 In the end, however, the university's budget was cut by $2 million, which Reynolds termed "serious enough, but not catastrophic".In the March 1985 issue of "Texas Monthly", Paul Burka proposed reducing the state budget by $1 billion through a series of cuts that including moving ETSU to Texarkana and transforming it into a junior college he styled East Texas Junior College, which he projected would save the state $24.2 million.Burka reasoned that the university had become expendable due to its decline in enrollment, from 9,981 in 1975 to approximately 7,000 by 1985, which had been caused primarily by the creation of the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Texas at Tyler, and numerous new junior colleges in the area.