The list of 10 questions related to campus finances is interesting. I know or could easily find answers to seven, but I'll be looking for the rest because I can see why this information is relevant to budgets.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/what-if-everyone-on-campus-understood-the-money?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_1517615_nl_Afternoon-Update_date_20200911&cid=pm&source=ams&sourceId=410706 (https://www.chronicle.com/article/what-if-everyone-on-campus-understood-the-money?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_1517615_nl_Afternoon-Update_date_20200911&cid=pm&source=ams&sourceId=410706)
If everybody understood the money on some campuses today, they would probably be a lot more worried than they already are.
Quote from: apl68 on September 11, 2020, 02:09:20 PM
If everybody understood the money on some campuses today, they would probably be a lot more worried than they already are.
If they really understood the money, many campuses would have few to no faculty in fields where good non-academic jobs exist starting about five years ago.
Paywalled.
Polly, my friend, you are obsessed.
It's obvious that my colleagues don't know the answers to any of these questions, because they think designing a curriculum is the same as designing a syllabus.
Spork, I had just that very conversation with one of the AVPs this week. He's trying to get faculty to use a template for program design and new program proposals that considers more than the curriculum itself. Our accreditor has a nice outline they use for their approval of new programs that we may imitate with great appreciation, as it contains sections for budget, additional resource needs, potential demand and target populations, ideal faculty profiles and availability projections, and such. We're going to need to educate up to it, but imho it is a worthy investment in a more informed faculty.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 11, 2020, 03:55:42 PM
Polly, my friend, you are obsessed.
If you know and have a conscience, then you can't remain silent when actions can be taken to prevent entirely foreseeable disaster.
As Penn Jillette puts it, how much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize when you know the truth to your bones?
The writing is on the wall and the best time to have acted was about ten years ago for many of the shakiest institutions. However, individuals could still act now for at least their own families instead of waiting until they lose their jobs.
Quote from: polly_mer on September 11, 2020, 05:35:06 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 11, 2020, 03:55:42 PM
Polly, my friend, you are obsessed.
If you know and have a conscience, then you can't remain silent when actions can be taken to prevent entirely foreseeable disaster.
As Penn Jillette puts it, how much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize when you know the truth to your bones?
The writing is on the wall and the best time to have acted was about ten years ago for many of the shakiest institutions. However, individuals could still act now for at least their own families instead of waiting until they lose their jobs.
The same applies to current doctoral students; to wit, I give you what seems to be the opening salvo in a social media flame war between two people I don't know:
https://twitter.com/CraigGaIIagher/status/1303793780894597121 (https://twitter.com/CraigGaIIagher/status/1303793780894597121).
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 11, 2020, 03:55:42 PM
Paywalled.
Polly, my friend, you are obsessed.
Sorry, but I don't see an unpaywalled version. The gist of article is that few faculty and staff (and some administrators) understand inner workings of their institutions, especially finances, due both to difficulty of obtaining information and lack of awareness/interest. He also points out that the middle of a financial crisis is not the best time to begin learning, then offers a few questions that indicate the context employees should begin developing an understanding of if they want to participate effectively in discussions of organizational strategy and finance. The ten questions he asked are:
1. What was the annual revenue of your institution in the last year? What percentage of that was
2. What were your college's top three sources of revenue?
3. What was the total amount spent on faculty and staff salaries last year? And the total cost of annual benefits?
4. How much was spent on debt service and utilities?
5. What was the published figure for undergraduate tuition? What was the average price students actually paid?
6. What was the size of the endowment at the end of the fiscal year? What is campus policy on the percentage of the endowment that can be withdrawn annually to fund institutional needs?
7. What percentage of the alumni donated money?
8. What are the main reasons students choose to attend your two competitors?
9. What are the top two factors that prompt first-time students to leave your campus after a year?
10. Name the top three ways that the quality of the overall student experience affects your institution's short- and long-term economic viability.
In my opinion, being able to explain why each of these questions is important and being able to find at least 80% of the information fairly quickly (an hour or so) demonstrates minimum understanding of organization needed to be an effective administrator.
Admin hide the answers to these questions to weaponize the answers.
Right now our union is battling it out with our administration which seems to be using the pandemic as a bargaining cudgel.
In a number of ways we are lucky: we're a commuter school with a very regional student demographic so we do not lose out on dorm & meal plan fees, and our enrollment is right on target, partly because so many students are not attending their name-brand schools and taking our meager offerings online.
And we are at the end of a (officially at least) very successful capital campaign.
Yet the admin is pleading poor and hoarding the budgetary information, giving out incomplete spreadsheets, and refusing to openly discuss numbers. Already the contract talks are in arbitration and we are being given strike strategy by the union. Admin have refused a one-year interim COVID contract.
It is very worrisome.
In a moment certain posters will appear to tell us what we already know about the state of academia and defend this administrative approach, but if there are good reasons to bargain this way, they should be made public.
You can get the article, BTW, by "signing up" for their email list-serve.
Quote from: Vkw10 on September 12, 2020, 11:42:18 AM
In my opinion, being able to explain why each of these questions is important and being able to find at least 80% of the information fairly quickly (an hour or so) demonstrates minimum understanding of organization needed to be an effective administrator.
For an administrator, even many department chairs, those are reasonable. For non-administrative faculty, of those questions address thing they can't influence and can't respond to.
I agree that
administrators need to understand how to explain the importance of the question.
