The Guardian: Oxford University’s global standing at risk
Outgoing vice-chancellor says university budgeting to make loss for fourth year
Oxford University faces “grave” risks and needs more than £1bn investment in the next decade to bring its “unfit for purpose” facilities up to a world-class standard, the institution’s outgoing vice-chancellor warned today.
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Wall Street Journal: India’s Ivy League Protests Lack of Public Funding
Faculty of the Indian Institutes of Technology Stages a Hunger Strike to Demand Higher Pay as Schools Face Staffing Shortage
NEW DELHI — The Indian Institutes of Technology, the subcontinent’s Ivy League, are in danger of losing their prestige, professors and alumni contend, because of faculty salaries starting as low as $6,000 a year.
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Tagged Budgets & Funding, India, Protests, Students
Richmond Times-Dispatch: Radford president asks administrators to return to their jobs
RADFORD — Radford University President Penelope Kyle has asked two popular administrators to return to their jobs in the New Student Programs and Services Office, which was dissolved this month by Vice President for Student Affairs Norleen Pomerantz
Press-Enterprise: Students protest campus cuts
Rallies, teach-ins and class walkouts were held Thursday at University of California campuses, including UC Riverside, to draw attention to state cuts to higher education.
Hundreds of UC Riverside students, faculty, staff, union leaders and alumni gathered to voice anger over decisions earlier this year to increase student fees, decrease enrollment, cut class offerings and lower employee pay.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding, Protests, Strikes & Labor Disputes
Tagged Budgets & Funding, Protests, Strikes & Labor Disputes, U of California
Inside Higher Ed: ’60s Tactics, New Cause
Few think the clock will be turned back to the Berkeley of the 1960s, but the protests planned across the University of California today mark a return to the tactics of another era. This time, however, the cause isn’t free speech or an end to war, but instead a response to the university administration’s budget-cutting proposals.
Today will be the first day of classes for 8 of the 10 campuses in the California system, and protest organizers plan to send an early message that the budget cuts besetting the university have been inappropriately addressed by system leaders. The centerpiece of the planned action is a walkout, which has been supported by systemwide student and technical employee organizations…
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Tagged Budgets & Funding, Protests, Students, U of California
News & Observer: Retired profs offer aid
CHAPEL HILL — In February, an association of retired UNC-Chapel Hill professors sought to help ease daunting budget cuts by offering to jump back into teaching, free of charge.
The response from the university, they say, has been underwhelming.
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The Chronicle: In U. of California Budget Crisis, Some Faculty Members See a Cover-Up
The University of California is dealing with its worst financial crisis in decades and a very uncertain financial future. But its leadership has another problem: convincing many of its employees that the situation really is as bad as it looks.
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The Chronicle: U. of California Regents to Consider 32% Increase in Tuition
The University of California may raise its undergraduate tuition by 32 percent by the fall of 2010 to replace sharply declining state support. The tuition proposal, which the system’s Board of Regents plans to discuss at a meeting next week, would raise resident undergraduate student fees by $585 in the spring semester of this academic year and by an additional $1,344 next fall. The university’s professional schools may also turn to unusually large tuition increases to make up for state budget reductions.
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Star-Ledger: Rutgers University faculty union approves pay raise delay to avoid layoffs, cuts
The Rutgers University faculty union approved an agreement with school officials Friday that staves off layoffs and other deep cuts by delaying two previously negotiated raises.
By slowing down wage increases for 4,200 union members, including professors and teaching assistants, Rutgers will spend $20 million less than initially thought over the next two years. That should help the university ride out the recession without shedding jobs. Without the deal, according to vice president of budgeting Nancy Winterbauer, the number of full-time faculty and staff positions would have fallen by 270 — 3.6 percent of the state-funded workforce. And about 450 fewer part-time lecturers would be appointed, she wrote in an e-mail.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding, Salary/Economic Benefits
Tagged budget, Layoffs, pay cuts, Rutgers U, Salary/Economic Benefits
Chicago Tribune: Chicago State gets $40 million surprise
State lawmakers plan funding for a West Side campus that the struggling school didn’t request
The president of Chicago State University was scanning the newspaper before an executive staff meeting when he did a double-take. Frank Pogue learned his South Side school would be building an extension campus on the West Side, and state lawmakers were allocating $40 million for it.
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News-Gazette: UI’s Global Campus staffers given notice of layoffs
URBANA – Virtually the entire University of Illinois Global Campus staff, which services about 500 students in the online education program, has been notified of layoffs.
Meanwhile, the leader of Global Campus has moved back to faculty status but retains the $344,850 salary he earned as administrator, at least for the next year.
