This would be good news to many of our students: The CHE reports “Economic stimulus likely to include increase to Pell Grant.” A quote:
ccording to an article published today in Politico, a the bill may include a $500 incease in the grant, bringing the maximum award to $5,231. Sources confirmed to The Chronicle that a Pell increase was likely but said that the final level was still being negotiated by appropriators in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. A bill is expected soon.
It’s a crazy time budget-wise at EMU and the state and beyond. I see administrative-types and faculty-types who are in the know being all grim and sour when anything about budgets come up, and, because I am less in the loop, I am not sure if this is a product of too many meetings/groupthink where people have convinced themselves that the sky is falling, or if it is true that the sky really is falling.
We know cuts are coming, but we don’t know what the incoming Obama administration is going to do to stimulate the states (which in turn could help EMU’s funding from the state), to stimulate “shovel-ready” projects (like Pray-Harrold, for example), and education.
But while we don’t know how much, it seems pretty likely we’ll be facing some kind of mid-year budget cut, and I do hear people whispering possibilities of layoffs, increased teaching loads, etc. Like I said, I don’t really know enough to make recommendations one way or the other, but this article at Inside Higher Ed, “Taking one (percent) for the team,” strikes me as an interesting and creative solution.
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From MLive: EMU athletic director wants coach by Christmas.
Gragg, reached on his cell phone Monday night in New York, where he was attending college football Hall of Fame ceremonies, said he will begin to interview a pool of “four to six candidates” starting in a few days and lasting through next week once those candidates are pulled from a larger pool of candidates currently being considered by a search agency enlisted by Gragg and EMU. He declined to name any potential candidates.
I have to say that after a very long day where I talked with colleagues about a current search in the English department, about searches that have been canceled, about even deeper (as if that were possible) budget cuts, about more budget cuts in the fall, and about losing football and now basketball teams, I find it somehow depressing that Gregg can wave a wand and make the hiring of another losing football coach just happen.
You may have heard that the economy is in the dumper right now. Sometimes, the rumors around campus and the news I hear and read sound a little too much like Chicken Little and the falling sky, though I do appreciate the fact that all things money are very bad. In the higher education world, there has been much talk lately about costs and tuition. Here are a couple of examples of what I mean.
“Changing the tuition discussion” is an article in Inside Higher Ed about how universities need to do a better job of explaining the costs of higher education and also to find ways to cut costs. Here’s a quote:
In this environment, the leaders of a national association of public universities hope to shift the debate — calling for better information about what really is going on with college costs, and also urging colleges to consider some potentially radical ways to control their costs. “University Tuition, Consumer Choice and College Affordability,” being released today by the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, both defends public higher education and criticizes it. While suggesting that colleges are more affordable than many people realize today, the report sees a “looming affordability challenge” in which public institutions could move out of the reach of many Americans, a potential shift that the association sees as counter to the values of its institutions.
According to the Chronicle of Higher Ed, “Colleges are told to improve financial practices to cope with downturn” and “The U.S. is falling behind on education and lacks key data, report card finds.” (By the way, both of these links, if you are off campus, will take you to the library proxy server space where you have to log in first to get the full article). Here’s a passage from that second article:
Many states, and the United States as a whole, are doing a better job than they were two years ago of preparing students for college and expanding access to higher education, according to a national report card on higher education scheduled for release today.
But the country continues to slip behind other nations on measures of enrollment and degree completion, particularly among young adults, the report found, and on the subject of college affordability, it gave failing grades to all but one state: California, which got a C-.
What’s a student to do? Well, according to this New York Times article, why not go to Scotland? Realistically, the kind of Americans who attend St. Andrews University are probably the kind who would have gone to some kind of Ivy League school in the U.S., but I think the point that higher education is an increasingly international commodity is interesting.
There are a couple of bad news economy stories in the CHE today: “As Economy Sours, Presidential Pay Draws Increased Scrutiny,” and (actually, this one is from last week) “Colleges May Yet Feel Bite From Recession, Moody’s Analysts Warn.” More of the bad news, etc., etc.
That first article on presidential salaries also has a link to a database about presidential salaries at universities around the country, but it doesn’t list Susan Martin or EMU. Which got me to thinking: how much money is she making? As far as I can tell, that really hasn’t been published in the various local media.
