Last updated on 05/25/2016
Wednesday May 25 at 11:00 AM in the Johnson Hall Conference room.
Brad Shelton and Jamie Moffitt will be in attendance to talk about the budget and the budget (re)alignment process.
The agenda is:
1) State of the UO budget (15 minutes)
2) Moving forward with budget processes (45 minutes)
a. The budget plan
b. The budget process
c. The role of the SBC
d. Identifying priority areas and measuring quality/impact
e. How do decisions get made
I’d actually asked the committee to meet about a different topic – budget realignment:
There’s an interesting article about realignment at Berkeley, here: http://www.dailycal.org/2016/04/13/uc-berkeley-faculty-hold-special-meeting-campus-deficit-academic-realignment/
I’d like to propose that the SBC ask the administration for the spending cut proposals that have been prepared by the various academic and administrative units, and meet to discuss these.
Instead we’re getting the generic Brad and Jamie show.
Notes:
Brad Shelton is starting the process of setting up committees to get faculty input into budget priorities and reallocation, including hiring of faculty.
The administration set up the Budget Advisory Group a few years ago to do some of this, but it’s not part of the Senate – all members are picked by the administration.
Similarly with the committee Brad has set up to develop a new budget model – no Senate input into who is on it.
Dreiling asks what the role of the SBC will be. Shelton says that he gets some BAG members from the SBC.
Chalmers asks Brad about Academic Analytics. (We spend $100K on this, CAS refuses to even use it.) Coltrane says he’s seen the problems raised by Linguistics, and that he is conducting a study and might cancel the contract. Or not.
My 2c after the meeting:
The change in state appropriations since 2008 is the single biggest problem with the budget. That is not news, but I was stunned by how much the distribution of state funds, in-state tuition, and out-of-state tuition has shifted in such a short period of time. It was about 1/3 apiece, and now it’s mostly out-of-state.
I think the best investment we can make right now is an apartment in Salem where Schill and members of the Board can stay while they lobby as many members of the legislature as possible.
Shelton’s proposal was to reallocate by attrition, e.g., when a faculty member from Dept X retires or leaves, the BAG will strategically consider whether to renew it or redeploy those funds to Dept Y or another cost (within or between colleges). This is a good way to realign money with our priorities, but it is not sufficient in its own. For example, we don’t want to be in a position where cutting faculty lines is the only way to significantly increase the budget for the graduate school or graduate students in general. In addition to the “reallocate by attrition” mechanism, there needs to be a more comprehensive process where all spending that the provost can touch is fair game for reallocation.
Boy do I have a lot of comments here but no will read a lengthy list so here is the short and direct version.
1. The Brad and Jamie show is well known – it never evolves and the slides rarely change. A circlejerk in my view …
2. Our response to the aforementioned 2008 budget shift was to become a community college in terms of how we handle student instruction – the unpopular actions of Marcus recently are a direct result of this singular and spectacularly stupid Bean decision.
3. Re-allocation by attrition is the “polite” manner in which to do this but it takes much too long to produce any kind of catalytic change.
4. I am not sure anyone in the UO admin understand the words “catalytic change” and I know a few departments that are allergic to that concept.
All true, and nothing new. Yet administrative bloat continues. I know the CAS office has been at least temporarily reduced, tho it too expanded very rapidly under SC and AM, but everywhere one looks yet another ‘associate’ [fill in the blank…e.g., dean, provost, vp, etc.] has been added, and of course they need staff. At the same time: departments cannot replace faculty who are leaving or meet their instructional obligations. This process reminds me to how dangerous bloated bureaucracies can be in destroying functional institutions. Examples come to mind…alas all to easily. I do hope the new senate leadership can devote some time and energy to this problem. UOM has promised to do so, but so far to no effect.