University state budget news good so far

The Southern has a quick story on Quinn's budget address, with reactions from Cheng and Poshard. The news here re the overall budget is good (i.e., Quinn does not advocate cuts to the higher ed budget), and includes plans to increase funding for MAP grants. But there are lingering concerns about pensions, in two senses: employees may be asked to pay more, and employers (i.e., the university) might be asked to pay more, which would mean less money was available for other things. Of course the final budget approved by the legislature may differ greatly. But the reaction to Quinn's message from the democratic leaders of the legislature was warmer than last year, at least according to the Chicago Tribune article, which including the following interesting bit from Senate President John Cullerton:

Cullerton called it time to “take the next leap forward in comprehensive pension reforms that control costs while preserving the constitutional rights of current employees and retirees.”

“Unlike Indiana and Wisconsin, we intend to work with unions to accomplish this goal,” Cullerton said.

There is of course plenty of bad news in this budget plan as well, including closures of several downstate facilities. Quinn, though, is obviously making education, including higher education, a priority, for which those of us in that line of work should be thankful.

Less Bad Budget News

The Southern reports today that the governor is now saying that he hopes to hold funding for education, including higher education, steady, despite his gloomy outlook on the budget over the medium term (an outlook that may in fact not be gloomy enough, according to one Springfield insider). This would be far better news for SIUC than the prior report that state funding might be cut 4.25%.  We will of course have to see what the legislature comes up with--as they seem to wield the real power in this state.

Southern Opposes Housing Upgrade

The Southern, usually a reliable source of support for the SIUC administration, has editorialized against the planned upgrade of campus housing, arguing that SIUC needs to turn around enrollment and somehow secure stable state funding before embarking on a major new construction project. I'm not sure, frankly, how to evaluate the housing plan. My understanding is that the new construction is to be paid for via housing fees; what is unclear is how much said fees will need to increase in order to pay for the new construction (a question I would have asked in the Faculty Senate had I been on my game). The new housing will be more attractive--not a hard bar to cross when the comparison is with the towers. And it does seem to me that more human scaled housing could well result in a better experience for our students. Finally, it is foolish to argue that we need to wait for stable state funding to do anything--state funding will not be stable any time soon. It will presumably continue its long-term decline, at least in real (inflation corrected) terms.

But the standard concern expressed on this blog--that money will be steered toward amenities rather than academics--may still apply. Student fees that are increased in order to pay for new housing could have gone elsewhere, including, as always, remaining in our students' pockets; though here students will at least have the option of living off-campus. Given the glut of student housing, cheap options are no doubt available off-campus, though they will not always be of the most attractive kind.

Okay, a brief last of 2011 post will have to do. Now I have to go see if my nine year old son needs any assistance in helping his cousins build a fort of blankets and pillows--what counts as a rockin' New Years Eve for this blogger.

Unhappy New Year Budget Tidings

The Southern reported today (12/26) that President Poshard believes the SIU system may be in line for a $10 million cut next fiscal year (FY 2013). While the story did not give Poshard's reason for this belief, this sounds like more than the usual vague negative prognostications. SIUC's share of that cut would be "about $6 million". To put that in perspective, it's about as much as we lost when we lost the $7 million in federal stimulus money in FY 2011--the FY of the furloughs.

Of course that year we had a nice long fight about just how bad the budget was. So how bad would this be? The rest of the numbers in the Southern story are difficult to follow (in part because some are for the SIU system rather than solely for SIUC). One quick stab at context: SIUC's total combined revenue for FY 2012, including state appropriations and tuition and fees, but not other sources, is budgeted to be $279 million. This is SIU's estimate from the FY 2012 "Budget Book", but will be accurate enough as a ballpark figure. So a cut of $6 million out of $279 million is about 2% cut to our overall budget. 2% doesn't sound all that bad, but given that many of our costs are fixed or relatively fixed, and given years of small but significant cuts, this cut would hurt.  It would not be  devastating--I can't see how it could possible reach a level anyone would call a "financial exigency". But we could very well hear furlough talk again. I do hope that this time around, should that talk arise, we will have more in the way of genuine conversation & negotiation and less in the way of top-down dictates. If faculty and others are given a real role in helping to determine and understand what their fair share of any cuts may be, and how those cuts are to be assigned, we could emerge from cuts without damage to morale doubling down on the fiscal damage. That would show that SIUC had learned something from 2011.

