The Council For Post-Secondary Education makes a preliminary ruling on Western Kentucky University's proposed 9% tuition hike.

Its answer... "No".

The Council wants an 8% cut for the university, which would mean more budget cuts.

This comes just hours after WKU announces a round of budget cuts that eliminates 23 jobs and has many faculty and staff speaking out.

Associate Professor Julie Shadoan is among the 645 staffers at WKU who are less-than thrilled with the faculty and staff budget cuts.

"It seems that faculty and staff generally are obviously concerned with the way the budget we do have is being allocated," says Shadoan.

Shadoan says its already a small staff working with a large number of students at WKU's South Campus, where she works.

"Here at the community college, we already have a class-size issue,"

"From the staff side, we just see more students and more students coming in and we can't expand our office so we have to be able to offer more programs for our students," says Coordinator of Students Services, Pat Jordan.

That's not the only issue WKU employees have with the slashed budget.

A half-million dollars of one-time money is allocated to update signs on campus... not to help a sagging budget.

"It is a little hard for faculty and staff to swallow that we have a million dollars to spend on signage, but we can't pay faculty, we can't pay staff," says Shadoan.

"We can't use one-time money on recurring costs. The budget reductions we made yesterday and the ones we'll make as a result of the Council's action's today...those are recurring costs," explains WKU's Vice President of Public Affairs, Robbin Taylor.

The continued talk of capital projects also seems to be a sore spot with employees.

"A lot of faculty are very offended by the continued investment in the physical structure of this campus," note Shadoan.

Jordan says more budget cuts could really shake up the university.

"I think everybody's nervous about their own position and what more budget cuts might mean," she says.

Taylor says this is a very tough time for the university and it will only get rougher if they do indeed have to trim another $962,000 from their budget.