Delta Cost Project

[apophenia]

Just saw this posted recently by the faculty of the University of Tulsa:

https://workingpeopleleadtulsa.org/open-email-to-the-entire-faculty-of-the-university-of-tulsa/

What do people think? Could this be an effective strategy? I think the data could be presented in a punchier format, and I'd like to see this spun off into an appeal to the students specifically, but it seems like a good start to me!

[mamselle]

I thought this was about an airlines reducing its fares.

I'm always in favor of that.

M.

[polly_mer]

Just saw this posted recently by the faculty of the University of Tulsa:

https://workingpeopleleadtulsa.org/open-email-to-the-entire-faculty-of-the-university-of-tulsa/

What do people think? Could this be an effective strategy? I think the data could be presented in a punchier format, and I'd like to see this spun off into an appeal to the students specifically, but it seems like a good start to me!

1) What's the call to action that will matter to people who make decisions?

2) Everything is reported by percentages.  Certain administrative costs don't scale with student enrollment.  That's one explanation for why Super Dinky's administrative costs were a huge percentage of the budget.  There was no cost cutting measure comparable to eliminating academic programs and using the full-time faculty to cover bigger gen ed courses because that's where the flexibility in costs is.

[tuxthepenguin]

Certain administrative costs don't scale with student enrollment.  That's one explanation for why Super Dinky's administrative costs were a huge percentage of the budget.

That's important for very small schools (a few hundred or less) but Tulsa has somewhere around 5000 students (too lazy to look up the actual number) and has for a long time. Anyway, I think the point is the trend there vs the trend at other schools.

There was no cost cutting measure comparable to eliminating academic programs and using the full-time faculty to cover bigger gen ed courses because that's where the flexibility in costs is.

Those aren't cost cutting measures, they're changes in what the school is selling to students. Ford could "cut costs" by selling bicycles instead of cars, but they're not going to be able to charge the same price.

[polly_mer]

Certain administrative costs don't scale with student enrollment.  That's one explanation for why Super Dinky's administrative costs were a huge percentage of the budget.

That's important for very small schools (a few hundred or less) but Tulsa has somewhere around 5000 students (too lazy to look up the actual number) and has for a long time. Anyway, I think the point is the trend there vs the trend at other schools.

Tulsa has an undergraduate enrollment of 3300 and a graduate enrollment of about 1200.  3300 undergrads isn't a tiny college, but it's nowhere near the average university size for a research-active university that also has undergraduate enrollment.  Having a quarter of the student enrollment be graduate students (i.e., much less teaching and much more research for the faculty), then that's going to affect the relative teaching/other budget mix.

Undergraduate enrollment can't be the primary driver for the staffing plan in that situation.

There was no cost cutting measure comparable to eliminating academic programs and using the full-time faculty to cover bigger gen ed courses because that's where the flexibility in costs is.

Those aren't cost cutting measures, they're changes in what the school is selling to students. Ford could "cut costs" by selling bicycles instead of cars, but they're not going to be able to charge the same price.

https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/education/university-of-tulsa-to-cut-degree-programs-reorganize-into-professional/article_6c6489e7-0de7-5433-a6b8-a88ccfb8c9d9.html

Tulsa was offering 192 undergraduate programs for those 3300 students.  Distributed evenly, that's 17 students per program.  That's unsustainable any way one slices it.  Eliminating programs that have little to no enrollment and faculty members who are leaving is a smart way to cut costs while focusing on the evident market demand. 

Ford did indeed recently announce that they are cutting most of their North American car lines in favor of specializing in the vehicles that are selling: "The automaker, like others, is having to choose where to put its resources and is using more profitable vehicles — pickups and SUVs — to pay for research into a future geared toward new forms of mobility." (https://www.chicagotribune.com/autos/sc-auto-cover-0503-ford-gm-cars-20180427-story.html)