Category Archives: The Market Crash of 2008

“At Forum on the Future, Leaders Dissect What Ails Higher Education Today”

Posted on December 12, 2011 by | Leave a comment

One of the things that I notice about the end of the fall semester is that everyone seems pretty tense and often a little depressed, I suppose because of the stress and pressures of ending the term well combined with stress and pressures of the holidaze, too. So in that sense, it doesn’t surprise me that a bunch of education wonks are dwelling on the negative, according to this CHE piece,  ”At Forum on the Future, Leaders Dissect What Ails Higher Education Today.”

There are two (related, I suppose) issues that came up here that I do think that many of us faculty-types are not of aware of as we should be:  the cost of tuition and the general “economic crisis” that is going on in the world.  Higher Ed needs to respond.  And (to quote):

And James J. Duderstadt, a former president of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, suggested that many in academe may not see a need to do things differently. In a time of cultural and economic turmoil, universities may be “out to sea as a tsunami of change comes through, destroying everything on land.”

The upheaval is felt on campus, he said, as merely “a few ripples.”

I see Duderstadt’s point.  Frankly, I have colleagues who lament a work schedule that requires them (because of meetings and such) to be on campus four days a week, and at the same time, I just heard a story on “Morning Edition” just now about the ridiculously high percentage of Americans who can’t find anything but part-time work.  There’s a disconnect there, right?

But like I said, everyone is a little stressed out….

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Posted in Administrator Life, Faculty Life, In the media..., Student Life, The Market Crash of 2008

“Universities on the brink”

Posted on February 4, 2011 by | 19 Comments

Via one of my blog feeds this morning comes a link to this article in Forbes by Louis E. Lataif, who used to be a dean at Boston University’s School of Management, “Universities On The Brink.” Here are the opening paragraphs:

Higher education in America, historically the envy of the world, is rapidly growing out of reach. For the past quarter-century, the cost of higher education has grown 440%, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Education, nearly four times the rate of inflation and double the rate of health care cost increases. The cost increases have occurred at both public and private colleges.

Like many situations too good to be true–like the dot-com boom, the Enron bubble, the housing boom or the health care cost explosion–the ever-increasing cost of university education is not sustainable.

Just 10 years ago the cost of a four-year public college education amounted to 18% of the annual income of middle-income families. Ten years later, it amounted to 25% of that family’s average annual income. The cost of attending a private university is about double the cost of public universities. Think of higher education as the proverbial frog in boiling water. It feels very warm and comfy but soon will be cooked.

The idea that higher education is a “bubble market” is interesting, though I don’t know it is the same kind of commodity or market as real estate or gold or tulips or whatever.  To me, higher education is more like the professional service sector, more akin to the costs of health care perhaps.

In any event, I don’t really see how a place like EMU can cut costs a whole lot more, and even though it costs too much money to go to college, more and more people are making that choice all the time.

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Posted in Academics, Budgets, In the media..., Student Life, The Market Crash of 2008

“Even in a Recovery, Some Jobs Won’t Return”

Posted on January 12, 2010 by | Leave a comment

This is kind of a tangent, but EMU is mentioned in this Wall Street Journal article, “Even in Recovery, Some Jobs Won’t Return.” The EMU connection is a sidebar/blurb about a student, 53 year old Jeff Walker of Brighton, “a former auto industry executive, doesn’t mind being among the oldest students at Eastern Michigan University. ‘I’m happier than just being unemployed and looking for a job,’ he says.”  The basic theme of the article is a lot of parts of the economy that are suffering the most are just never going to make a come-back.  Making it all the more challenging is, according to the economists cited here, it’s awfully hard to predict what jobs are going to come back.

It seems to me that this has been Michigan’s problem for a long time and it’s a potential problem for EMU.  Michigan’s ups and downs have been tied too much to the auto industry, and even though it does look like the things are looking better for at least Ford and GM, I don’t think the state powers-that-be ought to give up on diversifying the economy.  More locally, I think EMU needs to continue to diversify its “business” and rely less on teacher training.

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Posted in In the media..., Student Life, The Market Crash of 2008

No really– there’s a $5.8 million surplus

Posted on November 10, 2009 by | 4 Comments

I received an email the other day from EMU-AAUP President Susan Moeller in response to this post from late October, “Three of the many reasons why money confuses me.” Susan wrote:

I have heard from some faculty that on EMUTalk some people are saying my information is incorrect on the 5.8 million dollar surplus or that the surplus is due to accounting changes or that I am spinning the numbers – so I thought I would send you the document that the members of the Budget Council received from John Lumm at our last meeting.