Percentage of alumni giving? That could be tough. But a department chair needs to know. Say that the second assistant vice provost for development comes to you and says that the archrival school is at 32.7% alumni giving while you are only at 32.2% and the university has made it a priority to overtake them. Your department teaches a lot of seniors. How can you revamp their senior year experience so that more will become donors in the next fiscal year? How do you make faculty respond to that call? /s
I will admit that I don't know the answers to most of these questions at my place
Quote from: Sun_Worshiper on September 12, 2020, 12:58:02 PM
I will admit that I don't know the answers to most of these questions at my place
I doubt many people below the level of dean or VP know most of these. I understand why they're important, know a few, and could find most of them quickly, because this stuff is ammunition when I'm fighting for department budget. Getting the current year numbers for anything beyond my department is often impossible at my level.
I don't think most faculty need to know this specific information. For many faculty, it is often easier and just as revealing to notice that enrollment has been dropping 1% or more every year, that credit hours earned in the department are declining, that the relationship between official tuition rate and what students really pay is changing, that retention rates are declining. Those gradual but consistent declines should be scary. Instead, most of us overlook them until suddenly the institution where we've worked for 15 years is in serious financial difficulties because administrators have been bailing water without noticing that the crack in hull is getting a bit bigger every year. This pandemic is exposing a lot of cracked hulls.
My university is in relatively good shape now, but I can see problems developing. Five years ago, we shifted from slightly increasing enrollment annually to holding steady or decreasing slightly each year. There are other small indicators of stress, but that's the obvious one. All efforts seem to be aimed at returning to annual enrollment increases instead of recognizing the demographic indicators that enrollment decreases will continue and accelerate over the next ten years. We're in relatively good shape, but we won't be if we keep planning based on growing to 45k enrollment in ten years when we're more likely to drop below 35k.
Quote from: Vkw10 on September 12, 2020, 02:22:18 PM
I don't think most faculty need to know this specific information.
You know, though, when they come at you with a "we-need-to-cut-back" mantra while your classes have waiting lists and admin are getting salary bumps and you are being told you can't have a COL raise this year, it gets a little hard to buy.
Respectfully, I think we DO need to know these things. I think the public needs to know these things----particularly if we want to mollify the political sharks who circle our campuses demanding to know why tuition keeps rising.
I think it would be helpful for faculty on my campus to know the answers to most of these questions because then some might understand why it's really stupid to add required courses to the curriculum when those courses invariably get taught by adjuncts.
/
Quote from: spork on September 12, 2020, 04:03:32 PM
I think it would be helpful for faculty on my campus to know the answers to most of these questions because then some might understand why it's really stupid to add required courses to the curriculum when those courses invariably get taught by adjuncts.
I would like to know the amount of money adjuncts make for the campus.
Didn't we have a money breakdown that illustrated how many of these adjunct-heavy disciplines actually pay for themselves and then some? Wonder if I can find that.
Sure, let's see the numbers on these "stupid" courses involved with educating people.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 12, 2020, 11:45:02 AM
Admin hide the answers to these questions to weaponize the answers.
This. Once one understands that the ultimate administrative goal is a university with no faculty, online-only students, robot graders, and a gleaming administrative tower with a
Matrix-style spawning room (those assistant vice-deans don't come from storks), the behavior of our masters begins to make a lot more sense.
Quote from: writingprof on September 12, 2020, 04:59:37 PM
This. Once one understands that the ultimate administrative goal is a university with no faculty, online-only students, robot graders, and a gleaming administrative tower with a Matrix-style spawning room (those assistant vice-deans don't come from storks), the behavior of our masters begins to make a lot more sense.
Being non-profit [for good reason], and that they can't take the cash home, the ultimate goal of the median university administrator is to have a quiet life. Should not be a surprise that they are, on average, idiots. Thus, it should also not be surprising that many, many institutions will fail, given Covid, but especially, the rest of reality.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 12, 2020, 04:28:42 PM
/Quote from: spork on September 12, 2020, 04:03:32 PM
I think it would be helpful for faculty on my campus to know the answers to most of these questions because then some might understand why it's really stupid to add required courses to the curriculum when those courses invariably get taught by adjuncts.
I would like to know the amount of money adjuncts make for the campus.
Adjuncts teaching gen ed generally don't make money for the campus because students don't enroll in the university to take courses with Dr. Staff to meet the required 3 credits of SS/Div.
Students enroll to major in something specific and/or possibly to study with Big Name Professors X and Y.
Students enroll for Brand Name institution networking and name recognition.
It's true that paying adjuncts a pitiful amount compared to a full-time faculty member who also gets benefits means a given course costs slightly less to deliver. But, that's not really the same as making the university money by ensuring that the highly desirable majors can admit more students or recruiting for a solid major.
Name brand campuses and great majors seldom have armies of poorly paid adjuncts covering even gen ed because that's not the experience for which people will pay good money.
One red flag for institutional finances is having gone the armies of poorly paid adjunct route for gen ed
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 12, 2020, 04:28:42 PM
/Quote from: spork on September 12, 2020, 04:03:32 PM
I think it would be helpful for faculty on my campus to know the answers to most of these questions because then some might understand why it's really stupid to add required courses to the curriculum when those courses invariably get taught by adjuncts.
I would like to know the amount of money adjuncts make for the campus.
Didn't we have a money breakdown that illustrated how many of these adjunct-heavy disciplines actually pay for themselves and then some? Wonder if I can find that.
Sure, let's see the numbers on these "stupid" courses involved with educating people.
