Creative cost cutting ideas

[clean]

Put admincritters back in the classroom and cut adjunct costs, delay hirings, and maybe increase revenue!!.

This was one 'solution' several years ago. Im not sure that it really cut the costs, but it made the admincritters look more like they were 'chipping in' (as usually 1/2 of their salary is from the 'academic' part of the budget and only 1/2 is administrative... make them EARN the part of their salary that comes from the Academic Budget!!  (This also allowed the university to delay hiring for a year or so).

The biggest problem with budget cutting in an academic institution is that the major part of the budget (salaries, for instance) are fixed!  You can cut the paper budget to zero, but the paper budget is a really small expense overall!  When the budget people here were talking to faculty about the places to cut and we looked at the non-fixed/contracted parts of the budget, a 10% cut was actually a 57% cut of the non-contracted part of the college budget.  (but the cut was called for in the Spring, so we had already spent a good chunk of the budget earlier in the year to buy things like 'paper', so it REALLY fell on the remaining part of the budget items.

[Caracal]

The biggest problem with budget cutting in an academic institution is that the major part of the budget (salaries, for instance) are fixed!  You can cut the paper budget to zero, but the paper budget is a really small expense overall!  When the budget people here were talking to faculty about the places to cut and we looked at the non-fixed/contracted parts of the budget, a 10% cut was actually a 57% cut of the non-contracted part of the college budget.  (but the cut was called for in the Spring, so we had already spent a good chunk of the budget earlier in the year to buy things like 'paper', so it REALLY fell on the remaining part of the budget items.

Right, as a result its very hard for them to be well thought out. My institution generally just cuts adjunct budgets, because they can, but it isn't like that comes with a plan. Hiring more adjuncts was the cheaper option in the first place.

[fishbrains]

My CC is talking about offering a technology stipend to full-time instructors who don't really want an office computer and prefer mobile devices. No office computers reduces the need for IT support, computer support, softward support, etc.--or at least that's what we are told. This might also play into how the classrooms are configured for devices.

As clean noted, most of these costs are pretty fixed on the academic side, unless you want to increase class loads or otherwise do more work for the same/less pay--which faculty would be insane to recommend.

[marshwiggle]

My CC is talking about offering a technology stipend to full-time instructors who don't really want an office computer and prefer mobile devices. No office computers reduces the need for IT support, computer support, softward support, etc.--or at least that's what we are told. This might also play into how the classrooms are configured for devices.

We've been going in the opposite direction  here as IT tries to more completely control the configuration of all devices, including office computers, so faculty and staff don't have admin passwords to their own machines! In principle this is for security reasons, but it runs into big problems with research and teaching, since people need to use specific software which IT can't support, but which staff and faculty won't have the access to support themselves.

[fishbrains]

My CC is talking about offering a technology stipend to full-time instructors who don't really want an office computer and prefer mobile devices. No office computers reduces the need for IT support, computer support, softward support, etc.--or at least that's what we are told. This might also play into how the classrooms are configured for devices.

We've been going in the opposite direction  here as IT tries to more completely control the configuration of all devices, including office computers, so faculty and staff don't have admin passwords to their own machines! In principle this is for security reasons, but it runs into big problems with research and teaching, since people need to use specific software which IT can't support, but which staff and faculty won't have the access to support themselves.

Yes, I'm not sure it's going to be more than mere discussion, but I thought I would throw it out to the OP.

[secundem_artem]

I want to do my part, so I'm not going to use colons anymore, only semi-colons at half the cost. 

[pepsi_alum]

At my last place, the way we filled the budget gap without layoffs included:

1) Increasing class sizes, especially at the 100 and 200 level.

2) Slashing the budget for reader-graders in classes of less than 100 students;

3) Cutting the number of course releases available to faculty for service/administrative work. This was the most controversial and obviously unpopular, but I understand why it was done. There were a few senior people who had managed to "work the system" to get extra course releases beyond what was intended.


I'm not a huge fan of severely curtailing printing. One of my previous places did it (to the extent that faculty had to pay to print midterm and final exams), and it ended up becoming a major source of bad morale that eventually was overturned. I can understand having a monthly quota that faculty shouldn't exceed, but I'd say to be sure it's a realistic number.

[Aster]

My CC is talking about offering a technology stipend to full-time instructors who don't really want an office computer and prefer mobile devices. No office computers reduces the need for IT support, computer support, softward support, etc.--or at least that's what we are told. This might also play into how the classrooms are configured for devices.

This is the same kind of short-sighted logic failure as happens with labor unions and any other form of collective organizing (e.g. pension plans).

The more individuals that opt-out, the fewer options remain for everyone who remains (opts-in). The risk of actually losing viability for the opt-in groups can even occur.