You will see that it is a very simple schedule that shows exactly what I told the faculty. Just thought you might like to see it. It is too bad that people always assume the AAUP is spinning instead of reporting the facts. The academic administrators at the meeting – mostly department heads argued for the funds to be returned to the departments as they are still suffering from the 4 million cuts from a few years ago. Hope this clarifies the situation for you at least.

And she does include an Excel spread sheet that spells out the budget for the institution. I was going to include a copy of it here, but it’s kind of a pain to format that and really, it seems to me that it comes down to one very simple thing: enrollment is up, so instead of bringing in $159.8 million (as budgeted), the full year forecast in tuition is $166.5 million, or $6.7 million more than expected. A bit of that gets eaten up by other over-runs, but this leaves EMU $5.8 million in the black, and that is based not on EMU-AAUP numbers but on the EMU administrator’s numbers.

Now, I suspect that the administration will still argue that the sky is falling, especially once we get into EMU-AAUP contract negotiations, and they may have a point. It would be prudent to assume that the state is going to cut its appropriation next year, and it might be a significant cut, depending on which doomsday scenario you listen to.

As to what to do with the surplus, I guess it kind of depends on what is possible. If the budgeting/accounting rules are such that we can’t carry it over to the next fiscal year, then it makes more than good sense to distribute much of this money back to departments in an effort to backfill some of the previous cuts. That would seem to me to be the best way to help students. On the other hand, if this is a surplus that can be carried over, then it might make some good sense to use this surplus to brace for next year’s anticipated cuts.

Regardless of what happens with the surplus though, I think Susan’s point is a good one: the surplus isn’t a union spin.

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Posted in Administrator Life, Budgets, EMU-AAUP, The Market Crash of 2008

Three of the many reasons why money confuses me

Posted on October 30, 2009 by | 7 Comments

Earlier this week, EMU-AAUP President Susan Moeller sent around an email that said, basically, that EMU is currently running a $5.8 million surplus. “Given that our academic departments are suffering from a terrible lack of funding lets hope that the EMU administration uses some of this surplus,” Moeller writes, “to remedy the underfunding SOON.”

Earlier today, I was talking with a suit-type who I trust who basically said that what Moeller was saying wasn’t completely true because a) a lot of this “surplus” is really about about accounting changes, b) a lot of it is based on federal stimulus money that we all know is going to go away, and c) everyone is pretty sure we’re going to get cut big-time from the state next year.

And just now, a friend/colleague of mine who teaches at Michigan State posted something kind of alarming: “Possible MSU cuts: 30 programs, 2 departments, 600 jobs.”

So, what’s the deal here? Who is spinning the numbers at EMU, Moeller or the administration? How is it possible that EMU’s overall financial picture seems rosier than MSU’s? Anybody know anything?

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Posted in Administrator Life, Budgets, Michigan State U, The Market Crash of 2008

President Martin to host budget forums

Posted on July 24, 2009 by | Leave a comment

This just in from Edward Mullens/the EMU PR folks:

EMU President Susan Martin and Interim Chief Financial Officer John Lumm will host two open campus forums to discuss the 2009-2010 operating and capital budget recently adopted by the Board of Regents. Both forums will be in room 310B of the Student Center. The first forum will be Wednesday, July 29 from 11 a.m. to noon; the second will be Thursday, Aug. 6 from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Following the Aug. 6 forum, join colleagues for Lunch by the Lake on the Student Center patio, hosted by President Martin. Cost for lunch is $3 per person.

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Posted in Administrator Life, Budgets, The Market Crash of 2008

You think we’ve got at tough at EMU? At least we’re not Harvard

Posted on July 24, 2009 by | 1 Comment

I’ve only had the chance to read the part 1 of this 6 screen/page article, but “Hard Times at Harvard” in the August Vanity Fair magazine is pretty interesting reading. Here’s the teaser paragraph at the top:

Only a year ago, Harvard had a $36.9 billion endowment, the largest in academia. Now that endowment has imploded, and the university faces the worst financial crisis in its 373-year history. Could the same lethal mix of uncurbed expansion, colossal debt, arrogance, and mismanagement that ravaged Wall Street bring down America’s most famous university? And how much of the turmoil is the fault of former Harvard president Larry Summers, now a top economic adviser to President Obama? As students demonstrate, administrators impose Draconian cuts, and construction is halted on an over-ambitious $1.2 billion science complex, the author follows the finger-pointing.

Some of the cost cuts are silly; for example, they no longer serve free coffee and they reduced the free shuttle bus service from running every 10 minutes to every 20. Some of the other problems are pretty dramatic, like a $220 million deficit in the Arts and Sciences college, and a $1.2 billion science complex project that has been put “on hold.”