It's long-term stupid to have full-time faculty individually teaching a total of thirty students per semester in their precious upper-level courses in programs graduating 3-4 majors per year, when each adjunct teaches ninety students per semester for 1/8 the compensation in required gen ed courses. Some faculty here are now recognizing just how stupid it is because searches to fill open positions in their departments are now postponed/permanently cancelled. But naturally most of the faculty members who created and prevented change in the curriculum are either retired or close to it.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 12, 2020, 03:09:27 PM
Quote from: Vkw10 on September 12, 2020, 02:22:18 PM
I don't think most faculty need to know this specific information.
You know, though, when they come at you with a "we-need-to-cut-back" mantra while your classes have waiting lists and admin are getting salary bumps and you are being told you can't have a COL raise this year, it gets a little hard to buy.
Respectfully, I think we DO need to know these things. I think the public needs to know these things----particularly if we want to mollify the political sharks who circle our campuses demanding to know why tuition keeps rising.
I think we're using "need to know" in different contexts. I was thinking in terms of having specific details on the tip of the tongue, able to say at any point what the university spends in various categories, the way the article's author suggested. Most faculty don't need that level of knowledge. They do need ready access to details about finances, enrollment, and assessment data, because access to information is critical for shared governance. At my last university, it was almost impossible to obtain information without filing FOIA requests. My current university offers an annual workshop on how to find university information, open to all employees, although one does need a decent understanding of university budget codes to understand the financial data.
Quote from: writingprof on September 12, 2020, 04:59:37 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 12, 2020, 11:45:02 AM
Admin hide the answers to these questions to weaponize the answers.
This. Once one understands that the ultimate administrative goal is a university with no faculty, online-only students, robot graders, and a gleaming administrative tower with a Matrix-style spawning room (those assistant vice-deans don't come from storks), the behavior of our masters begins to make a lot more sense.
Ha! Brilliant!
Quote from: Vkw10 on September 12, 2020, 07:26:14 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 12, 2020, 03:09:27 PM
Quote from: Vkw10 on September 12, 2020, 02:22:18 PM
I don't think most faculty need to know this specific information.
You know, though, when they come at you with a "we-need-to-cut-back" mantra while your classes have waiting lists and admin are getting salary bumps and you are being told you can't have a COL raise this year, it gets a little hard to buy.
Respectfully, I think we DO need to know these things. I think the public needs to know these things----particularly if we want to mollify the political sharks who circle our campuses demanding to know why tuition keeps rising.
I think we're using "need to know" in different contexts. I was thinking in terms of having specific details on the tip of the tongue, able to say at any point what the university spends in various categories, the way the article's author suggested. Most faculty don't need that level of knowledge. They do need ready access to details about finances, enrollment, and assessment data, because access to information is critical for shared governance. At my last university, it was almost impossible to obtain information without filing FOIA requests. My current university offers an annual workshop on how to find university information, open to all employees, although one does need a decent understanding of university budget codes to understand the financial data.
I was just thinking of having it available in general. No way would I or any of the people I work with have the info on the tips of our tongues----in fact, we probably wouldn't particularly worry about it.
When it comes up is during contract negotiations. Every three years the admin makes claims that do not seem to match what little we know. They re-sodded the football field this year even though we don't have a season; it was a hefty chunk of change. Guess how many non-teaching staff members the school laid off.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 13, 2020, 09:52:41 AM
Quote from: Vkw10 on September 12, 2020, 07:26:14 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 12, 2020, 03:09:27 PM
Quote from: Vkw10 on September 12, 2020, 02:22:18 PM
I don't think most faculty need to know this specific information.
You know, though, when they come at you with a "we-need-to-cut-back" mantra while your classes have waiting lists and admin are getting salary bumps and you are being told you can't have a COL raise this year, it gets a little hard to buy.
Respectfully, I think we DO need to know these things. I think the public needs to know these things----particularly if we want to mollify the political sharks who circle our campuses demanding to know why tuition keeps rising.
I think we're using "need to know" in different contexts. I was thinking in terms of having specific details on the tip of the tongue, able to say at any point what the university spends in various categories, the way the article's author suggested. Most faculty don't need that level of knowledge. They do need ready access to details about finances, enrollment, and assessment data, because access to information is critical for shared governance. At my last university, it was almost impossible to obtain information without filing FOIA requests. My current university offers an annual workshop on how to find university information, open to all employees, although one does need a decent understanding of university budget codes to understand the financial data.
I was just thinking of having it available in general. No way would I or any of the people I work with have the info on the tips of our tongues----in fact, we probably wouldn't particularly worry about it.
When it comes up is during contract negotiations. Every three years the admin makes claims that do not seem to match what little we know. They re-sodded the football field this year even though we don't have a season; it was a hefty chunk of change. Guess how many non-teaching staff members the school laid off.
On one hand, there's probably some reasonable explanation for this. Athletics money often comes from separate pots. A donor might have paid for the field, or there could be some separate athletic endowment. I can see why administrators often find faculty complaints like this frustrating. But, often I think this is a way to avoid a larger discussion about priorities. You probably couldn't actually take the money from the field and keep an extra staff member, but it probably reflects the way the school has courted donors, assigned priorities and managed their budget.
Quote from: Caracal on September 13, 2020, 10:33:16 AM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 13, 2020, 09:52:41 AM
Quote from: Vkw10 on September 12, 2020, 07:26:14 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 12, 2020, 03:09:27 PM
Quote from: Vkw10 on September 12, 2020, 02:22:18 PM
I don't think most faculty need to know this specific information.
