Bruce Balick is the former Chair of the Faculty Senate and currently Chairs the Senate Committee on Planning and Budgeting
What follows is his committee’s recommendations to Provost Lidstrrom for how we should manage the budget crisis.
I am struck by this document’s lack of priorities. Assuming that cuts must be made in the meat of the UW, what shoud be protected?
At least in theory, the Senate is supposed to be a legislative body .. somewhat like a parliament under a modern king. A parliament does not administer law, it creates policy. Shouldn’t the Senate be expected to offer more guidance on what the king should do at a crucial time like this.?
To make matters worse, the Senate does not ask the Provost for the kind of accounting that might help the faculty make hard decisions. For example, the UW has multiple sources of income as well as an endowment. How we spend money should be connected to those sources. Assuming that the most important issue now is state funding, where does state money go now?
For example, the UW is involved in many programs that redefine its core mission as a research university. These include the money being spent on a new football stadium, the expansion to branch campuses, as well as development of new initiatives in global health, environment, and information. Many, perhaps most, of these have serious financial impact on what we do. How do these programs impact on the decreased pool of support from the State?
The Committee’s report follows:
Principles and Recommendations for Crafting UW’s 2011-13 Biennial Budget
Principle 1: Respond to budget changes strategically.
Our students are among the state’s most important resource. Our faculty provide the means for our students to succeed in their education and for the state to prosper.
However, continued budget cuts are taking an accumulating toll. Repeated across-the-board budget cuts are not a
suitable strategy for long-term success, excellence, and prosperity. Alternate strategies include:
a. encourage academic units to decrease the cost of our primary services (principally instruction) and their delivery
as long as doing so maintains the overall excellence of our academic program,
b. reduce the level of administration and infrastructure service whose impact lies furthest from the classroom,
possibly through simplifications and consolidations, and
c. balance student needs, the scope of our programs, and our overall instructional quality through the
reprioritization of our strategic goals and the evaluation of the effectiveness of our program expenditures.
Recommendations
1. Aggressively continue the work of the goal-setting, strategic-planning and program-evaluation initiatives in
progress (i.e., 2y2d, Organizational Effectiveness, and the Program Evaluation initiatives).
2. Require that the deans engage with their elected Faculty Councils to develop strategic priorities for their academic
units. This will be a necessity in the event that units must cope with painful internal decisions about
reducing or eliminating programs.
3. Consider consolidations and reorganizations of units that result in significant reprogrammable funds.
4. Prioritize and possibly reduce the levels of service provided by non-academic units. The infrastructure that
most directly supports teaching and learning quality, excellent scholarship (e.g., libraries), and essential
student services (e.g., advising) should be protected first.
5. Preserve access to UW for lowest-income students.
6. Create a pool of central bridge funds that allow disruptive changes in academic programs and student support
to be managed thoughtfully.
7. As a short-term measure allow vacant state-funded faculty positions to remain open to meet the most urgent
needs except where the integrity of programs that meet key strategic needs would be compromised. (See also
Principle 3.)
Principle 2: Value the faculty.
Faculty drive the University’s mission of instruction, research, and community
service. Their confidence in high-level appreciation of and fair and competitive compensation for their work is
essential if UW is to proceed to function collaboratively through the coming period of budgetary unpredictability and
retain its devoted faculty.
8. We must strive to fairly reward meritorious performance and to remain competitive among our peers.
9. Promotion and tenure policies, including promotion raises, must be sustained at all faculty levels.
10. The Provost should reaffirm our commitment to established principles of promotion and compensation.
11. Faculty numbers may not keep pace with undergraduate enrollment, so student-faculty ratios and teaching
loads are likely to increase. Encourage the use of TAs where they add instructional value and control the
negative impacts of rising faculty teaching loads. It is important that we not lose TA positions in programs
where these TA’s provide a key part of the education services.
Principle 3: Maintain faculty demographic balance.
