Update: It would appear that there are “mixed feelings” amongst the leadership of Faculty Senate about 0/0/0% to say the least. This morning, I (along with all other faculty) received this email from Faculty Senate President Matt Evett:
As you are probably aware, last week the EMU Board of Regents approved a budget for next year that calls for a 0% increase in tuition, fees, room and board. This is excellent news for Eastern, as well as for the families of Southeastern Michigan. It will make Eastern even more affordable and hopefully bring more students into our classrooms. I know that we faculty are sometimes cynical about applications of the phrase “education first”, but this is one we can be proud of.
Go figure…. Anyway, here’s the rest of the post as it was before:
Along with all the other faculty, I received an email today from Mahmud Rahman, who is the vice president of the EMU Faculty Senate, and it isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of the recently announced freeze on tuition and fees next year. I don’t disagree with what Rahman is saying, but I am also not quite sure this is the strategy faculty want to take. It seems to me that we really ought to be a little more cautiously optimistic about all this.
Which brings me also to the predictions of a faculty strike. I learned my lesson a long LONG time ago not to make predictions one way or another about that (mainly because I am, as more than one of my colleagues has pointed out to me, always wrong about such things). But I will say this:
- A strike is in no one’s interests for fall 2010. It’ll make the faculty look greedy (even though I don’t think we are and even though I think we do deserve modestly more money and a hold on benefit costs), and it’ll take all the wind out the promotion for a freeze on tuition and fees. Lose-lose. Actually, it’s probably a bigger loss for the faculty as it stands now because if it turns out we negotiate a contract that the administration claims costs too much and forces them to raise tuition and fees after all, faculty will not look good. And it won’t matter what the “truth” of the matter is, either.
- It occurs to me that the EMU-AAUP and the Faculty Senate needs to be a little smarter about this stuff. For example, how about instead of complaining about the problems of this freeze, why don’t we ask the administration to pledge a freeze on rising costs associated with health insurance plans, a freeze on dropping the number of faculty, etc.?
Okay, the letter from Prof. Rahman after the continued:
The approved 2010-11 EMU budget, and the zero tuition increases, however, was neither discussed nor received input from the University Budget Council, where one third of the members are faculty representatives, prior to presenting it to the Board of Regents. Obviously, we remain puzzled at our exclusion from the input this year. The purpose of this memo is to provide the left out faculty voice to ensure that the resources needed for supporting the academic division and the delivery of the expected enrollment growth are provided. Senate and UBC Faculty representatives hope that our students will not be denied a continuation of our excellence in their education as a result of associated budgetary decisions.
It is only prudent that we be cautious in crafting our budget. Ideally, budgets should not encourage a trade off between the long-term viability of academic mission to a short term exigency. A budget is a spending decision that reflects priorities. BOR has set those priorities for the 2010-11 with a $280.9 million budget for EMU. On the revenue side, sourcing that budget realistically, determines whether the budget can actually deliver what it promises to. The two of our largest revenue sources—state appropriations of $75.8 million ($2.4 million cut) and tuition (forecasted to be $198.6 million with 0-0-0 increases) are estimated. The only uncertainty is in realizing the expected 3.4% growth in enrollment.
In an inflationary environment, one has to spend more in order to just stay even. The academic division, however, will now be required to deliver a better curriculum (one that is focused, relevant, timely and not outsmarted by our competition) and also more credit hours. So, with both rising inflation, and increased credit hours, even more resources are needed for the academic division. Delivering increased credit hours also requires retention and recruitment of qualified faculty in a highly competitive employment market. Responses to Provost Kay’s budget forum recognized the urgency of securing needed instructional equipments and consumables. Not providing adequate funding to build up faculty resources risks accreditation, and delivery of the increased credit hours. As we heard during the budget forums, the fantastic effort by our administrative colleagues in the academic division has paid rich dividends in increased enrollments. So, in meeting the budgetary need, starving academic division is an unwise choice, akin to the proverbial story about killing the goose to get the golden egg in a hurry. In short, the promise of zero tuition increase is not to be confused with condoning inadequate resources for the academic division.
The tuition freeze alone, as President Martin has said, is a risk to our bottom line and to our credit rating crucial during the declining state support. Securing funding from other sources (grants, donations, income from investments, etc..) to meet the increasing budgetary need, is thus more important than ever before. The recent initiatives like the $50 million “Invest, Inspire” fund raising are much appreciated, and should be prosecuted vigorously.
Your Faculty Senators and Budget Council Representatives always appreciate hearing from you.
Best regards,
Mahmud
I just wanted to make a quick comment Sitedad. While Professor Rahman is a faculty member and a member of the AAUP, he does not represent the AAUP. In fact, Susan Moeller, earlier this week, sent out an email to the entire faculty applauding the 0-0-0 announcement by the administration. The text of that email is below:
Dear EMU Faculty:
Yesterday at the Board of Regents meeting, Eastern Michigan University announced that there will be a ZERO percent increase in tuition, fees, and room and board for the 2010-2011 academic year.
We are happy that after years of tuition increases, our students will not have to pay yet another increase. We applaud EMU for embracing the true academic mission of higher education and letting the community and our students know that Eastern Michigan University’s public relation message is not just about empty promises; EMU is putting “Education First.”
In Solidarity,
Susan Moeller
EMU-AAUP President
Observer, that’s true, and I’m glad that you posted Susan Moeller’s letter, too. But I do think that Rahman represents the point of view of at least some on the Faculty Senate, which is also an important representation of faculty on campus.
