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`Soon I’m going to a budget forum. Actually, there are three of them: Friday, November 6 from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. in McComsey Hall — Ford Atrium, Tuesday, November 9 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. in Stayer Hall, MPR, and Wednesday, November 11 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., also in Stayer.
I want to encourage you all to join me there – and to ask the questions you wouldn’t usually ask. Here are some samples:
Is the budget crisis over? I read in the paper that Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education is getting far more money that we expected for this year. I know that the funding gaps for this year and next will be largely subsidized by federal stimulus money and that we can’t rely on them down the line, but why are we proceeding with skyrocketing class sizes, increased advising loads, and other cuts if things are better than expected?
Is it true that the state’s share of public university funding was 64 percent in 1974, but only 34 percent today? And why is tuition set at a level that doesn’t allow us to meet our negotiated commitments and the rising costs of energy, technology, health care benefits, and needed financial aid for students? What can we do and are we doing to tilt against the values that prompt these political decisions?
What are other SSHE schools and other states’ universities doing to maintain academic integrity in the face of this “new (budgetary) normal”?
We’ve known for years that the State Employees Retirement System contribution formula was a political and financial powder keg. Why didn’t we invest the same percentage for employer contribution that we were investing in Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association, College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF) employees so that we would have the funds for projected dramatic increases in 2011?
Why are we continuing with ambitious facilities improvement plans when our academic plans seem to be going up in smoke?
Are we all sharing the pain (1)? Faculty have more students and more advisees than ever. Staff are juggling balls and student inquiries as well as the demands of increasingly testy faculty and administrators.
Students are finding that once-faithful faculty don’t have the time to return their email messages. How are we rewarding – and taking care of – the folks who are torn in multiple directions and working more hours? How long can we keep stretching them until they snap?
Are we all sharing the pain (2)? Raises went through this year despite early summer scare tactics, but will earned sabbaticals be granted? And faculty and staff raises over the past 10 years have not kept pace with administrative increases in salary. Will faculty and staff be asked to sacrifice yet again – as we did six years ago in what was portrayed as a political rather than budgetary crisis?
Are we all sharing the pain (3)? Class size data make it pretty clear that class size increases are being imposed across schools and departments unevenly and without obvious pedagogical justification. Why are we increasing class sizes across the board in only two schools while holding steady in the School of Science and Math? And why across the board rather than determining and following a departmentally approved plan for insuring that all students and all majors have at least some of the “close encounters” with faculty required to persist and succeed?
Are we all sharing the pain (4)? The Middle States report suggests that women are bearing the burden of the increasing workload; is that fair?
Are we all sharing the pain (5)? We have more students attending the university than we did 10 years ago, but no more full-time faculty and no more departmental support staff, and we have more Assistant and Associate Deans, Vice Presidents, Directors and assorted other functionaries than we used to. Everybody’s workload is increasing for all kinds of complicated reasons, but only some of us have the option to shift that workload to a new assistant or associate.
Is the crisis over? Can we think together about how to move toward the future?
I don’t know if these are the right questions. In fact, lots of my questions – and perhaps some of yours — are not technically budget questions at all, but budgets are the embodiment of priorities and so are these questions.
The American Association of University Professors said this in their 2008-09 Report on the Economic Status of the Profession,“It will be critically important for faculty members to participate fully in the difficult budget decisions to come. They must insist on full access to information, and take a critical look at claims about the need for immediate action that will result in further demands on already strained human resources.”
Students and staff can join faculty in insisting on access to information and in taking a critical look at actions cast as urgent. Happily, the open budget forums offer just that kind of opportunity. See you there!