resulted in about a $60 million cut to the university’s $577 million state budget appropriations, which is roughly a quarter of the university’s $2 billion operating budget.

UNC was forced to eliminate more than 200 vacant full-time positions and cut temporary jobs. The university also eliminated 138 permanent SPA (staff employees subject to the State Personnel Act) positions and 33 positions exempt from the Personnel Act.

It also canceled more than 40 faculty searches and started reducing, consolidating or eliminating programs. Some services were also cut or reduced.

Perhaps the only local higher education institution to weather the economic downturn was Durham Technical Community College. It benefited from a wave of increased community college enrollment nationwide, as students went searching for lower-priced alternatives and many of those without a job went back to school, hoping to learn new skills.