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Someways I think the University of Puerto Rico can save money are:

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The University of Puerto Rico has 11 campuses around the island and all of them are funded by the government.

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The University of Puerto Rico has 11 campuses around the island and all of them are funded by the government.

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A lot of people are receiving government help because of the economic problem in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is in debt.

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The Puerto Rico power utility PREPA, ladden with a $9 billion debt load, has filed for a form of bankruptcy, Puerto Rico's primary fiscal agent said on Sunday.

The Puerto Rico Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority (AAFAF) said PREPA power had filed in the United States District Court of Puerto Rico for protection under Title III of the 2016 Puerto Rico rescue law known as PROMESA, which gave Puerto Rico and its agencies access to a workout process akin to U.S. bankruptcy.

"I believe that the Title III filing will provide PREPA the tools necessary to assure its uninterrupted operation and achieve a successful restructuring," said Gerardo Portela Franco, Executive Director of AAFAF

PROMESA was created to help Puerto Rico emerge from a crisis marked by $72 billion in debt, a 45 percent poverty rate on the island and insolvent public pensions. Some public entities, including Puerto Rico's central government itself, have already filed Title III cases.
For more about Puerto Rico's debt crisis, watch Fortune's video:
Puerto Rico's seven-member financial oversight board created under PROMESA had unanimously authorized a bankruptcy filing at a public meeting in San Juan on Friday, granting a request by Governor Ricardo Rossello.

The filing comes after nearly three years of restructuring talks between the utility and its creditors, and the unraveling of two separate deals

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Puerto Rican Power Utility PREPA Files For Bankruptcy

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The Puerto Rico power utility PREPA, ladden with a $9 billion debt load, has filed for a form of bankruptcy, Puerto Rico's primary fiscal agent said on Sunday.

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What does the university mainly use their money on?

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What does the university mainly use their money on?

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This pdf document below is the Financial Information and Operating Data Report.

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The article states that 70% of students that attend UPR receive financial aid.

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Alberto Hernández, 22, from Vega Baja. (Xavier J. Araújo Berríos)

Alberto Hernández knows what it is like to blow the transmission of his decrepit 2000 Camry and leave it rusting and catching dust at home for a year, all because he did not have the money to get it running. He knows what it is like to miss a semester of class in the Río Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) for not having transportation and not being eligible for the scholarship upon his return, since he had dropped out during the previous semester.

"The car hasn't broken down lately," Alberto says with relief, during a conversation in the building of the Faculty of Social Sciences, where he studies Economy.

It could be worse, and he knows it. "There were days when I only ate Pop Tarts," says Alberto, 22. He knows what it is like to study hungry. He knows what it is like to spend a whole day in class, studying under a tree, talking with friends, with only a Pop Tart and its sugars and carbs dissolving in his stomach, trying unsuccessfully to distract himself from that nagging hunger.

He knows that those days are almost as long as the year his car spent stuck in his driveway, because a hot meal will not be available when he gets to his home in Vega Baja-where he lives alone with his mother-long after dusk, to see what is there to eat.

Alberto is poor. He is a poor student. There are thousands like him in the UPR, where-despite the myth that its strict admission requirements mean it is the university of the middle-class or the privileged class-more than a quarter of its students come from families with an annual income of less than $10,000, which places them below the federal poverty level, set at $11,880 for a single person.

Statistics of the UPR Office of the Vice President of Student Affairs reveal that 28% of the 55,425 undergraduate students come from homes with an income of less than $10,000 per year. In addition, 42% come from homes with an income under $25,000, which, depending on the family composition, means it is very likely that many more also fall below the poverty threshold.

A family of three with an annual income of $25,000 or less falls under the federal poverty line. And 70% of UPR students receive financial aid. Meanwhile, 27,528 students-which totals half of the institution's 55,425 population-receive the total sum of the Pell Grant ($5,818 per year), because it is understood that their families, due to their financial situation, cannot contribute a single cent to their studies.