You know, though, when they come at you with a "we-need-to-cut-back" mantra while your classes have waiting lists and admin are getting salary bumps and you are being told you can't have a COL raise this year, it gets a little hard to buy.
Respectfully, I think we DO need to know these things. I think the public needs to know these things----particularly if we want to mollify the political sharks who circle our campuses demanding to know why tuition keeps rising.
I think we're using "need to know" in different contexts. I was thinking in terms of having specific details on the tip of the tongue, able to say at any point what the university spends in various categories, the way the article's author suggested. Most faculty don't need that level of knowledge. They do need ready access to details about finances, enrollment, and assessment data, because access to information is critical for shared governance. At my last university, it was almost impossible to obtain information without filing FOIA requests. My current university offers an annual workshop on how to find university information, open to all employees, although one does need a decent understanding of university budget codes to understand the financial data.
I was just thinking of having it available in general. No way would I or any of the people I work with have the info on the tips of our tongues----in fact, we probably wouldn't particularly worry about it.
When it comes up is during contract negotiations. Every three years the admin makes claims that do not seem to match what little we know. They re-sodded the football field this year even though we don't have a season; it was a hefty chunk of change. Guess how many non-teaching staff members the school laid off.
On one hand, there's probably some reasonable explanation for this. Athletics money often comes from separate pots. A donor might have paid for the field, or there could be some separate athletic endowment. I can see why administrators often find faculty complaints like this frustrating. But, often I think this is a way to avoid a larger discussion about priorities. You probably couldn't actually take the money from the field and keep an extra staff member, but it probably reflects the way the school has courted donors, assigned priorities and managed their budget.
Just checked an article from five years ago. It cost the Chicago Bears $250,000 to re-sod the field (which they did at least 3 times!). If Wahoo's place is anything like mine athletic expenditures directly impact the general fund dollars.
We had someone donate money to "beautify" the campus with yearly planting of flowers, etc. During the great recession we had to let a few people go and cut everyone else's salaries. Yet, at the same time, the flowers were all being planted. Someone asked how we could dare plant flowers when we were firing people. The answer was that it was an endowed fund. We couldn't use it for anything else nor could we insult the donor by not using the money. People say the same thing about why we mow the grass so much, and the answer is that nobody wants to come to a school that's overgrown with weeds and such.
Though annual athletic maintenance is usually not donated money, we do get donations for total re-dos of fields, or bigger projects like stadium rebuilds.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 13, 2020, 09:52:41 AM
When it comes up is during contract negotiations. Every three years the admin makes claims that do not seem to match what little we know. They re-sodded the football field this year even though we don't have a season; it was a hefty chunk of change. Guess how many non-teaching staff members the school laid off.
What does admissions research indicate about how students are choosing your institution over competitors? At Super Dinky (DIII), 70% of the students entered as athletes with a large fraction being three sport athletes.
If football is a big draw for you for the party/PR aspect, then having adequate facilities (new sod takes a while to be great) can be a good investment.
Student experience is far more than time in the classroom. Having enough support people so lines are short and phones/emails are answered immediately is more important than paying the adjunct army more. Having enough activities to appeal to students is part of the college experience. Students can arrange their own parties, but all the enrichment bandied about on a different thread is arranged by employees with only a small fraction arranged by faculty. Sports as a party opportunity is often part of the appeal for state universities with medium-to-large enrollment.
The athletes themselves are much less of the revenue than the pageantry for the games. Even if the games themselves don't bring a lot of revenue, the spirit apparel, good enough regular PR, and good will/fond memories of the community tend to help fill the gaps.
Endowed and donated funds are seldom used for athletic maintenance at most places. For all the regional publics with D1 and D2 programs athletics are certainly subsidized by general fund dollars and the Super-Dinky reference simply doesn't apply. With what we pay staff members a re-sodding would easily pay 5+ yearly salaries.
With no season it is actually a good time to re-sod a field if you have the cash. However, only the really big D1 programs have the cash this year, and even many of those are furloughing staff.
Quote from: polly_mer on September 13, 2020, 11:34:13 AM
What does admissions research indicate about how students are choosing your institution over competitors? At Super Dinky (DIII), 70% of the students entered as athletes with a large fraction being three sport athletes.
Good questions, Polly, and at one or another point in time you've asked these same and I've answered these same. Nevertheless, these are good points and I can explain.
People choose our school because it is the cheapest in the state, it is near our students' neighborhoods (hence these folks can live at home), and open admission. In other words, our student body is almost exclusively from the metro area we are situated in, well over 90%, so much so that I have met only three students not from the immediate area----so much so that I ask, "How did you end up here?" and there's always been a family connection. A quarter of the students are POC, and a large percentage are first-generation.
In other words, we are the safety school. Somehow the mix we get is better than you would expect from an open-enrollment place----from those who are unable to formulate a grammatically complete sentence to valedictorians at their tiny rural high schools. Some utterly terrible students, a great many mediocre students, a small faction of very good students, a smattering of super smart people.
Quote from: polly_mer on September 13, 2020, 11:34:13 AM
If football is a big draw for you for the party/PR aspect, then having adequate facilities (new sod takes a while to be great) can be a good investment.
It is not.