The long-term health of academic programs requires a good demographic mix of faculty. An imbalance arises when opportunities for junior level faculty positions are not sustained.
12. Propose effective ways to entice earlier faculty retirements for faculty review.
Principle 4:
The actual per-student cost of delivering of instruction differ widely across programs. In addition,
instructor training, course web-page preparation, and new low-cost instruction delivery methods (e.g., on-line learning
exercises and exams) can be time-consuming investments that are critical for reducing long-term costs. These efforts
need to be recognized and compensated in unit funding allocations.
13. Consider differential per-student instructional costs across the units as the new budget is crafted.
14. Be aware of the accumulating impacts and the responses of diligent units to previous budget cuts. We urge
that best practices of successful programs to cut the costs of instruction be posted.
Principle 5: Curtail (but continue) strategic investments.
To remain a world-class institution of higher education it is vital that we continue to invest in the most urgent facets of our mission with vision and purpose at a rate consonant with financial reality.
15. Centrally funded strategic investments must continue. Nonetheless defer all but the most vital investments at least until the University’s revenues stabilize.
Response from David Lovell (via AAUP listserv)
After five years of service on the Senate Committee and Planning and Budgeting, including as its Chair in 2009-2010, I am confident that the Senate, through this committee, has asked the Provost for an accounting of how the University’s money is spent, that the University’s financial officers have provided substantial amounts of information, and that the usefulness and accessibility of this information has improved over the last few years. I think we know where state money goes at the University level; within each school or college, it’s up to the elected faculty councils to ensure that faculty are fully consulted on budgetary decisions, and the Senate as well as the Secretary of the Faculty have supported the councils in those efforts.
It’s also fair to acknowledge—without pointing fingers–that the Chairs of this committee and many of its members have often been frustrated about the effectiveness of budgetary consultation between the administration and the established organs of faculty governance at the university and college levels. Furthermore, In the absence of a core of dedicated financial analysts who work for the Senate (or for the union in unionized schools), the faculty’s representatives have only an amateur’s grasp of the intricacies of revenue and spending allocations at a major research university. Perhaps a professional analytic capability is required if the faculty aspires to hold itself, and the administration, to a robust level of accountability. But the absence of this capability—and the frustration that has often accompanied our efforts–does not mean that the faculty’s representatives have simply been stonewalled, or that they have ignored their responsibilities.
David,
I am certain that the members of the committee try to do a good job.
However, as you state it, they can not do their job.
Imagine a US Senate committee stripped of all ability to use its own staff? Imagine a US Senate without its own attorneys and without media to encourage public debate.
That is what we have. Our parliament is more like the Supreme Soviet than it is like anything Jefferson might have understood as an open, Representative democracy.
I do not think the lack of clout in the Senate is due to any bad intent. I believe, esp. given our state laws, that the Admin is transparent and that it is honestly devoted to the goals it believes should be achieved.
You, however, stated the problem well. Unless someone can provide the Senate with a real staff, there is no way faculty on the council can police the accounting done by the admin.
More than just the accounting, however, I worry about who is setting policies.
I am very convinced that the value of our faculty in making decisions about what the UW should be and should do is likley to be at least on a par with anyone the Regents are likely to appoint as our next President. I am less than confidant in policies made by the coterie of non academics we seem to accumulate as vice provosts and administrative directors.
The crucial and most disturbing part of your post is the part about input from the faculty . I doubt very much that any but a very small art of our faculty considers itself represented by our system or even aware of what the Senate does.
There is no mystery about why the Senate is so ineffective. It makes almost no effort to communicate with the faculty. Does anyone read the new Senate blog besides myself? Why doesn’t the Senate or its councils use that blog to encourage public discussion?
Back at your council, everyone I have met who does that job is wonderful. I am only arguing that there must be better ways to use these faculty talents.
Just thought i would comment and say neat design, did you code it yourself? Looks great.
how much people are contributing to this blog?
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