The President of the Faculty Senate sent out the following email this morning:
Dear Colleagues,
As you are probably aware, last week the EMU Board of Regents approved
a budget for next year that calls for a 0% increase in tuition, fees,
room and board. This is excellent news for Eastern, as well as for the
families of Southeastern Michigan. It will make Eastern even more
affordable and hopefully bring more students into our classrooms. I know
that we faculty are sometimes cynical about applications of the phrase
“education first”, but this is one we can be proud of.
Yours, Matt
Perhaps the sentiment of Professor Rahman’s email is simply his own.
As a member of the Faculty Senate, I would like to point out that the matter of zero tuition increases has not been discussed on the floor of the Senate. In fact, the Senate has not met since the announcement. I am not a member of the Executive Board, so I don’t know what has been discussed there, or whether they have met. It is the policy of the Faculty Senate, when it wishes to speak on a matter of concern to EMU faculty, to introduce and vote on a written resolution which then becomes a matter of record. This has not happened.
Elaine,
No the Faculty Senate Executive Board has not meet since the BOR meeting last Tuesday.
Nor were members of the Senate, or the faculty members on the University Budget Council, informed prior to last week’s zero increase action by the Board that the idea was being considered.
Professor Rahman has been charged by the Senate with presenting timely information to the faculty on budgetary matters, as they unfold, and I assume that his email is an effort to do just that.
I strongly support the zero increase decision, and all or nearly all the faculty members I’ve talked about it with also strongly support it. Indeed, a year ago, several faculty colleagues of mine who also serve on the University Budget Council, along with several administrators and the student government leaders who served then on Budget Council, proposed a motion that would have recommended that the university adopt a zero increase for the 2009-10 academic year. It failed to pass, and would have been only advisory; instead, a motion advocating as “close to a zero increase as possible was passed.
I’ve advocated a zero increase for years, as have other faculty critics of EMU’s record of increasing student costs to attend EMU. I recall a lengthy chat with then president John Fallon in 2006 over why the increase for that year was so high (11%, if I recall correctly), and he shamefully told us – a group of students and faculty standing in PrayHarrold — that “we had to hike the tutition, we had no choice!” This was of course before Fallon’s total self destruction, but after his inability to act as a leader was clear to all on campus except the automatons of EMU bureaucrats. Those people told Fallon what to do, and that there was no choice, and he believed them. Disaster was the result.
The EMU budget making process has never been professionally handled with solidly determined institutional priorities being determinative. Instead, it’s been in the hands of officials with few connections to the university and little grasp of higher education. But we are now moving toward a professional, ethical budget, and I commend the decision makers for this Zero increase budget. I applaud it as one of the most notable achievements of the still very new Martin Administration! I also commend the university’s communications officials for explaining the purpose of the no increase so well. (Gosh, isn’t it nice to have university communications staff who can write well? Such a novelty! )
In truth, it is faculty leaders, student activists, and other members of EMU’s Loyal Opposition are deserving of the true credit for the idea of a Zero increase. In last year’s discussions of the idea of a zero increase, in the University Budget Council, it was the Loyal Opposition who presented the idea. At the time, it was rejected as impossible; a year later, it’s policy.
That’s progress! Education First means affordable, accessible, quality education!
The question now is how the zero increase budget will be reconciled with expenditures. Will we cut academics? We will cut administrative waste? Will we eliminate some of the positions held by the deadweight of automatons? Or will we make no strategic budget choices and instead just count on rising enrollments to make everything float? I take Professor of Finance Mahmud Rahmad’s email to be just an effort to raise these questions. He does not oppose the zero increase, though he wants its implications to be openly discussed.
And as my department’s rep to the Faculty Senate, I am absolutely confident that the Senate as a whole will also embrace this zero increase. Still, as faculty reps, we’d be remiss if we didn’t ask questions about all that results from the decision. For instance: The zero increase is based on a certain projected rise in enrollments for Fall 2010. Where are the classrooms to be found, with PH and MJ closed? What about the faculty to teach the larger number of students? Such issues haven’t yet been addressed seriously, and they need to be.
Education First! A good slogan, if we have the institutional will to make it real. Zero increase is a good step, a very good step; it is not a sufficient step to make Education First real.
The e-mail I sent to the faculty states my opinion, and mine alone. As Elaine pointed out, neither the Faculty Senate Executive Board nor the Faculty Senate have formally met to discuss the issue. That is why I did not mention the Faculty Senate in my letter. As I do with any letter I might send to the entire faculty, I first circulated it among the Executive Board, in case I’ve misunderstood or misrepresented something.
Some of the confusion about my e-mail (and Mahmud’s) results from the way the Senate operates. We are a deliberative organization. Normally, I e-mail the faculty with purely factual information: the Senate did this or that, or the Senate needs to appoint members to Committee X. The question, then, is how should the Senate (including its officers) behave when there is “important breaking news”? Do we want the Senate to be a more agile organization?
I have exchanged e-mails with many faculty about the 0-0-0 budget. Mark’s note captures most of what they have said. We will certainly be discussing the ramifications of the budget, as well as the process by which the budget was announced at the next Executive Board and Senate meetings. We will also discuss the “agility of the Senate”. I have no doubt this will lead to a resolution or two. I welcome your input into this process; please feel free to e-mail me, or post here.
Thanks, Mark, for reminding me of Mahmud’s role re informing the faculty about budgetary matters. Now his email makes perfect sense.
Elaine