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Posted in Academics, Administrator Life, Budgets, In the media..., The Market Crash of 2008

Obama administration coming to campus to talk about the collapsing auto industry– but not to the public!?

Posted on June 1, 2009 by | Leave a comment

From the Freep.com come news of an event that might be kind of interesting to folks in the area/on campus tomorrow: “Two from Obama’s team to be in southeast Michigan on Tuesday.” Here’s the whole article:

President Barack Obama’s labor secretary and director of recovery for auto communities will head to Romulus and Yspilanti on Tuesday – a day after General Motors filed for reorganization in bankruptcy court in New York.

At 10 a.m., Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Ed Montgomery, the Obama administration’s point person for linking hard-hit auto communities with federal resources, will go to GM’s Romulus Engine plant, meeting with Gov. Jennifer Granholm, U.S. Rep. John Dingell of Dearborn, and management and union leadership at the plant.

At 11:30 a.m., they will hold a worker roundtable at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti that focuses on available job retraining programs.

This event will be open to the media but is not open to the general public.

I was getting ready to say “hey, a good opportunity to find out what’s going on in our government and in our area about such an important topic.” But then I saw this part about “not open to the general public? What the hell?! Who is it open to? And why is EMU playing host to some sort of dog n’ pony show that EMU students/faculty/staff (I assume they would constitute “general public”) can’t attend?

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Posted in Administrator Life, Faculty Life, In the media..., Staff Life, Student Life, The Market Crash of 2008

Welcome to my world

Posted on May 16, 2009 by | 2 Comments

Well, no, not completely; I am not feeling that demoralized. Still, I think the opening paragraphs of this recent Inside Higher Ed article, “Next Budget Victim? Joy” kind of rings true:

Step away from that copy machine, and don’t even think about serving lunch at that next faculty meeting. Oh, and that class you love with 20 students? Double it. On second thought, couldn’t you just triple it?

Welcome to the world of higher education in the thick of an economic recession. While tenured faculty may feel more secure in their jobs than employees in more beleaguered industries, there’s little question that the quality of life many professors have come to expect is deteriorating at many institutions. Workloads are increasing while pay is stagnant or falling, and the threat of layoffs has brought an edginess to the Ivory Tower that some professors say hasn’t existed in decades.

All sorts of pressures– upping teaching loads, administrative creep, a general falling off of other benefits of being a professor– do make someone like me question if it’s worth it. Of course, in this economy, what else would I do? But it is true that it is less fun when these sorts of economic times to be a professor. Though most other jobs are probably less fun too.

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Posted in Academics, Faculty Life, In the media..., The Market Crash of 2008

Freeze my tuition– please!

Posted on April 12, 2009 by | 26 Comments

The Ann Arbor News has an article on the soon to be defunct paper front page, “Students: Please freeze tuition,” while is online version as the headline “The cry at U-M, other campuses: No tuition hikes.” Here’s the relevant part about this particular “other campus:”

Anxiety isn’t limited to students at U-M. “I’ve been here 33 years, and I have never seen financial aid, in general, the way it is now,” said Cynthia Van Pelt, director of the financial aid office at Eastern Michigan University.

She said financial aid applications are up 9 percent at EMU as of mid-March compared to the same period last year.

EMU also expects to handle double the number of appeals from students seeking to increase the financial aid packages for next year. In the prior round, 150 students appealed their financial aid awards.

“People are afraid,” said Van Pelt. “We’re doing everything we can to enable families to figure out what the bottom line is. They want to be able to plan.”

The problem with a tuition freeze is if Michigan is going to cut funding to public universities like EMU, then EMU has to make up the shortfalls somewhere. That’s a complicated issue:

Gov. Jennifer Granholm has recommended another round of belt-tightening for state universities, this time a 3 percent cut in their appropriations for the next fiscal year, which would be a reduction of $10 million for U-M.

But for universities that also adhere to her charge to freeze tuition for next fall, Granholm has said she hopes to use federal economic stimulus money to help with their budgets.

So, if I’m understanding this correctly: Granholm wants places like EMU to take a 3 percent cut and not raise tuition, and if EMU et al do this, then maybe– just maybe– we will get some of that money back from the feds. The problem with this from EMU’s and the other state unversities’ perspectives is that the state has made this sort of promise before and not held up their part of the bargain.

I have a better idea: why doesn’t Granholm hold funding to higher ed at currently levels and ask the universities to freeze tuition, and then take some of that federal stimulus money to make up the shortfalls on the state’s end?

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Posted in Administrator Life, Budgets, In the media..., Student Life, The Market Crash of 2008