And by “draconian,” I mean “rigorous; unusually severe or cruel.” For I am pretty sure that as I type this, a meeting of administrators (department heads on up) are getting the news of take-backs from the state, deep cuts on campus, canceled searches, etc., etc.
My guess is that someone reading EMUTalk.org has heard something. Anybody want to share?
You may have heard something about this little economic downturn thing. A colleague of mine sent me a link to a New York Times just the other day, “Tough times strain colleges rich and poor.” The article names all kinds of colleges and universities in the U.S. and describes their problems: huge losses to endowments, massive layoffs, budget freezes, etc., etc.
Obviously, this makes me think of our own problems here at EMU.
The optimistic side of me likes to think that things here won’t be as bad as they are in some places in the U.S. because EMU has already endured several years of aggressive budget cutting and when you’re already kind of poor, being a little bit more poor doesn’t make that much difference. We don’t have to worry about our endowment loosing too much money because our endowment isn’t that big in the first place.
But I know there is going to be an emergency budget council meeting this coming week, and I have heard rumors of mid-year budget cuts from the state. I’ve even heard the rumor– and this is just a rumor– that the state is contemplating a 7% cut next fiscal year, which would be devastating. What will these probable/possible cuts mean for hiring? For Pray-Harrold? For Mark-Jefferson?
Yet on the other hand, as more and more college-bound people and their parents have less and less money to work with in this crapola economy, more affordable options like EMU start to look a heck of a lot better than some fancy private university or even places like U of M and MSU. In other words, everyone else’s own money problems might actually increase applications and enrollment at EMU.
The AAN/blog reported today “Enrollment drops 4 percent at Eastern Michigan University.” That’s not good, but as EMU President Susan Martin said, it could have been worse:
President Susan Martin said the drop was forecast to be about 8 percent overall, but university outreach efforts – following up with students and assisting them with enrolling or re-enrolling – seem to have paid off.
Martin attributed much of the drop to students taking time off for financial reasons.
“The economy is most of our struggle right now,” she said. Students are “taking a semester off to work, sometimes even a year. They’re trying to make enough money for gas and living expenses.”
I think Martin is right, and it might be more realistic (given the economy, given the demographics of Michigan) for EMU to attempt to reach for a goal of trying to not lose enrollment and to leave increasing enrollment for better times.
After the “more” part, I have the entire message that was sent around by Bernice Lindke yesterday afternoon about financial aid and student loans. Basically, she says that the federal loan programs are fine, but private loan programs are not:
The only market that is experiencing significant change due to the economic turmoil is the private, or alternative, educational loan market. The same lenders who offer mortgages and car loans have become more conservative in approving private educational loans. Private loan lenders such as JP Morgan/Chase, Sallie Mae, CitiBank, US Bank and others are instituting higher credit standards for applicants to qualify and are requiring a creditworthy co-signer for most applicants. As a result, fewer students are qualifying for private loans.
In a way, this kind of speaks a bit to my very naive and very layman’s take on at least aspect of the credit crisis. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but these private loans are not a whole lot different than credit card debts/personal line of credit, and this doesn’t seem to me to be a very good way for students to pay tuition and expenses. Or really, this doesn’t seem to be a very good way for just about anyone to pay for everything.
I realize that sometimes folks just have no choice. I speak from personal experience regarding credit cards, though I am no longer carrying a balance on one. Still, maybe one of the things we need to do to ultimately get out of the current financial mess is to reduce the amount of debt we all have.
Anyway, the entire message here:
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Posted in Budgets, Student Life, The Market Crash of 2008
I know almost nothing about what’s going on with the economy right now, but I do know that I’ve personally lost (only on paper, of course) lots and lots and lots of money on my TIAA-CREF fund and I know that a 600 or 700 point drop in the Dow Jones in a day is a the opposite of good. I don’t actually worry about this much personally since I have more than a few years to think about retirement and, as a tenured professor, I think I have a reasonable level of job security.
Still, I do wonder about what this all might mean for EMU and other state supported institutions. For example, as this NBC news story indicates, there are cuts coming in the state of Virginia to the University of Virginia, James Madison University, and some community colleges (and I would guess some other universities and CCs) are facing sudden cuts because of the current crash.
So, is there something unique going on out in the southeast that we are insulated from, or is this something that might come back to Michigan? And again, am I being paranoid about Pray-Harrold renovation money or what?