The UPR does not have data on how many of its students live below the poverty threshold. But the statistics they do have, like the family income of those who apply for financial aid, indicate that we are looking at a college population that is significantly poor or that comes from the long list of Puerto Rican homes that live in extremely unstable financial situations.
Education in the Balance
These are the young adults that, in taking time to prepare themselves and contribute to the development of the country, have trouble eating properly. We know there are some who do not have a permanent place to live because they do not have the means to pay for it, and they rotate between their friends' homes. These are the ones that leave no stone unturned in the search for a used book, even if it is falling apart. These are the ones that wear the same clothes to class every day.

"This country has been living a lie for years, thinking that there's no poverty or hunger in Puerto Rico. What's happening in the UPR matters because it uncovers the fact that this isn't the case in Puerto Rico or in the UPR. The university is a microcosm of Puerto Rico's situation," said former student leader Giovanni Robert, who now leads Comedor Social (Social Diner), an initiative that provides meals to students who would otherwise be unable to eat.

The situation affecting thousands of students who-amid poverty, uncertainty, and even hunger-keep fighting for the chance to make a better future for themselves through education, is especially relevant now. This, because the UPR could face cuts of almost $450 million (a figure equal to 50% of its budget), following the requirements of the Oversight Board, and it is considering increasing tuition costs as part of the balancing act it is performing to meet this target.

Alberto-who has not gone hungry in campus again after finding Comedor Social, where he eats in exchange for a suggested contribution of $5, donating an ingredient, or volunteering with the group that serves meals-lives on the remainder of approximately $1,000 per semester.

This leaves him with $250 a month. He spends almost $35 a week, or $140 a month, in gas for his car. This leaves him with $110 per month for his expenses. If nothing unforeseen comes up, he can survive. But if something does, he will be short on cash. And often he will have to buy a book, materials for a project, or something will go wrong with the old car, which worries him the most.

His mother, a speech therapist who only gets paid occasionally, bought the car for him so he could keep studying after the increase in the Tren Urbano (Urban Train) fare made that mode of transportation unviable. "If nothing happens to my car all semester, I'm good," says Alberto, in a tone that is closer to a plea than an affirmation.

Carolina Mejías, 27, grew up in the Río Abajo barrio in Vega Baja with her mother-who lost her job after a factory closing-and her sister. Her father is a drug addict and is unable to contribute to her education. Carolina studied Political Science and Recreation, while earning medals for the UPR's soccer team. She is currently doing a master's degree in Cultural Administration and Management.

Christhian Cruz, a 20-year-old Communications student from the El Cemí housing project in Santa Isabel. (Xavier J. Araújo Berríos)

She used to get a scholarship and receive a tuition exemption for being an athlete. But this did not save her from poverty.

"Studying in my house was a privilege, because my mother was single and I didn't want to worry her, so I tried to pay for my expenses myself with my scholarship. The demands of my studies sometimes required me to buy books that I couldn't find second-hand. Food was kind of expensive because (my housemates and I) didn't have cars and we couldn't go to the supermarket," she remembers.

"Sometimes we only ate Chinese soups to save money," added Carolina, who is now an exchange student in Spain. "A lot of students are going through hard times," says Carolina, who remembers classmates who had to drop out because they could not handle the economic burden.
Proposed Increase
The proposal being pondered by UPR administrators to meet the Oversight Board's demands includes an increase in the cost per credit hour, from $56 to $70 for those who receive the Pell grant, and from $56 to $78 for those who pay for their own studies. This would increase the cost of a 15-credit semester from $840 to $1,050 for scholarship students, and to $1,170 for students without financial aid.

Christhian Cruz, a 20-year-old Communications student from the El Cemí housing project in Santa Isabel, smiles sadly at this possibility. Since he was little, he has been dreaming about the world of communications and show business. He first enrolled in the University of the Sacred Heart (USC, by its Spanish acronym), because they said that "they go on strike over anything at the UPR".

