Let me update a few things that have gone on since last 12/10.
First, we saw the full extent of the 2017 budget and ended up with over a $6 million loss in revenue rather than a $5 million loss in revenue. The difference was made up with "reserves."
Next, we found out in the spring that those items marked "university initiatives" continue to be funded regardless of the budget situation. Even while faculty positions are being cut and class sizes are being pumped up by 30% or more. "University Initiatives" are those things that were listed above the priority line when they were brought to the Planning and Budgeting Committee over the years, so they weren't considered for voting. They just "were." Very Zen.
Since the spring we've had no FY18 budget updates in PBC, just enrollment updates. Yes, you read that right. Even though numbers have been closed out and handed on to the Board of Regents, the UHCL Shared Governance system hasn't even really updated anything but our revenue forecast (based on Fall 2017 numbers). Even better: the numbers for the 6% reduction expected for FY19
(next year) and the 3% reduction for FY20 for academic units came out of
thin air. Those numbers were picked simply to spread the remaining deficit over three years.
Thankfully, we've had the Ruffalo-Noel-Levitz academic consulting firm on campus several times to set us on the straight and narrow one analyst at a time. Unfortunately, nobody's really sure how much this relationship costs.
Meanwhile, I've been in several different meetings where I got to hear about how the support units had so.many.cuts last year. I'm pretty sure that the support units are what accountants call "cost centers" and the academic units are what accountants call "profit centers." Given the current overhead profile at UHCL the "cost centers" have a long way to go before we hit bottom, but the folks in charge don't see it that way.
MBA enrollment for FA17 was up about 60% from last fall. However, due to our new 8-week classes it appears that we're running those folks off as fast as we can. Some math:
- ONLINE CLASS < > EASY
- 8-WEEK CLASS < > EASY
In fact,
- HARD(8-week) > HARD(15-week); HARD is fn (time; reasons)
- HARD(ONLINE) > HARD(F2F); HARD is fn (time; reasons; 10,000 years human practice and conditioning)
This will come as news to some of our new grad students, I think. The same thing has happened in the summer for the last 10 years. The intersection of the 9-week bubble and the online bubble is the spot.
More retirements have been announced: the interim CFO and her husband the head of computing are leaving in the spring.
On a happier note, our new Prez Dr. Ira K. Blake, formerly of Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, the Huskies, has made a big impression on our external constituency since she arrived on campus in August, and most folks are convinced that she's here to help. Unless she's willing to start cutting back staff, and quickly, I'm not sure what will help. Looking at the numbers, there's no way we can grow our way out of our issues. Certainly not if we keep growing in the direction we've been growing for the past 10 years.
We found out today that the university will be creating yet another AVP position, this one for marketing and communications, and a Director slot under that one too. Taking marketing out of Enrollment Management is a step in the right direction, but unless there's a big pot of money someplace, and unless the AVP gets up to speed fast, there may not be anything left to market.
A couple more things:
In meetings I hear the question "What is the faculty going to do?" The proper question is "What ELSE is the faculty going to do?" In the last two years we have changed the MBA curriculum by shortening it to 39 hours without prereqs or foundation courses, eliminated the GMAT requirement, and gone to an 8-week format because we were told that was "all we could do." The year before that the MS Finance group revised the MS curriculum to support the eventual MBA change and take 6 hours out of the 36-hour curriculum, eliminate prereqs and foundation classes, and drop the GMAT requirement so that most students won't need to take it. We continue to struggle to implement and tweak an 8-week format with both online and hybrid classes, again, to support our MBA concentration (which also had to be rebuilt) and the general MBA. All of this is ongoing, and the demands on the faculty and students are much different in an 8-week session. So again, the question should be "What ELSE can the faculty do?"
Some solutions to the issues that keep coming up (from various deans around the university). I think it's imperative that we get some idea of the university's long-term plans before we commit to any of these proposed solutions and fix the FY18 budget shortfall:
- Faculty will need to teach bigger classes. The average on campus, it seems, is 16 students. That seems kinda small for MBA classes since about 2007 or so. And, let me add "again."
- Faculty will need to teach a 4-4 load, even though the handbook says we teach a 3-3 load due to service and research expectations. I don't know about the other colleges, but the business college would lose accreditation in this case, but at least it would lower research expectations - we don't have time to work on research anyway. If we aren't accredited as a BUS school, we'll need a lot fewer staff and/or admin types around.
- Faculty will have to come up with new masters programs that are timely and up-to-date and popular. Read as: easy, cheap and short. And, let me just say "again."
- If we can't get our act together we might just have to become part of UH Central Campus. Yes, but they have a real faculty senate who might just stick up to administration once in a while. I think they probably have a real HR department and maybe a real computing group, too.
- We might have to lose some salary. Yes, but if you cut my salary you better be prepared to start cutting everyone else's too.
- We might have to have layoffs of faculty who aren't tenured. Yep, that could happen. That's what tenure is for. Well, that plus academic standards. Without tenure there wouldn't be any standards really. Not these days.
- Unless BUS and the MBA program decides to work with Academic Partnerships or some other diploma mill all Hell will break lose and it will be the BUS faculty's fault. How dare we not fund all of those staff positions just so we can have fewer than 70 students in a class? That's so selfish of us. After all, the whole bigger classes and online thing has worked out so well for us up to this point. Plus, never mind the reputation damage to all of our prior grads. We need to work with really big classes so some of the student services folks' assistants can get assistants of their very own. Best reason yet!
