How is the budget situation affecting the Faculty and the University?  A question simply posed by the Technician in requesting my Viewpoint opinion, but hardly a simple one to answer.

In my role as Chair of the Faculty I have listened to faculty, staff and students across campus, and have participated in countless meetings grappling with the reality of coming up with $28 million in cuts to the Academic Affairs budget. That is the core budget for all University functions, not just the budget for “academics.” 

The number increases to $36 million if you include the Ag. Research Service and Cooperative Extension Service.  The magnitude of this cut is staggering. As a point of reference, eliminating the entire college of Ag and Life Sciences (something that should not even be considered), with its academic affairs budget of $23 million would not cover this cut.

Addressing the current budget crisis is made only more complicated by the fact that in 19 of the past 22 years, the University has faced cuts to its academic affairs budget. 

Even in good economic years with “good budgets,” we have seen cuts to the core funding of the University. Last year for example, before the economic collapse, the celebrated increase in funds for enrollment growth and dedicated appropriations was matched nearly dollar for dollar with cuts in general budget areas. This pattern of funding has resulted in a variety of new centers, programs and institutes while core programs have been cut year after year.  

Thus, even before this current budget crisis we have seen section sizes in many core classes increase dramatically. In spite of enrollment growth, the number of faculty has remained stagnant. There has been a substantial increase in hiring significantly lower paid non-tenure track faculty.  Research facilities and technical support have been significantly pared back. I have been told of departments where as many as five faculty were assigned to share a single office. And of all things, our communication department does not have funds to provide telephones for each of their faculty.

It is on top of this situation, years in the making, that we must make an additional $28 million in cuts. The major difference in dealing with the budget cut now, compared to many of the previous cuts, is that today cuts will not so easily be masked by a celebration of some new center or initiative that received a special appropriation. 

Every sector of the University will be impacted by this cut. Class sizes will continue to grow. Sections will be cut. More faculty will continue to forgo grant-funded summer salary in order to pay salaries of technicians and graduate students. Extension faculty will severely curtail travel required to interface with the community. Critical infrastructure will not be built and repairs and renovation will continue to be postponed. People will lose their jobs. Quality will erode.

However, even if budgets were restored tomorrow, we should not go back to the same manner of operation that led us to this point, any more than the financial sector should continue its past mode of operation if the tax-payer funded bail-outs in fact work.  

We need to seriously address the University funding model that requires enrollment growth as the primary way to obtain new appropriations. Selling enrollment growth when the physical and personnel infrastructure cannot accommodate the increased enrollment is eerily similar to a Ponzi scheme, promising investment returns that cannot be realized. It is not sustainable to continue to build new programs without insuring that the foundation is kept strong. A research university simply cannot run on an enrollment-growth based funding model. 

We have also heard a lot about using a “business model” for the operation of the University. But how careful are we in choosing the businesses to model? Enron, Bear Sterns, etc. are not good models. By contrast, in the 80s companies such as Toyota recognized excessive growth in middle management and that management had become increasingly out of touch with the reality of the business.

Reorganization, resulting in a model which required managers to be on the shop floor, got many managers out of their offices and into the plants, and elevated many “workers” giving them managerial responsibility. But most importantly quality and efficiency improved by ensuring that management was intimately connected to what was really going on at all levels of the company.

Such a model translated into a university setting will require many faculty to take on some more administrative responsibility, while expecting every administrator/director/… to be in the classroom and/or research laboratory.  Such a serious reorganization of “middle management” could not only provide substantial cost savings, but I suspect would also result in quickly abolishing unnecessary reporting, assessments, policies, etc.  We might also discover we do not need to create a new center or new program requiring a director and staff for every new initiative.  

Such an organizational model integrating management and the shop floor, in fact approaches the collegiate organizational model, born out of centuries of academic traditions. Maybe this budget crisis can serve as a wake-up call to rediscover what it means to be a university.