Happy New Year.

Morning conversations

President Poshard was on WSIU radio yesterday as one of his regular appearances on Jennifer Fuller's Morning Conversation series. There wasn't a great deal of news here; the conversation centered, as have so many prior conversations with President Poshard, on finances, and the potential challenges facing SIUC. I'll also finally flag my own last Morning Conversation on 11/30, which I just listened to today (not as bad as I remembered it being, a sort of strike recap).

Does anyone else have the feeling that every time President Poshard goes on the radio we lose another 25 students? It's not because Poshard is inarticulate (he isn't), but that he's such a downer. The state's budget isn't in good shape, of course, and one shouldn't lie and say that it is, but the most recent news is good--MAP funding has been restored for the spring, and the state has indeed come through and paid us the last of our overdue FY 2011 funds. But rather than playing up these bits of good or at least reassuring news, Poshard emphasized how awful things would have been had the state not come through. In his last morning conversation, back in late November, he said that the negotiations with the FA took place in the worst imaginable financial situation. That's simply not true. At least in the run up to the strike depressing talk about finances played a tactical goal in helping the administration at the bargaining table. But now the only possible result is to provide us all with a little coal in our stockings. Listening to President Poshard leads one to believe that we are always in the worst imaginable financial situation--or at least that we are on the verge of it.

A Very Busy Monday

So much is going on today, you'd think there was something BIG about to happen on campus.  Regrettably, you are probably right.  It was a busy day for me doing actual work for the university, so I'm going to lump together the happenings of the day.  After the break I'll offer a few comments.  Well, maybe a tad more than a few.

Hughes v. Cheng

Dueling emails this evening, as FA President Randy Hughes attempted to rally faculty for the demonstration tomorrow at 11-1 (at Grand Ave and Route 51), while the Chancellor attempts to rain on the union parade by pointing to the "false assumptions that appear to be held in some parts of a campus".

Hughes' email, which includes a report from the FA bargaining team, makes it clear that little progress has been made during the first bargaining sessions this fall. In addition to the perennial issues of tenure and furloughs, there is a cluster of issues about distance learning. While the administration has made a positive step by moving control over distance education from continuing education to academic units, it appears to be insisting on the right to require individual faculty members to teach distance learning courses, to outsource distance learning work to other institutions, and to not include distance learning students when calculating the student/Faculty ratio the contract is supposed to protect.

The bargaining team also reports that they have been told that the Chancellor is working hard to attempt to offer faculty the following generous compensation package:  -2% for FY 11 (counting furloughs); 0%  for FY 12; 0.5% for FY 13, and a whopping 1% for FY 14. Some context: the current rate of inflation (as measured by the CPI) is 3.6%. SIUC's budget (tuition and fees + state appropriations) for next year, assuming static enrollment, will go up $4.1 million dollars in FY 2012 (-$1.3 in state appropriations, +$5.4 million in tuition and fees--this from the reports the Chancellor references in her email).  That's approximately a 2% increase in the budget (tuition & fees and state appropriations). Thus SIUC has a hiring freeze for faculty, decreasing our numbers greatly, and says that, over a four year contract period, it can't even compensate faculty for the 2% cut they took last year. I believe it is safe to conclude that the administration plans to give Faculty a smaller and smaller share of campus resources.

After the break, a first take on the Chancellor's email.

Cheng on WSIU (2): Budget, Athletics, and the Golden Fleece

Let me start out with what I consider the Chancellor's most significant mispresentation of the facts. I will mark it with our first ever Golden Fleece designation.  (I am a classicist, after all, though this usage mangles the classical reference).  Jennifer Fuller did a rather good job of asking the Chancellor some challenging questions.  The Chancellor's responses, were, in some cases, truth-challenged.