He lasted one year at USC. "I left because I thought that, at some point, I would have to go into debt and I didn't want to do that. Maybe now I'll have to," says Christhian, whose mother is unemployed and whose father, with whom he has not lived since he was little, works in an auto glass shop.

Students, says Giovanni Roberto, do not lose hope, and "even though they don't have enough to have lunch every day and dinner every day, they dream about making a difference in Puerto Rico. They go to college every day with the desire to move forward and be better".

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Alberto Hernández knows what it is like to blow the transmission of his decrepit 2000 Camry and leave it rusting and catching dust at home for a year, all because he did not have the money to get it running.

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How much does it cost to attend the University of Puerto Rico?

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How much does it cost to attend the University of Puerto Rico?

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According to this to attend the University of Puerto Rico it costs $2,019 in-state and out-of-state is $4,518. (this info applies to the Rio Piedras campus)

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Applying to University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras in San Juan, Puerto Rico, but not sure how much it costs or if you can afford to attend? Click to find out more.

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The University of Puerto Rico was on strike because of the budget cuts that the government want to make.

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Now, the cascading financial crisis that forced Puerto Rico to declare a form of bankruptcy earlier this month also threatens to decimate its public university. The school receives 90 percent of its funding from a central government that cannot pay $123 billion in bond debt and pension obligations. A financial oversight board that runs Puerto Rico's affairs has said the university's budget needs to be sliced by about half. The crisis is both imperiling its future and pitting students against one another - those keeping the institution closed versus those eager to resume their studies.

University supporters say the cuts are jeopardizing an institution that helped Puerto Rico transform from an agrarian society dependent on sugar and tobacco into a modern middle-class society and whose graduates are essential to rescuing the island from its fiscal quagmire.

"The University of Puerto Rico was the most important cultural and social project that Puerto Rico had in the 20th century, and it was going to continue being so in the 21st century," said Silvia Álvarez Curbelo, a historian who published an anthology about the history of the university. "I have been at the university for 30 years - I will retire next year - and I have seen many of these movements. This is the worst.

"Because in previous events like this, there wasn't this feeling that everything is collapsing, and there's no light at the end of any tunnel at all."

The University of Puerto Rico was founded in 1903, mostly as a place to educate teachers. It now has nearly 60,000 students across 11 campuses, and is considered the cradle of Puerto Rico's leftist thought. Known affectionately as "La Yupi," U.P.R. offers 452 degree-based programs, including 40 at the doctorate level, a medical school and a law school.

But tuition is just $56 a credit, so a full course load costs less than $1,700 a year. At least half the students are dependent on federal Pell grants, meaning they pay no tuition at all, and even get a subsidy for living expenses.

In a desperate mission to raise revenue and cut costs, the administration drafted a plan to increase tuition based on a family's ability to pay. Half the student body would see no increase, but the highest-earning parents, about a quarter of the student body, would see tuition more than double.

For some students, that was too much. "Zero cuts" and "zero tuition increases" became the mantra of the student body.

"The problem isn't raising the tuition, it's raising the tuition to pay bondholders," said Loderay Bracero Marrero, an environmental science major who is a spokeswoman for the student committee. "If you tell me you are going to raise tuition so you can offer more courses, that's different. These cuts are not to improve, they are to impoverish."

The school's chief financial officer, Norberto González, noted that many students pay far less for college than they did for high school.

He said the government had not been clear on how much the university would have to cut from its $900 million budget, but the figures bandied about in internal government documents - anywhere from $241 million to $512 million by 2026 - would be impossible to accomplish without gutting the university. Officials have already spent years cutting back on bonuses, raises and other academic expenses like books and conferences. The university proposed a plan that phases in more modest cuts, but the board of trustees rejected it.

"We are willing to right-size or downsize or whatever you want to call it," Mr. González said. "The students' requests are noble and all, but the university does not have the control over the majority of the things they are requesting."