Our comparatively tiny Div-1A stadium is virtually empty on game day. Our teams have something like a 50% win rate at best. High school games are regularly broadcast in their entirety on the local affiliates----the only time our sports make the news is when one of the coaches makes an extraordinarily clueless politically incorrect public statement. I swear, these are almost regularly scheduled.
I've had a number of papers from students about subsidizing sports in college; these are people very concerned with finances, and they are not happy about the grand they usually pay every year to do things like sodding the football field.
Quote from: polly_mer on September 13, 2020, 11:34:13 AM
Student experience is far more than time in the classroom. Having enough support people so lines are short and phones/emails are answered immediately is more important than paying the adjunct army more. Having enough activities to appeal to students is part of the college experience. Students can arrange their own parties, but all the enrichment bandied about on a different thread is arranged by employees with only a small fraction arranged by faculty. Sports as a party opportunity is often part of the appeal for state universities with medium-to-large enrollment.
Sports have been both evil and glorious at both my undergrad and grad alma maters.
Not here.
Quote from: polly_mer on September 13, 2020, 11:34:13 AM
The athletes themselves are much less of the revenue than the pageantry for the games. Even if the games themselves don't bring a lot of revenue, the spirit apparel, good enough regular PR, and good will/fond memories of the community tend to help fill the gaps.
See above.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 13, 2020, 12:37:47 PM
People choose our school because it is the cheapest in the state, it is near our students' neighborhoods (hence these folks can live at home), and open admission. In other words, our student body is almost exclusively from the metro area we are situated in, well over 90%, so much so that I have met only three students not from the immediate area----so much so that I ask, "How did you end up here?" and there's always been a family connection. A quarter of the students are POC, and a large percentage are first-generation.
What are the projections for high school graduation for the next five to ten years? Some parts of the country will see declines of 30% from the high in 2012 with no reason to expect to ever come back up as the region dies.
How have your demographics shifted in the past five years and how will they continue to shift in the next ten years? Going from 70% of a large total number of HS graduates enrolling full-time to only half of a much smaller group that will go primarily part-time is problematic. Even if the institution manages to have the same FTE, but as part-time students means keeping income about the same, but needing to provide more support services at more expense.
Why is your institution the cheapest in the region and what's the margin on projected enrollment? In other words, if your institution reasonably raised price to reflect rising costs of maintenance, IT infrastructure, and faculty in majors with excellent non-academic options, would your students bail?
What are the state appropriations looking like? Higher ed is often one of the few areas that can legally be cut from the state budget. If your institution used to get a fraction like 30% of the revenue in from appropriations and now it's going to be 10%, then that's a big problem, especially if your institution doesn't have several sources of revenue that perhaps could take up the slack. If your revenue is tuition/fees, appropriations, and a pitiful amount of giving from alumni, then that's really a huge concern for the next three years.
How have the majors changed over the last decade? Nursing and engineering are expensive to run. Keeping computers updated for graphical design, CS, and a few other majors is expensive. Internships and practicuums in social work, education, and nursing limit the size of the cohorts that can be admitted. If you've had huge growth in the humanities, then that's good and bucks the national trends where the expensive-to-deliver majors are generally the growth areas.
How have the fractions of students who come in as essentially sophomores or as transfer students been changing? Having to recruit much more because few students come in with no credits and stay for four to six years of full-time enrollment is an additional cost to the university, particularly if those cheaper-to-deliver-but-cost-full-price courses are the ones being skipped. One university model is to only admit students who have already met the gen ed requirements and only offer the major courses and therefore justify a higher tuition.
However, if the university standard tuition assumes that almost half the courses will be the cheaper-to-deliver-gen-eds to subsidize the cost of other courses, then that's a big financial hole looming, even if head count remains the same.
Quote from: writingprof on September 12, 2020, 04:59:37 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 12, 2020, 11:45:02 AM
Admin hide the answers to these questions to weaponize the answers.
This. Once one understands that the ultimate administrative goal is a university with no faculty, online-only students, robot graders, and a gleaming administrative tower with a Matrix-style spawning room (those assistant vice-deans don't come from storks), the behavior of our masters begins to make a lot more sense.
Except the same things can be explained by starting out by accepting that administration is not as thrilled with the tenure system and what it provides and at what cost than you would prefer. Which is a much more plausible scenario.
Add to that some administrators are embittered former faculty members who thought they got exploited as faculty. So someone owes them.
Quote from: mahagonny on September 13, 2020, 06:06:43 PM
Except the same things can be explained by starting out by accepting that administration is not as thrilled with the tenure system and what it provides and at what cost than you would prefer. Which is a much more plausible scenario.
Add to that some administrators are embittered former faculty members who thought they got exploited as faculty. So someone owes them.
It is easy to make arguments for why tenure is a bad system. Those arguments look convincing, until you see what happens when there is no tenure. I know people who teach at new schools created in the last 20 years without tenure protections. The results are pretty bad. None of it has led to better conditions for adjuncts.
Quote from: polly_mer on September 13, 2020, 06:00:41 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 13, 2020, 12:37:47 PM
People choose our school because it is the cheapest in the state, it is near our students' neighborhoods (hence these folks can live at home), and open admission. In other words, our student body is almost exclusively from the metro area we are situated in, well over 90%, so much so that I have met only three students not from the immediate area----so much so that I ask, "How did you end up here?" and there's always been a family connection. A quarter of the students are POC, and a large percentage are first-generation.
What are the projections for high school graduation for the next five to ten years? Some parts of the country will see declines of 30% from the high in 2012 with no reason to expect to ever come back up as the region dies.
