Weekly Briefing: Faculty members take budgets into their own hands

When colleges face budget cuts, faculty members dive into the numbers for solutions. ADVERTISEMENT [Weekly Briefing Logo]( You can also [read this newsletter on the web](. Or, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, [unsubscribe](. Faculty members are becoming budget experts. Is anyone listening? Financial pressures are mounting at institutions across the country. Think of the stories you’ve read about [the University of Wisconsin system]( [West Virginia University,]( University of Arizona]( and [the University of Chicago](. The budget woes are giving rise to a new phenomenon: Professors, eager to reassert their role in shared governance and resist the proposed cuts of administrators, are increasingly getting involved in budget discussions. They’re even crafting alternative plans to tackle budget shortfalls. But that doesn’t mean the people in charge of the purse strings are listening. At Bradley University, in Illinois, the University Senate’s executive committee were assigned to evaluate potential program eliminations — specifically $10 million in cuts from academic operations. The university said it faced a $13-million budget hole in July 2023. Eden S. Blair, a professor of entrepreneurship who served on the committee, told our Megan Zahneis that she and her colleagues effectively took a crash course in institutional finance. The stakes felt high: Their colleagues’ and their own jobs were on the chopping block. In their November report, the committee proposed nearly $10 million in cuts, including $4.5 million in instructional costs. Bradley’s president, Stephen Standifird, said in December that 15 academic programs would be phased out. Twenty-three faculty jobs would be culled because of attrition and 38 would be laid off, including Blair. Standifird’s plan didn’t use any of the faculty committee’s recommendations, Blair said. A university spokeswoman said that Standifird considered recommendations from the faculty committee, provost, and deans to make his decision. When budget activism is successful The Johns Hopkins University announced in 2020 that it would deal with a projected $375-million pandemic-induced deficit by freezing hiring, canceling all raises, and suspending contributions to employees’ retirement accounts for one year. Faculty members were critical of the changes, especially the pension pauses. They recruited Howard Bunsis, a professor of accounting at Eastern Michigan University and former chair of the American Association of University Professors’ Collective Bargaining Congress. In recent years Bunsis has become known for his analyses of institutions’ publicly available financial statements. He often presents a different picture than one offered by administrators. Bunsis told Hopkins faculty in his presentation that the university’s budget shortfall was much smaller than what administrators had cited and that it could be covered by unrestricted reserves. That galvanized faculty members. Their advocacy resulted in administrators holding town-hall sessions to explain different parts of the budget. The types of questions that faculty members asked forced administrators to be more transparent in their answers. Within months, Hopkins essentially undid the pension freeze. François Furstenberg, a professor of history at Hopkins who called for greater financial clarity and an end to the pension freezes in T[he Chronicle’s pages]( said that Hopkins’s faculty isn’t just a single success story. He hopes that it is fuel for a larger effort by faculty members to educate themselves on institutional finance. [Read Megan’s full story here.]( And take a closer look at other emerging trends dominating higher education in our [2024 Trends Report.]( ADVERTISEMENT NEWSLETTER [Sign Up for the Teaching Newsletter]( Find insights to improve teaching and learning across your campus. Delivered on Thursdays. To read this newsletter as soon as it sends, [sign up]( to receive it in your email inbox. Lagniappe - Read. The novel I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai explores the societal [obsession with true crime](. The protagonist is a podcast host teaching a podcast course to high-school students who re-evaluate a past murder on their campus. (The New Yorker) - Listen. The Ghost Train Orchestra and Kronos Quartet recently released [the album]( Songs and Symphoniques: The Music of Moondog. It’s an interpretation of American composer Moondog’s music. (Bandcamp) —Fernanda SUBSCRIBE TO THE CHRONICLE Enjoying the newsletter? 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