Dr. Carlos Pérez Díaz, an alumnus who was president of the board of trustees until his resignation Tuesday, said students should be protesting somewhere else, like maybe the governor's mansion.

"I feel sad, frustrated," Dr. Pérez said in an interview last week, before he stepped down. "It doesn't matter what you try to do. You can offer something, but it's not enough."

The governor's office has said that it agrees that the proposed cuts are too severe and that it hopes to reach a compromise with the fiscal board in New York.

Some campuses had already voted to lift the student strike. On Thursday night, the main campus voted to lift it when the university board of governors ratifies a compromise that would delay tuition increases for a year. But the board still has eight of 14 seats vacant, so ratification will not happen immediately.

A group of six law students had taken the university to court to force it to reopen. A judge sided with them, and began fining the university $1,000 a day. The school asked the police to help, but authorities have been unwilling to engage in a potentially violent clash with students.

Students stormed a board of trustees meeting, and a May 1 protest turned violent, so already lawmakers have submitted several new bills that would increase penalties on acts of disobedience.

"We see it as a kidnapping of a public institution," said Anamar Menéndez, 36, one of the law students who sued to get classes to resume. "If the students want to strike, fine, let them strike, but the university has to offer its services."

Carlos V. Villegas, 25, another plaintiff, said the students conflated the right to free speech with the right to take over a public building.

"People are confusing freedom of speech and vandalism," he said.

But even some of the creditors are taken aback by the proposed cuts.

"I think there is little question that the cutbacks that are being proposed relative to the University of Puerto Rico are draconian," said Nader Tavakoli, the former chief executive of Ambac Assurance, an insurer of Puerto Rican bonds.

Mr. Tavakoli said although students had a right to be upset, there had been too much emphasis on despair, which, like the deep university cuts and the strike itself could wind up having unintended consequences.

"That lack of aspiration, lack of hope, is going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy," he said. "The numbers we are seeing - $280 million, $450 million - those are just too big. People need to sit in a room and have a dialogue to do this in a way that's sensible and doesn't completely change the nature of a public institution that has done a lot of good."

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Puerto Rico's University Is Paralyzed by Protests and Facing Huge Cuts

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Now, the cascading financial crisis that forced Puerto Rico to declare a form of bankruptcy earlier this month also threatens to decimate its public university. The school receives 90 percent of its funding from a central government that cannot pay $123 billion in bond debt and pension obligations.

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According to this Article the University has over 99 programs that have less than 25 students enrolled.

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Making million-dollar cutbacks on the UPR's system is a complex task. (Xavier J. Araújo Berríos)

The network of campuses, units, divisions, and offices that make up the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) are catalogued as its main strengths when it comes to fostering access to higher education and offering multidisciplinary services. However, they also turn into its main obstacles when faced with the prevailing necessity of generating savings, as is currently the case.

Even though the UPR receives its budget in bulk, it is distributed for each unit to manage separately. Obtaining a detailed report of the expenses of each campus turns out to be a complex task, since its budgetary reports only encompass the larger allocations, as pointed out Arnaldo Cruz, a specialist in public policy and public finances.

"Here, the cost of managing each campus is not always divulged; not everything is talked about. When the campuses' operational budget is presented, only the General Fund is talked about, they don't talk about the associated costs or the revenues themselves," highlighted Cruz, who is the co-founder of the Center for Integrity and Public Policy.

It is well known that the biggest cut to the UPR's budget will be taken from its payroll. Of the $1.5-billion budget, the institution directed $873 million to the payroll of its employees this fiscal year.

But a closer look reveals that there are campuses that spend almost the same amount of their budget on paying administrative and non-teaching staff as they do on salaries for teaching staff, who carry out the university system's educational and research mission more directly.

In the Utuado campus, 80 cents are invested on non-academic staff for every dollar spent on faculty salaries. Meanwhile, in Cayey, for every dollar spent on academic employees, they pay 94 cents to administrative and non-teaching staff, as Cruz detailed. This, on the basis of an analysis of financial reports from 2015, the most updated ones he has received from the university administration.

