UPDATE: Budget Balancing For Dummies

The Wisconsin State Journal has the update on this recent blog post ("Budget Balancing For Dummies").

Almost all state workers will have to take furloughs, regardless of whether their paychecks come from the state, federal grants, or private sources, under versions of the budget passed by both the state Assembly and Senate.

Some state workers paid with federal grants, particularly university researchers, argued they shouldn’t have to take the 16 unpaid days off as mandated by Gov. Doyle over the next two years because it wouldn’t save the state money.

An amendment proposed by Rep. Kelda Helen Roys, D-Madison, that would have shielded some of those employees from taking furloughs never made it into the Assembly's budget.

No one proposed a similar amendment in the Senate, making it unlikely that it will be inserted in conference committee, which reconciles the budgets passed by the two houses.

Seems to me that this brain-dead policy choice is completely counter to economic stimulation. By unnecessarily reducing workers' paychecks through a policy that saves the state of Wisconsin $0, how much will the state lose in income tax revenue, retail sales taxes, and the like as a result of this policy aimed solely at 'feel good' public relations?

Also, treating non-state-funded university faculty and staff in this way sorta flies in the face of the retention fund aimed at keeping high-demand faculty in Wisconsin. At best, it's going to create a run on this fund - by slapping UW faculty and staff with the furlough, plus the rescinded salary increases over the next two years. That's money out of the state's pocket.

What was it that Forrest Gump said?

U. Minnesota Leads the Way

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports a new policy on academic freedom at the University of Minnesota, designed to ensure that faculty can speak truth to power on issues related to university administration. The policy defines academic freedom as “the freedom to discuss all relevant matters in the classroom, to explore all avenues of scholarship, research, and creative expression, and to speak or write without institutional discipline or restraint on matters of public concern as well as on matters related to professional duties and the functioning of the university.”

Good going UMN. We should all follow suit.

Time to Get Creative

One of the hardest things about being a scholar of higher education is working at a university. Inevitably we're seen as either pandering to the administration, or in direct warfare with it. What I can't understand is why leaders at universities don't identify and embrace their colleagues as (nearly) free sources of expertise. Those of us who study higher ed are generally a deeply committed body of folks who love nothing more than dreaming up creative ways to help colleges achieve.

Yet so often we're left out in the cold, only brought in at the last minute when it's time to give us a warning and tell us to shut up. Which, of course, makes us less effective, hurt, and generally pissed off.

My last two days were extremely long ones, extremely fraught ones...and today will be no exception. My task: figure out, in short time, highly nuanced and effective ways to increase the amount of need-based aid UW has WITHOUT promoting economic inequality. I'm glad I have a pool of talented colleagues with which to confer. Now only if I'd had more time....

So Many Bad Ideas, So Little Time

The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents is struggling to retain faculty by increasing salaries while simultaneously containing costs. Challenging, to be sure.

But this Capital Times article ("UW Regents weigh pay increases against maintaining costs") reports some unbelievably bad ideas for making it happen. Among them -- reduce the size of the faculty workforce, in order to keep the others' salaries competitive. UW-Madison's provost is quoted as saying, "We'll have fewer heads because we need the money to pay appropriately the faculty that we do have. We don't like that outcome, but if that's what we need to do to maintain quality, that's life, and that's what we have to do."

But a shrinking faculty substantially reduces quality of life for the faculty in ways that even a raise can hardly offset. Take my own department. When I got here in 2004 we had 12 full-time members. Four years later, we're down to 11 with another departing next month. We're searching for two positions, but in the meantime we're operating with 11. And, oh man, even with that "small" reduction, life is challenging. Fewer hands on deck means more service committee assignments, more advisees, fewer classes to offer our students (and therefore longer time-to-degree and more complaints), the need to put more money in the pot to pay for dept functions, more time spent on searches, etc etc. While I've often complained about my salary level, and more importantly lack of increases over the last 4 years (I've gotten in total approx a 4% increase over that entire time), it is much much harder to take because of that increased workload. Honestly, we should get hardship pay just for the reduction in size of the faculty -- not just an increase to keep us from being 15% underpaid compared to our peers!