Golden Fleece #1.  Fuller noted our observation that SIUC actually received more money in tuition and fees last year than the year before (this at about 14:00 into the interview).  Cheng responded that that's a good thing, because faculty got $500,000 in promotional raises last year.  What she didn't mention was that, even including these raises (earned fairly by promotions to associate and full professor, as the Chancellor noted), SIUC spent approximately $1.8 million less on Faculty in FY 2011 than FY  2010 (as so many Faculty lines have been left empty).  Oh, and add the $1 million extra they sliced off via furlough days.  So let's check the figures . . .

The Chancellor said that SIUC spent $500,000 more on faculty last year.

In fact, SIUC spent $2,800,000 less on faculty last year.

A speech for the Chancellor

I've been asked, reasonably enough, whether I'd ever approve of something the Chancellor proposes. So here's a suggested speech. I hereby give Chancellor Cheng carte blanche to use it as she chooses.  Neither consultant's fee nor charges of plagiarism shall apply.

We all know that SIUC faces a difficult budgetary situation, and that SIUC faces a long-term enrollment decline. I'm convinced that we need to improve our campus athletics and administrative facilities; to upgrade our marketing by developing a new message and doubling our spending to communicate it to the world; to continue aggressively funding scholarships for our student athletes and other aspects of our athletics budget; to set up innovative Saluki First Year and Saluki Start Up programs; and to put greater resources into more effective enrollment management. And we need to get the best people we can to fill top administrative positions, and pay them competitive salaries.  None of these moves will be cheap: in fact I believe that we must increase our spending in these areas by X million dollars in the next Y years if we are to get ourselves where we need to be in these crucial priorities. But if we do not up our game in these ways we may well face a bleak future.

To fund these priorities we are going to have to hold the line on spending on faculty and staff. 

Cheng on WSIU: Marketing to the rescue

Chancellor Cheng was on WSIU's "morning conversation" this morning. The most striking part of the interview, for me, was the failure by Jennifer Fuller to ask about negotiations with campus unions. There was nothing at all about these negotiations in the interview. As if the threat of a faculty & staff strike (whatever you think of that potentiality) wasn't one of the more important things facing SIUC this fall. Contrast last week's conversation with President Poshard, where Poshard went out of his way to say things helpful to the administration side in those negotiations (SIU is broke; the faculty got big raises).  WSIU isn't always deaf to union issues, however: you will hear more about those negotiations next week, when a certain blogger will put on his union spokesperson cap and see how well he fares live on the radio. Yikes. At least I can still wear my pajamas on the radio.

I was also struck by a series of questions Fuller had obviously arranged in advance with the Chancellor, who had precise numbers at the ready (this pre-arrangement became clear later in the interview, when Fuller apologized for asking an unscripted question about what percentage of SIUC classrooms were smart rooms and the Chancellor didn't have a number handy). I didn't jot down the numbers fast enough myself, but that's not the point (or at least not my point). The questions were about how enrollment affects SIUC finances. The $1 million cut in state finances equals this many students; this many students would undo our "structural deficit". And we wouldn't spend a dime more to educate any of these students? Yes, enrollment does obviously impact our budget, and, yes, we need to turn around the decline in enrollment, though I think we need to have a conversation about how many students we ought to aim to serve: more isn't always better. But equating students with cash this blatantly struck me as crass. Our students are more than cash cows. Which brings us to marketing, after the break.

Morris library in the Chronicle

SIUC was in the Chronicle last week.  The story was about cuts made by the library, but emphasized the smart way SIUC librarians were trying to save money, by getting out of costly "Big Deal" subscriptions plans pushed by academic publishers.  I don't have anything to add to the story--which focusses mainly on obscenely expensive journals in the sciences and engineering (ok, "obscene" was the humanist in me).  But flagging it gives me a good opportunity to call attention to another blog at SIUC.