Therefore, the money used to cover the operational expenses of each campus varies between the $9 million required in Río Piedras, to Utuado's $523,160, figures which could be attributed to the amount of students enrolled.
Of Closures and Consolidations
Getting into the UPR is a goal that hundreds of adolescents dream of during their years in school. But being a student in one of the larger campuses is not the same as being a student in one of the smaller campuses, and the numbers show it.

The Río Piedras campus invests $15,458.92 per student, while the Carolina campus invests $7,390.86.

These analyses include the entirety of funds received by the UPR for its operations each fiscal year, from both state and federal sources as well as its own revenues.

The university system's Governing Board discusses and publishes the approved budget for the UPR each fiscal year. Nonetheless, the document mainly focuses on the General Fund's revenues and does not provide specific details on certain line items.

Making million-dollar cutbacks on the UPR's system is a complex task. This is due to the fact that each unit operates independently and it is not always possible to see how much is really needed to operate each one, Cruz argued.

The institution's interim President, Nivia Fernández, agreed with this assessment. Nevertheless, she attributed the difficulty to the fine balance required between the need of the institution to fulfill its academic mission, the demands of the accrediting agencies, the interests of the student population and, now, the requirements of the Oversight Board to make adjustments that will reduce the university's dependency on the General Fund.

Fernández highlighted that, even though it is common to hear claims in favor of closing campuses-particularly the smaller ones-, this is a move that would not generate the savings needed and would have a direct impact on the State university's mission to educate future generations.

For example, Fernández stressed that there are campuses and programs that act as an "entry point" so that young adults have access to higher education. Be it due to the limitations each academic program has as far as the amount of students it can admit, or due to the student's academic achievement in high school, these pupils are accepted into a program or campus that they will later move on from.

The official indicated that each unit and program was created in response to one of the Island's needs at a certain point in time, but over the years no review processes were undertaken. That is how the system ended up with offerings in its catalogue that repeat themselves in every campus-like business administration, education, and social sciences-, without there being any major difference in what they offer the student body. Nevertheless, she reiterated that there are offerings which are unique to some campuses, as is the case of the agriculture-focused offer in the Utuado campus or the focus on the hotel industry adopted by the Carolina campus.

"Why do we have so many education programs, why do we have business programs? Here, we had the post-war period, the industrialization, the birth of the baby boomers, and the UPR responded to the need," Fernández expressed.

Nonetheless, the renovation at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st was not conducted at the same speed, the interim President recognized.

In light of that, the official claimed that the economic crisis the Island faces has been the catalyst for the UPR to finally make the revisions it needs.

For Cruz, however, the figures do not justify dismissing the closing of campuses as an alternative to alleviate the Government's economic problems in some way.

"There are a few specialized offerings in some campuses, but it is scarce. Is it worth having full campuses, with everything that entails, just for these programs? Will the central government continue financing the municipalities? Those are things that we would have to ask ourselves," Cruz examined, while reminding that one of the main arguments used to defend the continuity of the smaller campuses is that they generate economic activity in the municipalities where they are nestled.

For example, Cruz indicated that, according to a review of the UPR's academic offer, there are 99 academic programs in the entire system that have less than 25 students enrolled.

Yet eliminating campuses is not a process as simple as a merely closing a gate and it will not necessarily generate the intended savings, Fernández stated.

"First, we have to evaluate the academic programs, see what we have available, how relevant they are, if the programs are being efficient. Once we have those facts and know what we have to offer the students, then we can move on to assess the campuses," Fernández held.

The first partial report on this academic evaluation is supposed to be ready by March 1st. It is likely that the final plan will be submitted in May, the official pointed out.

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The network of campuses, units, divisions, and offices that make up the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) are catalogued as its main strengths when it comes to fostering access to higher education and offering multidisciplinary services. However, they also turn into its main obstacles when faced with the prevailing necessity of generating savings, as is currently the case.