Another bad idea: Add dependent tuition benefits. In a time when it's more important than ever to target scarce resources to the neediest, moving money to that form of merit-based aid is just silly. Children of faculty are not bad off, they will manage to attend college, and UW-Madison is already a decent deal for those kids who get in-state tuition.

Instead--let's try another approach to increasing faculty retention: REWARD their efforts. Specifically, start by cutting grant getters in on the indirects. No, UW-Madison hardly needs to create an incentive for faculty to seek external funding, but it does need to create an incentive for those with grants to stick around. Those are the folks seeing their market values rise while their salaries remain stagnant. So for the duration of the grant, supplement pay or at least flex funds with 1%. I'm sure the UW could do with just a little bit less, and it'd go a long, long way.

EduProfs in the 21st Century

Edu-Academia is taking giant leaps forward (in my opinion) with the willingness of faculty (and future faculty) to get out there in the blogosphere and talk with the commoners. If we only hear the thoughts of our colleagues when they appear in peer-reviewed journals, then we're often engaging in an out-of-date conversation.

So, props for the day go to my Facebook pal Aaron Pallas; Columbia faculty and as it turns out skoolboy extraordinaire. It's a brave, brave new world, and the bigger the population the more powerful it is....

And my oh my, I had NO idea that I was *already* friends with skoolboy and eduwonkette. My known circle of friends already included Kevin Carey. Now things are SO interesting....

Destruction of the Public University

I write from the front lines. Support for public higher education isn't merely "eroding"-- dare I say it, we are being destroyed. I am employed at one of the longtime leaders of flagship universities, one that really put the public in public, and these days I have no choice but to wonder "Does the state government want me to leave?" Would they rather UW-Madison not exist?

Pardon me for being a bit upset. While my school is by no means the poorest in the state, and I am fully aware as I'm on the tenure-track I occupy a very elite position in the overall structure of faculty jobs, still, the belt tightening is getting to be a little too much. Just a few examples:

1. Our "raises." Since I arrived 4 years ago we've never received more than a 2% annual increase. Today they reneged on our scheduled increase for this July, reducing it from 2% to 1%. One percent!! Thanks very much for the just over $500 bucks-- that's not even enough for a single plane ticket from Madison to Washington, DC these days.

2. Funding our grad students. They are terrific, and boy are they struggling. A very small percentage have any funding--from a teaching or research assistantship-- and it's getting increasingly more difficult to generate external funds to support them. Recently the University was forced to change policy and pass the costs of grad student tuition on to faculty research grants. So now, to hire a student, one has to budget for their stipend, their benefits, and their tuition. That eats up a whole lot of the space in grants. So much so that I have already, on one occasion, been forced to choose between funding a student, or funding myself. I am no saint, but honestly, I funded the student. Why should I have been forced to choose?

3. The lack of benefits. Don't even get me started... 6 weeks unpaid maternity leave (the fed minimum), no domestic partner benefits, no dependent tuition waiver, no childcare assistance...

4. The departures. We're losing great people, wonderful people, right and left. And not just to elite private schools, but to other publics. To places you really think people wouldn't leave us for. But they do, they must, and we wave goodbye and wonder if we're next.

Now maybe I'm taking a huge risk here in being so frank about what it's like here and now, especially without the status of a tenured prof. Oh well. Because here's the other side of the story: This is truly-- despite it all, in spite of their best efforts to squash us-- a WONDERFUL school. The students are genuine and smart, ambitious yet for the most part without egos. The colleagues (who remain) are brilliant, funny, kind people who are truly here for the work. The town is easy-going and somewhat affordable, and a great place to raise a family. The administration ain't perfect, but it's clearly trying. So we stick around. We hope. We survive.

We just do it on a shoestring
("Mom, please send money-- childcare is expensive. Thanks-S.")