The story was brought to my attention when yet another good posting over at Unions United led me back to a nice blog run by SIUC's own Julie Arendt, Science and Engineering Reference Librarian at Morris:  Science Librarian Notes.  Recent posts include a comment on the Chronicle story, some background on the decision to open Morris late at night, and top secret pictures of what's to be found on the unfinished floors in Morris.

Poshard on Faculty Salaries

A second post on Poshard's morning conversation today.  When pushed a bit about funding on new recruitment and retention schemes--"enrollment management" (as if we are in the business of managing students), marketing, Saluki First Year--and on whether funds spent on such things should rather go to support faculty and staff (i.e., faculty and staff directly engaged in our core mission of education and research), Poshard sounded another theme: faculty salaries went up a lot in the last contract, and something has to give this time around.  Poshard's argument boils down to this: we're paying you almost as much as you deserve, so we should be able to cut your pay or lay you off whenever we want to. 

Poshard threw around various figures from what he said was the 2010 IBHE report on faculty salaries. He said that when he took over as President, one of the goals given to him by the BOT was to bring up faculty salaries to par, and he said this had been done.  Has it?

Poshard on the budget and the value of higher ed

I caught Glen Poshard's "Morning Conversation" with Jennifer Fuller of WSIU radio this morning.  Poshard sounded weary and rather depressed, and his main theme was the lousy state budgetary situation. The Illinois state budget is of course depressing, but Poshard's read on this continues to be rather more grim than present circumstances would seem to dictate--and indeed is rather bleaker than the view presented by Chancellor Cheng--which was itself a reflection of Poshard's initial relief that we fared as well as we did.  Poshard noted that the state is even farther behind on FY 2011 payments (which were supposed to be complete by June) than it was last year, but his deeper gloom was tied to the overall state budget picture, which remains dire despite last year's tax increase. This leads him to fear a rescission which would add to the 1.1% cut in state funding we have already received.

Poshard's depressing view of things makes sense from two perspectives. My guess, for what it is worth, is that it accurately reflects his state of mind. Certainly his tone was that of the long suffering public servant, an attitude familiar to Poshard watchers. But of course his view also makes sense as an aid to bargaining with campus unions. Playing up the state's budgetary woes helps the administration demand concessions at the bargaining table.

Athletics Spending in the Southern

A short story in the Southern has picked up the athletics spending story, which originated in the Chronicle and was covered earlier here.  The only news to readers of this blog will be the administrative responses, which ranged from irrelevant through unpersuasive to incoherent (though, to be fair, one can't fairly evaluate a response once it's filtered through a third party).

Cheng noted that the athletics program makes up only 3% of the total SIUC budget, and that combining cuts last year and those planned for next, the athletics program will have taken a 7.5% cut.  That means their funding will have gone up by only 114.1%--a truly staggering blow to our spending on sports.  This unless, as seems likely, the 7.5% cuts she mentions came in budgets that were already slated to rise.  The final paragraph wasn't fully intelligible to me, but I think the claim was that ticket sales and donations were up--though, as the story itself indicates, they still form a small minority of total athletics spending.

Campus Tour

Ok, from my secure undisclosed vacation I've been able to access stirring video of the campus tour from July 1 here:


http://thesouthern.com/vmix_98e3b050-a465-11e0-bbbc-001cc4c002e0.html


I paste in the text of the tour after the break.  The tone is obviously tongue in cheek but the facts are, well, facts.  

Summer enrollment

A quick comment on summer school, which has been in the news of late due to the screw up in Political Science and the ballyhooed rise in enrollment of 100 students, about 1%.

This will come as news to few reading this, but bears repeating: summer enrollment is dictated more by the supply of courses than by student demand. For the details, and a suggestion for how to improve things, read on.