How have your demographics shifted in the past five years and how will they continue to shift in the next ten years? Going from 70% of a large total number of HS graduates enrolling full-time to only half of a much smaller group that will go primarily part-time is problematic. Even if the institution manages to have the same FTE, but as part-time students means keeping income about the same, but needing to provide more support services at more expense.
Why is your institution the cheapest in the region and what's the margin on projected enrollment? In other words, if your institution reasonably raised price to reflect rising costs of maintenance, IT infrastructure, and faculty in majors with excellent non-academic options, would your students bail?
What are the state appropriations looking like? Higher ed is often one of the few areas that can legally be cut from the state budget. If your institution used to get a fraction like 30% of the revenue in from appropriations and now it's going to be 10%, then that's a big problem, especially if your institution doesn't have several sources of revenue that perhaps could take up the slack. If your revenue is tuition/fees, appropriations, and a pitiful amount of giving from alumni, then that's really a huge concern for the next three years.
How have the majors changed over the last decade? Nursing and engineering are expensive to run. Keeping computers updated for graphical design, CS, and a few other majors is expensive. Internships and practicuums in social work, education, and nursing limit the size of the cohorts that can be admitted. If you've had huge growth in the humanities, then that's good and bucks the national trends where the expensive-to-deliver majors are generally the growth areas.
How have the fractions of students who come in as essentially sophomores or as transfer students been changing? Having to recruit much more because few students come in with no credits and stay for four to six years of full-time enrollment is an additional cost to the university, particularly if those cheaper-to-deliver-but-cost-full-price courses are the ones being skipped. One university model is to only admit students who have already met the gen ed requirements and only offer the major courses and therefore justify a higher tuition.
However, if the university standard tuition assumes that almost half the courses will be the cheaper-to-deliver-gen-eds to subsidize the cost of other courses, then that's a big financial hole looming, even if head count remains the same.
Polly, it is funny how you try to trip people up. In other threads you attack admin, but in threads such as these you defend the actions of admin.
Our projections on student enrollment have been wrong for the last 5 years. Each each we get a projected 2 percent dip in enrollment (which make us suspicious, of course, about the people making these predictions). Actually, our enrollment has wavered by 4% up and down each of the last five years---some years we are down slightly, other years we are actually up; this year our enrollment is right on target. We are in one of the very populous parts of the country and our state's H.S. grad rate is projected to dip in 2022-23 and then rise to rates approximately what they are now and remain stable through 2027 according to the NCES. The exodus from our city seems to have slowed after 40 years, although the economy here is always precarious (we lost one big plant but gained a new major distributor's warehouse).
I doubt that our students would bail if we raised tuition----the big draw for most of these folks is that they can live at home. Most want to leave town but stay in the region. The really intrinsically motivated good students go to one of the many major-league universities that surround us. Our salaries are some of the lowest in the state----I looked us up on the CHE database of college salaries: we are below most of the community colleges and satellite campuses, and we are just slightly above the tiny religious schools in the region as far as pay is concerned. I think that has something to do with our affordability.
State appropriations are less than half our operating budget this year, but they are up 5% from last year; we have a pittance, approximately 4%, comes from other sources (we are not a research school); total operating budget is up 2.1%.
Now, gotta teach class. But this is interesting, so I shall return.
Quote from: Caracal on September 14, 2020, 06:29:50 AM
Quote from: mahagonny on September 13, 2020, 06:06:43 PM
Except the same things can be explained by starting out by accepting that administration is not as thrilled with the tenure system and what it provides and at what cost than you would prefer. Which is a much more plausible scenario.
Add to that some administrators are embittered former faculty members who thought they got exploited as faculty. So someone owes them.
It is easy to make arguments for why tenure is a bad system. Those arguments look convincing, until you see what happens when there is no tenure. I know people who teach at new schools created in the last 20 years without tenure protections. The results are pretty bad. None of it has led to better conditions for adjuncts.
I have lived experience to refute this last claim. A lot depends on what a union can do. Tenure is usually a solidarity breaker.
No system should have a faction of workers that is sacrificial. Talk to any tenured person long enough, even the nicest ones, and it's clear the culture regards the adjunct that way. The claim they would be better off without adjuncts, while relying heavily on them, and getting miffed when they aren't available.. Only the privileged get to entrench lies of that sort. They claim that their culture encourages them to look down on the adjunct, while they, the individual, in an act of defiance do not. The sort of self-congratulation one finds.
'Adjunct' means 'a thing added to the main thing, but not part of it'. Which of course is a pretty shaky claim as of the last twenty years, to begin with, but routinely reinforced by tenured and their non -TT full time minions. Remove 'the main thing' and what is left is not 'adjuncts.' It's your workforce. With bargaining rights. Unless everyone wants to vote for people like Chris Christie.
Quote from: polly_mer on September 13, 2020, 06:00:41 PM
How have the majors changed over the last decade? Nursing and engineering are expensive to run. Keeping computers updated for graphical design, CS, and a few other majors is expensive. Internships and practicuums in social work, education, and nursing limit the size of the cohorts that can be admitted. If you've had huge growth in the humanities, then that's good and bucks the national trends where the expensive-to-deliver majors are generally the growth areas.