A community college choosing to reduce/decline technology support has most definitely lost its way. Technology in instruction is the *cornerstone* for the 21st century community college model.

[dr_codex]

When this comes up on our campus, the arguments from the CFO & Co. run as follows:

1. We are in the red.
2. Almost all (c. 87%) of our operating budget is tied up in salaries. (Others upthread have noted this.)
3. Cuts need to be made.

Two things are routinely omitted from this presentation. A) Lots of what we do is not included in that operating budget. Many things are paid for by student fees (athletics, technology, food services, and health services, to name some of the big ones.) A total overview of our budget would indicate much more spent on non-salary things. And, B) "Salaries" =/+ "Instructional Salaries".

It is very difficult to break out instructional costs in isolation. You can do it, to a rough approximation, for something like online summer teaching when all instructors are paid the same stipend, but even then you're going to need to have a "cost of business" for marketing/staffing/support etc.

For all those reasons, and more, any real budget crisis needs to be solved by looking at the entire institution.

We had a past President (during the market collapse around 2008), who constantly mentioned that he was saving $40,000/year by replacing paper towel dispensers with air dryers. You can laugh, but some shrewd purchases of fuel oil from brokers at low prices saved hundreds of thousands of dollars. We could take advantage of some branding initiatives and have equivalent amounts coming in. "Paperless" hasn't worked out as we'd hoped, but it has cut down on some of the unnecessary duplication of copies. And our newest IT Director, appalled at our "use it until it dies" protocol, has instituted a 5-year overhaul cycle; among other things, this makes budgeting more predictable, and replacement scheduling rational.

If you insist that I play the "Instructional Expenses Shredder Game", I'll point out that we've done what others have, including:
* Imposing and enforcing enrollment minimums in all courses, excluding only those critical to programs and/or graduating students;
* Requiring minimum student loads for every faculty member; you can have one smaller course, say, but you'll need to make up the numbers elsewhere;
* Cutting adjunct sections when numbers decline (I know, I know...);
* Eliminating course releases, almost across the board, for service and for research;
* Freezing sabbaticals;
* Consolidating departments;
* Cutting library database subscriptions;
* Not replacing student support positions, when vacant
* Paying for lots of extra service teaching, at adjunct rates

What has all of this saved? Not much. The ax falls on adjunct faculty, almost entirely, which is the cheapest labor around. Class sizes are larger, research is curtailed, and overall teaching loads are heavier.

The last time we had a real budget crisis, an existential one, we did what one does: hire a hatchet-person as CFO and make across the board layoffs of faculty, staff, and administration. Before my time, but the memories linger. Nobody is proposing that, I'm guessing, in part because your administration doesn't want to share the pain, and/or open up the books that would be required as part of the process. The U of Tulsa letter is illustrative.

Good luck,
dc

[AJ_Katz]

Early retirement incentive.

[downer]

How about single payer health care for the state or the nation, and employers having no role in covering health care insurance costs? Much more efficient.

[pedanticromantic]

I would SO be willing to take early retirement if that were made an incentive and I was eligible.
I asked our own university about cost-saving measures and was basically told that short of voluntarily reducing my salary, the things I suggested would save little money (get rid of land line phones, add an extra 2 years to computer replacement for all faculty who don't work in areas that require powerful computers, etc. These things all come in at the tens of thousands, not the millions that the budget needs to shave.
Frankly, it's administrators who are eating up ever more chunks of university salaries, not faculty.
Tell your admins: cost cutting begins at home.  Most faculty work unpaid overtime every single week, but I've never seen a staff member not jump ship at 5pm. 

[Dismal]

We advertised to staff that they could work 32 hours instead of 40 hours a week and get 80% of their pay plus maintain their health and pension benefits and a few took  the offer.  I think it was intended to be temporary and it did save a few staff bucks.

I had a colleague who didn't have a grant but still wanted to reduce her teaching load by buying out a class. We charge faculty who have grants 1/8 of their salary to buy out a class and so she chose to do this by reducing her own salary.  She did this for a few years.

There might be people who would do these things in order to have a better work-life balance.  Probably requires a well-paid spouse.

[pedanticromantic]

We advertised to staff that they could work 32 hours instead of 40 hours a week and get 80% of their pay plus maintain their health and pension benefits and a few took  the offer.  I think it was intended to be temporary and it did save a few staff bucks.

I had a colleague who didn't have a grant but still wanted to reduce her teaching load by buying out a class. We charge faculty who have grants 1/8 of their salary to buy out a class and so she chose to do this by reducing her own salary.  She did this for a few years.

There might be people who would do these things in order to have a better work-life balance.  Probably requires a well-paid spouse.

I love this idea and would definitely buy out some of my teaching, but at 1/8 of my salary that's about 3x what we pay sessionals, so it would have to be a better deal than that.