SIUC Athletic Budget Up 121.6% in last five years

That figure comes from a series of articles in the Chronicle (main article; support article; table of figures),* and shows that SIUC had the third highest such increase among institutions at our athletic level, the "Football Championship Subdivision". The article's main point is that institutions like SIUC are spending more and more on athletics in what may well prove a futile and unsustainable effort to match institutions with marquee athletics programs.  SIUC is one of the poster children for this trend. In 2005-6, SIUC was spending $10.5 million on athletics.  In 2009-2010 we spent $23.2 million. Those figures are adjusted for inflation.  And they don't even include capital spending--though Saluki Way gets us several paragraphs midway into the story.

Show Me the Money

The IEA mobilization committee is going to hold another "collective action" event at noon next Friday, July 1st, the first day of the fiscal year.  We're calling it the "The Show-Me-the-Money SIUC Campus Tour".

  

We (and yes, I'm afraid I'm involved) plan to meet in front of Morris Library at noon and proceed to other key locations including Faner Hall, Woody Hall, Anthony Hall, and McAndrews Stadium. At each stop, we'll have a brief presentation and discussion about what each place reveals about SIUC's fiscal priorities and what we see as a consistent de-prioritizing of quality education. We anticipate that the entire tour will take less than an hour. To introduce a playful element, we're encouraging people to dress as tourists, so consider pulling out your bermuda shorts and tropical shirts, and bring along your cameras. We also hope to circulate a satirical campus map. 

Commentators here are welcome to suggest their own stops and commentary for the Money Tour, whether to help us with ideas for our own tour or to get a virtual version of the tour going here.  

Cheng: no layoffs or furloughs next year

I finally made time to listen to the Chancellor's regular "morning conversation" gig on WSIU radio from Tuesday (6/14). The big news item was her statement that "the deans" have informed her that there will not be a need for either furloughs or layoffs next year. This even if cuts to state allocations are somewhat worse than the 1.1% in the current budget, perhaps as high as 3%. Thus the overall state budget news, and its impact on SIUC, is good, at least in comparison to last year.

Cheng did return to the issue of a "structural deficit" on campus, and said that "right sizing" the budget (a lovely corporate euphemism), together with meeting this year's cuts, would result in a reduction on campus of somewhere between 2.5% to 5%. Those cuts sound pretty steep, and I also don't fully understand what Cheng means when she talks about a structural deficit, since SIUC ran a surplus last year. My guess is that some of these cuts will mean cutting positions that are already empty--i.e., resigning ourselves to the fact that we're going to have fewer staff in some areas.

Cheng also characterized this good news as meaning that we would be able to move forward to a "better and brighter future" with "employees and programs" intact. This line, if taken literally, will come as a comfort to any worried about the sorts of large-scale program cuts that have gone on elsewhere. Apparently our "right sizing" is going to be done largely via attrition. No suggestion of an end for the hiring freeze, however, or hint of an end to the freeze on salaries.

As I suggested in response to Poshard's email announcing the better than expected state budget, this relatively good news ought to make negotiations easier. But if the administration insists on retaining the power to unilaterally declare furlough days, even if they say they won't need it next year, we'll still have are real debate on our hands. And of course there are other issues, starting, for the FA, with the status of tenure.

Three more matters after the break: the GA healthcare debate, Cheng's more general statements on negotiations, and Cheng's evaluation of her first year in office.

Unbad pension and budget news

As you'll have learned if you are following the SIUC Unions United blog, the attempt to gut our pension benefits failed to pass, though the signature of a prominent pro-business (i.e., anti-tax) lobbyist on the memo announcing the end of that push is rather troubling, to say the least.

Glen Poshard, in an email report sent to faculty on Thursday, reports that state appropriations for next year will also be rather less bad than had been feared, and a number of proposals detrimental to SIUC have been defeated. I can't say how much credit Poshard himself deserves for achieving this result—most of the results he describes spared all state universities, of course, and thus were no doubt fought for by his colleagues at other state universities as well. But presumably his political experience isn't hurting us any--and his rather full report on the state legislative session shows his (or at least staff's) full engagement with these issues. Most of you will have received his email (which I paste at the end of this post), but I'll here pull out some of the high points and consider their impact on our budget.