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LSA keeps priorities during period of budget cutting

By Nancy Connell
News Service

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Editor’s note: In this article, the Record continues to trace the steps that University units are taking to maintain their priorities while planning to meet a decrease in the state appropriation to the operating fund in fiscal year 2004. Previous articles reported on President Mary Sue Coleman’s testimony before a state legislative committee, cost-cutting plans by Human Resources and Affirmative Action and by the University Library, and savings from the expansion of cost sharing of health insurance premiums to include almost all employees.

LSA will preserve undergraduate teaching and direct support for research and graduate studies as top priorities for the coming academic year, despite its need to cut $13.4 million in expenditures to balance the fiscal year (FY) 2004 budget.

The plan comes in response to Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s budget proposal that included a 10 percent reduction in the University’s appropriation as the state strives to close its budget gap. Although current planning is based on her recommendation, the state’s budget process is not yet final, and the University’s ultimate FY04 appropriation depends on actions yet to occur.

Budget process
Planning for the FY04 LSA budget began more than six months ago, when Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Paul N. Courant briefed the college about the state’s budget situation and anticipated cuts.
The LSA faculty executive committee, consisting of six faculty members, was consulted in the process that followed. (The committee includes two faculty each from the three divisions of the college—natural science, social science and humanities).
Members of the dean’s office met with units and asked them to identify cuts. Based in large part on those meetings, the dean’s office created a preliminary budget reduction plan that was reviewed by a small committee drawn from the executive committee, department chairs and key administrators. After feedback, the plan was revised and a draft budget proposal was presented to department chairs and program directors Feb. 14. Another series of meetings followed with individual chairs and directors throughout the next month, and a final budget was submitted to the provost at the end of March.

Units continue to finalize plans
As academic and administrative units across campus reach specific decisions as part of budget planning, the full impact can be described more fully, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Paul N. Courant said. At present, it appears that University-wide, about 50 existing faculty positions will be eliminated by attrition, and more than 250 staff positions will be cut, some by attrition and others by reduction in force.
“We remain committed to protecting the academic core, and we are on track to realizing that goal,” Courant said. “Nonetheless, we will experience real losses in personnel that will have a negative impact on our work.”
The planning has been based on the governor’s proposal calling for a 10 percent reduction in the state appropriation, but the final impact will not be known until the Legislature takes action.

“LSA’s highest priority in this difficult budget year is to maintain, and even improve, undergraduate education within the college,” Dean-elect Terrence McDonald says. “We are committed to preserving the quality of our core activities even as we scale back on many activities. Despite cuts, we will continue to offer our full range of programs and ensure that our students have access to the courses they need to complete their degrees.”

Priority areas

The college will make it a key initiative in the coming year to increase the access of students to courses in Spanish, chemistry, philosophy, psychology, English, political science, communications studies and film/video. Students were closed out of classes in all these subjects last year.

The college is taking a number of steps including reallocation of faculty lines, improved handling of waitlists, increased numbers of graduate student instructors and graders, and more use of technology in ways that release instructional resources to open up more classes.

The college also will protect funding for certain key disciplines that have been identified as priorities. Faculty positions in these areas, including the life sciences, economics and international studies, will not be subject to elimination in the coming year.

Budget measures for 2004

The General Fund budget of LSA totals approximately $220 million. Of this, personnel costs for faculty and staff account for approximately 80 percent of the total, McDonald says.

“Given the fact that the budget is so heavily an investment in people, it is not surprising that personnel took some of the most significant reductions,” McDonald says. “We have crafted a plan that will enable us to stay the course on our major initiatives and preserve our core. Yet we will also impose cuts and other measures to respond to serious fiscal restraints imposed by the anticipated reduction in state appropriation.”

Faculty

The first measures in response to the anticipated decrease in state funding began last fall, when the college suspended a faculty expansion program targeted to departments experiencing serious enrollment pressure, those that were overly reliant on non-tenure-track faculty, or those that lacked senior faculty leadership because of an imbalance between senior and junior faculty. The expansion program would have added a total of 24 faculty positions, 12 each in FY03 and FY04. None of these planned additions to faculty will be made. The college also instructed departments that they could each fill only one faculty vacancy during the upcoming academic year.

The college expects to open recruiting for unfilled positions in FY04, but it first will eliminate 21 faculty positions that currently are vacant.

The downsizing of faculty will result in larger class sizes, more classes taught by graduate student instructors and lecturers, increased difficulty in gaining access to needed classes, fewer freshman seminars and undergraduate research opportunities, and a reduction in fellowship aid.

Some examples include:

• The Department of Political Science will nearly double the class size of some of its upper division courses from 45 to 80 students in some, and from 80 to 130 students in others
• The Department of Mathematics will eliminate one freshman seminar and offer two others every other year instead of annually, and it will reduce the number of graduate offerings in order to re-deploy faculty to more heavily enrolled courses

LSA General Fund budget FY03
Major components (selected items)

Faculty salary and benefits—$89.6 M
Support staff—$41.1M
GSIs and lecturers—$36.2M
Facilities—$3.7M
Recruitment and retention—$10.6M
Regents Fellowships—$4.5M
Dept. Scholarship—$2.5M
Computing—$4.8M
Research incentives—$2.6M
Temporary personnel—$1.2M

• The Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology was unable to move ahead with hiring this year because of the one-position constraint
• When faculty vacancies occur, the college will provide departments about $40,000 for replacement teaching rather than the full salary for the open position. This change will decrease the quality of instructors because funding will allow only a junior visitor or lecturer to be hired as a replacement
• The college will cut $450,000 from the Regents Scholarship program that funds graduate fellowships.

Additional savings

The college also will reduce staff costs to realize $2.2 million in savings. Examples include:

• Staff salaries and benefits will be cut by reducing hours and eliminating positions. The total planned savings of $875,000 is the equivalent of 20 positions
• Temporary staff, including work-study students, will be cut by 50 percent for a savings of $600,000.

Additional savings will be realized by:
• Elimination of five positions in the dean’s office by a combination of attrition and reductions in force
• $400,000 cut in information technology.

Coleman, executive officers decline raises

President Mary Sue Coleman and the 12 members of her executive team will not accept pay raises for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Coleman first announced the decision May 6 at a Booth Newspaper editors’ meeting in Lansing.

The president said that at nearly the same time she informed the Board of Regents of the plan to decline an increase in her base salary, members of her cabinet came forward suggesting that they, too, wished to take a pay freeze. The executive officers were unanimous in the decision to forgo any increases, Coleman said.

“The group felt the raises were inappropriate at a time when the University is faced with a $36 million funding cut from the state on top of more than $40 million in anticipated increases in the cost of doing its business,” Coleman said.