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Posted in Academics, Budgets & Funding, Corporate University
Tagged Corporate University, Distance Education, Layoffs, U of Illinois
AAUP’s CBC Executive Committee Issues Resolution
AAUP: Washington, D.C.— Recently, the AAUP’s Collective Bargaining Congress (CBC) Executive Committee issued the following resolution.
Turn it around; don’t give it away
Recent decades have witnessed: (a) a systematic shift of institutional monies from educational to administrative expenditures; (b) a disjuncture between rapidly rising tuition versus overused and underpaid contingent faculty and graduate student employees; (c) a growing gap between rising numbers of Full Time Equivalent students and the numbers of tenure-track faculty; and (d) a growing gap between faculty/academic professional and senior administrative salaries. Each of these patterns work to the detriment of educational quality, institutional effectiveness, student access and success, and broad social benefit.
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AP: University leader warns of more steep budget cuts
SACRAMENTO, Calif.—University of California President Mark Yudof warned Thursday that more budget cuts were in store for the 10-campus system when federal stimulus money runs out next year.
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San Francisco Chronicle: UC to lend state millions to kick-start plans
The cash-strapped University of California – forced to lay off employees, cut pay and offer fewer classes because of deep cuts in state funding – has now agreed to lend the state nearly $200 million.
Seriously.
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Workers World: California budget crisis hits students, education workers
The economic crisis in California spells hardship at the state’s public universities as budgets are balanced through a combination of tuition hikes and pay cuts for faculty and other workers.
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Globe and Mail: Staff cuts to boost class size on campus
Services hurt as universities strapped for cash
A wave of staff reductions at cash-strapped universities will mean larger classes and fewer services for students at campuses this September.
The budget squeeze – the result of falling investment income and rising costs, especially for pensions – has left many universities scrambling to find millions of dollars in savings for the coming school year. With salaries accounting for the lion’s share of budgets, job losses are the inevitable result, school leaders say. That’s led to a range of actions to reduce head counts on campus, including layoffs, buyout offers, the cancellation of teaching contracts and hiring freezes.
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World University News: AUSTRALIA: Top university slashes 220 jobs
The global financial crisis has struck one of Australia’s leading universities with Melbourne University’s shock announcement last week that 220 full-time equivalent academic and administrative staff positions would be cut following a A$30 million (US$25 million) decline in investment returns.
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Detroit Free Press: Teachers cling to their benefits because it’s ‘one of our perks’
Teachers in the Wayne-Westland school district went on strike last fall for the first time in 36 years. Health care coverage was a key issue.
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In the end, teachers kept MESSA, the health insurance affiliate of the Michigan Education Association (MEA), as their insurer. The district wanted teachers to join a self-insurance plan officials said would give equal coverage at less cost, a claim the MEA disputed.
The New York Times: Union Accepts Furloughs at California Universities
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A union that represents 22,000 faculty members at California State University has agreed to two furlough days a month to help close a huge budget deficit at the 23-campus system, officials said Friday.
Inside Higher Ed: Cal State Faculty Accepts Furloughs
Faced with no good options, a union representing California State University faculty members decided to accept a furlough plan that will reduce compensation by about 10 percent, union leaders announced Friday. The California Faculty Association also questioned Chancellor Charles B. Reed’s leadership, voting “no confidence” in him by a margin of 80 percent. The union represents tenure-track faculty as well as lecturers, who would be most likely to lose jobs if furloughs hadn’t been approved. While the vote indicates some tenured and tenure track faculty essentially voted to preserve other people’s jobs, the measure passed by a significant but not overwhelming margin of 54 percent. The union had criticized Reed for not guaranteeing the furloughs would save jobs, although Reed told Inside Higher Ed he estimated 6,000 positions would be saved if the 23,000 union-represented faculty and other employees took furloughs. The association is affiliated with the National Education Association and the American Association of University Professors, as well as Service Employees International Union.
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U. of California Cuts: a Faculty Member’s Dispatch From the Front Lines
The Chronicle: U. of California Cuts: a Faculty Member’s Dispatch From the Front Lines
By Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
Budget cuts at the University of California have generated a lot of attention, especially after a plan of across-the-board salary cuts, combined with mandatory furlough days, was recently announced. How will such drastic financial measures threaten the strengths of that system and other large public universities? Are certain fields of study in the humanities and social sciences especially vulnerable to state cuts because those areas of inquiry—even when dealing with topics of broad importance—rarely get large infusions of national, foundation, or corporate monies of the sort that routinely support work done in areas such as engineering and medicine?
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