In the 7 years we've been here the student body has remained remarkably standard. Right now our big majors with 200+ and 300+ students per major are, not surprisingly, business, education, engineering, criminal justice, nursing, psychology, and, interestingly, biology. Our poly sci and English are each about 100 majors, and we have 400+ "college credit plus" students. If you look down the charts it would seem that majors such as Music Performance are woefully under-filled, until you realize that each individual performance specialty (strings, horns, piano, voice, etc.) has several students per, and suddenly the music major is much healthier than it appears. After that the student body is spread about evenly among the other 71 majors. STEM and Lib Arts are the two heavy-hitting colleges, although we just went through reorganization this summer, so we annoying lib arts people will have even a bigger punch this year.
Quote from: polly_mer on September 13, 2020, 06:00:41 PM
How have the fractions of students who come in as essentially sophomores or as transfer students been changing?
Very few of these. We are essentially a 4-year community college. Our only transfer students come from one of the other two low-ball universities in the state or the local CC.
Quote from: mahagonny on September 14, 2020, 07:12:01 AM
Quote from: Caracal on September 14, 2020, 06:29:50 AM
Quote from: mahagonny on September 13, 2020, 06:06:43 PM
Except the same things can be explained by starting out by accepting that administration is not as thrilled with the tenure system and what it provides and at what cost than you would prefer. Which is a much more plausible scenario.
Add to that some administrators are embittered former faculty members who thought they got exploited as faculty. So someone owes them.
It is easy to make arguments for why tenure is a bad system. Those arguments look convincing, until you see what happens when there is no tenure. I know people who teach at new schools created in the last 20 years without tenure protections. The results are pretty bad. None of it has led to better conditions for adjuncts.
I have lived experience to refute this last claim. A lot depends on what a union can do. Tenure is usually a solidarity breaker.
No system should have a faction of workers that is sacrificial. Talk to any tenured person long enough, even the nicest ones, and it's clear the culture regards the adjunct that way. The claim they would be better off without adjuncts, while relying heavily on them, and getting miffed when they aren't available.. Only the privileged get to entrench lies of that sort. They claim that their culture encourages them to look down on the adjunct, while they, the individual, in an act of defiance do not. The sort of self-congratulation one finds.
'Adjunct' means 'a thing added to the main thing, but not part of it'. Which of course is a pretty shaky claim as of the last twenty years, to begin with, but routinely reinforced by tenured and their non -TT full time minions. Remove 'the main thing' and what is left is not 'adjuncts.' It's your workforce. With bargaining rights. Unless everyone wants to vote for people like Chris Christie.
Maybe some places it works, but I know of places that do have strong unions and it is still a disaster.
Quote from: Caracal on September 14, 2020, 08:24:30 AM
Maybe some places it works, but I know of places that do have strong unions and it is still a disaster.
Unions exist to protect the faculty. Tenure exists to protect academic freedom. I know there are those that don't understand what tenure protects, or who tell stories that confuse ineffective administration with tenure, but that's what it's there for and what it does in practice. Unions and tenure are completely different animals that can coexist or stand on their own.
Quote from: tuxthepenguin on September 14, 2020, 08:34:59 AM
Quote from: Caracal on September 14, 2020, 08:24:30 AM
Maybe some places it works, but I know of places that do have strong unions and it is still a disaster.
Unions exist to protect the faculty. Tenure exists to protect academic freedom. I know there are those that don't understand what tenure protects, or who tell stories that confuse ineffective administration with tenure, but that's what it's there for and what it does in practice. Unions and tenure are completely different animals that can coexist or stand on their own.
More correctly, unions exist to protect
themselves. Unions despise non-union workers in any field, including academia, and they're even not very supportive of faculty who belong to the bargaining unit but choose not to join the union. They often oppose flexibility in work arrangements because the more uniform they can make working conditions the more they can ensure that faculty interests align with union interests. Where they differ, union interests win.
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 14, 2020, 08:46:25 AM
Quote from: tuxthepenguin on September 14, 2020, 08:34:59 AM
Quote from: Caracal on September 14, 2020, 08:24:30 AM
Maybe some places it works, but I know of places that do have strong unions and it is still a disaster.
Unions exist to protect the faculty. Tenure exists to protect academic freedom. I know there are those that don't understand what tenure protects, or who tell stories that confuse ineffective administration with tenure, but that's what it's there for and what it does in practice. Unions and tenure are completely different animals that can coexist or stand on their own.
More correctly, unions exist to protect themselves. Unions despise non-union workers in any field, including academia, and they're even not very supportive of faculty who belong to the bargaining unit but choose not to join the union. They often oppose flexibility in work arrangements because the more uniform they can make working conditions the more they can ensure that faculty interests align with union interests. Where they differ, union interests win.
You've always been a fan of the blanket statement, Marshy. Careful with those. What you've said is not necessarily true.
A long time ago, when I was unskilled blue-collar, I worked for a union shop. It was Big Brother. It coddled the incompetent. I also defended the weak. I landed right after the union sued our employer for forcing workers to finish their shifts off the clock if they didn't get their work done. Illegal and immoral. The union defended truck drivers who would be awakened in the middle of the night at their motels by shift managers who could not locate this or that on a palate. I don't know about you, but I don't want a driver hauling one of those big rigs through mountain passes who's been awakened at 2am after a hard day driving----yay union.
We've worked for both a non-union and a union school.
God Bless the union.
I might suggest watching fewer movies.
Quote from: tuxthepenguin on September 14, 2020, 08:34:59 AM
Quote from: Caracal on September 14, 2020, 08:24:30 AM
Maybe some places it works, but I know of places that do have strong unions and it is still a disaster.
Unions exist to protect the faculty. Tenure exists to protect academic freedom. I know there are those that don't understand what tenure protects, or who tell stories that confuse ineffective administration with tenure, but that's what it's there for and what it does in practice. Unions and tenure are completely different animals that can coexist or stand on their own.
If you think tenure protects academic freedom as a principle you are seriously mistaken. If you think it protects the application of that principle to a subset of educators because they are special people who get special privileges, you are accurate.
Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Durden
"On June 6, 2017, Durden appeared on Fox News in an interview with Tucker Carlson, discussing a Black Lives Matter chapter that held a Memorial Day event exclusively for black people. Durden defended the chapter's actions, saying "Boo-hoo-hoo... You white people are angry because you couldn't use your 'white privilege' card to get invited to the Black Lives Matter's all-black Memorial Day celebration." Carlson responded by calling Durden "hostile and separatist and crazy" and "demented".[11] Two days later, Durden was suspended from her position of adjunct professor at Essex County College in Newark. Two weeks later, she was fired.[11][12][13] Durden described the experience as being "publicly lynched".[11][13] College president Anthony Munroe said the firing was in response to concerns and fears expressed by students, faculty, and prospective students following Durden's remarks on television.[14]
A legal analysis by the campus free speech organization Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) said that the firing violated established First Amendment law for public employees, and rejected Munroe's claim that Durden's remarks made it impossible for her to do her job. FIRE stated that "if simply offending others and causing an 'outpouring' of criticism and consternation were sufficient to overcome a faculty member's First Amendment rights, freedom of expression on campus would be reduced to a nullity."[15
Of course, in response, an outcry of support for Prof. Durden's right to express herself without threatening anyone or causing any harm to her institution or falsely claiming to speak on its behalf came immediately from the college's tenured faculty...
not.In case anyone needs a refresher course on how adjunct faculty have the right to think, study, and teach, but are not eligible for tenure, (academic freedom protection) and never will be, no matter what their qualifications or job performance...https://www.essex.edu/employment-qualifications/
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 14, 2020, 09:24:10 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 14, 2020, 08:46:25 AM
Quote from: tuxthepenguin on September 14, 2020, 08:34:59 AM
Quote from: Caracal on September 14, 2020, 08:24:30 AM
Maybe some places it works, but I know of places that do have strong unions and it is still a disaster.
Unions exist to protect the faculty. Tenure exists to protect academic freedom. I know there are those that don't understand what tenure protects, or who tell stories that confuse ineffective administration with tenure, but that's what it's there for and what it does in practice. Unions and tenure are completely different animals that can coexist or stand on their own.
More correctly, unions exist to protect themselves. Unions despise non-union workers in any field, including academia, and they're even not very supportive of faculty who belong to the bargaining unit but choose not to join the union. They often oppose flexibility in work arrangements because the more uniform they can make working conditions the more they can ensure that faculty interests align with union interests. Where they differ, union interests win.
You've always been a fan of the blanket statement, Marshy. Careful with those. What you've said is not necessarily true.
A long time ago, when I was unskilled blue-collar, I worked for a union shop. It was Big Brother. It coddled the incompetent. I also defended the weak. I landed right after the union sued our employer for forcing workers to finish their shifts off the clock if they didn't get their work done. Illegal and immoral. The union defended truck drivers who would be awakened in the middle of the night at their motels by shift managers who could not locate this or that on a palate. I don't know about you, but I don't want a driver hauling one of those big rigs through mountain passes who's been awakened at 2am after a hard day driving----yay union.
We've worked for both a non-union and a union school.
God Bless the union.
I might suggest watching fewer movies.
For the record:
- Canada has a higher unionization rate than the U.S.
- Canada has stronger protections for unions than the U.S.
- I am represented by two unions; one for my "day job", and one for my "side gig".
I'm basing my comments on experience. (I can't think of any "union" movies I've watched, and I can't imagine staying awake through one.)
Have unions done good things? Yes.
Are unions a good thing? Especially in un- or low-skilled labour situations, in industries with competition, yes.
In the public sector, and in professional situations, where there are real (in the public sector) or virtual (in professional settings) monopolies
and where unions are highly protected, then they have an inordinate amount of power, since during a strike there is no other option for the services provided for their members. (Where real competition exists, an organization in regular conflict with its workers is going to lose market share because it will be unreliable. The organization with productive, satisfied workers will have a huge competitive advantage, whether that is because of a union or not.)
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 14, 2020, 10:13:17 AM
I'm basing my comments on experience. (I can't think of any "union" movies I've watched, and I can't imagine staying awake through one.)
Have unions done good things? Yes.
Are unions a good thing? Especially in un- or low-skilled labour situations, in industries with competition, yes.
In the public sector, and in professional situations, where there are real (in the public sector) or virtual (in professional settings) monopolies and where unions are highly protected, then they have an inordinate amount of power, since during a strike there is no other option for the services provided for their members. (Where real competition exists, an organization in regular conflict with its workers is going to lose market share because it will be unreliable. The organization with productive, satisfied workers will have a huge competitive advantage, whether that is because of a union or not.)
Tenure track unions are partly there to protect members from each other. Because they have tenure, some of them, when they get enough of a gang together, may feel they can afford to get vengeful, aggressive. Because they have academic freedom, some of them will oppose each other on educational or political things and it all gets personal. Because they get to be (or have to be, as you prefer) rotating chairs...you know. Some of the rules they live by seem to be in a state of flux or open to interpretation. And they're rules with consequences.