ANNE RITZ
News editor
Across the SUNY system, schools are experiencing deficit’s in their budgets. Dr. Arnavut, president of United University Professions, explained that administration is working to address these issues.
There has been a budget problem and the union has tried to address this at the Assembly as well as Senate by advocating the issues,” Arnavut said.
“SUNY wide, we were asking 82.2 million dollars. Unfortunately we were given 7.6 million dollars. As you can see, when you are looking for 82.2 million dollars and you are getting about 8, 9 percent of what you are asking, definitely there is a problem and will be a problem.”
Administration has been working to address this issue. President Dr. Virginia Horvath, has been working on a plan that looks to fix the problems for the long-term.
“Our priorities are the same, we want to make sure that students have access to classes and services that they need. We want to avoid layoffs of faculty and staff,” Horvath said.
Both Arnavut and Horvath explained that part of this issue due to pay raises that will be new for next year but the state did not alter the budget to meet those costs.
“We have salary increases for faculty and staff that are members of unions, and their unions negotiate salary raises. People are entitled to those raises, it’s not as if people are paid an exorbitant amount in SUNY,” said Horvath.
“I think our salaries are competitive compared to other institutions, we’re good, we’re in about the average. So it’s not as though we have unbelievably high salaries or anything like that. It’s just that the amount that we’re funded, has not kept pace with our actual cost. ,” she said.
Arnavut said that problems may have been able to be avoided if SUNY was able to acquire the amount of money they were looking for from the state. “And the administration is trying to come up with the best strategy as they can. We have to understand them too, because if we are their shoes then it will look differently,” he said.
Horvath explained that Dr. Brown, vice president for academic affairs, gave a presentation goals for academics. One strategy she discussed as shifting teaching more to full time faculty.
“Half of our student credit hours (SHC) are generated by tenure track, she [Dr. Brown] wants to shift that and have three-quarters of the instruction delivered by full time people. And do to do that without hiring more full time people to shift the teaching assignment,” said Horvath.
Because the goal is to shift teaching to more full time, it could affect adjuncts but it will vary by department. “I know there some messages going around out there that are incorrect, ‘we’re going to fire all the adjuncts’ — no. We have some people who are hired each semester that are new to us, maybe we won’t need to hire those new people. Maybe the people who have been continuing here are going to be able to stay, depending on what need there is in department. But again if we’re building a schedule based on what we need, as opposed to what people would refer to teach then it would change things quite a bit,” said Horvath.
“I don’t want to put adjuncts in a panic. There are some that have been continuing here and we count on them to deliver different parts of the major,” said Horvath. She explained that it could mean not hiring new adjuncts in the fall and ones have been continuing would stay on.
Another goal was to have a more strategic way of how the calendar is built and to determine how many classes are needed based on student need. “Chairs would say to faculty, I’m building our schedule for next Fall what are you going to teach and when, then it’s a chair’s nightmare to sort all of that out. Why not begin with the data we already in banner in scheduling system and degreeworks,” said Horvath.
Class sections sizes may increase depending on department. Classes that are more clinically based such as music and communication disorders and sciences, need to have small classes sizes for instruction one-on-one instruction so those would not change.
Other classes (that are different from clinically based ones) sometimes only have ten students. “Our classes, I would like them to be larger than ten smaller than 35. Somewhere in there is where they should be. And for a university these days that’s remarkable that’s still our commitment, that we’re not taking every class up to 50,” said Horvath.
Horvath feels that there that are advantages to small class sizes. It allows students to have more discussion based and constructivist classes and be able to practice critical thinking, reading, writing and speaking.
“That’s not our Fredonia mission to have classes with 200 people. I know we still have some large section classes and I would think that the proportion of those would stay about the same, it’s fewer than five percent of our courses that are delivered with a large section. But larger than ten,” she said.
She added that there is not going to be a wide scale cancellation of classes.
Another strategy is to hold positions when they become vacant and not immediately re-hire. If someone leaves or retires from their position, holding the position allows time to evaluate the position and save money but not hiring right away.
Retention rate for students, especially from first year to second year, is also crucial in this strategy. Retention rate from first to second year students has been at 80 percent but has dipped to 77 percent. Horvath explained that administration is looking into the reasons why students leave.
She explained that it was partly something that is trending, students are more mobile than they used to be, students often will go to several universities. But if there are reasons that they could address, they would like to do that to get the retention rate back to 80 percent.
Part of the budget problem is that state support has been flat and has not increased to the extent of spending. Types of strategies that are being worked on for next year are:
Work on enrollment, not just first year students but retaining people.
Looking to support from the foundation
Tution from summer school classes
Tuition from J-term classes
Expenditure reductions
Decline in enrollment is another factor in the budget. The first year enrollment, transfer enrollment and graduate school enrollment have seen a decline. It has decreased 6.4% since 2009, but Horvath explained that that was the highest enrollment ever, it was not that Fredonia’s enrollment had always been that high and as fallen, but the numbers now are more where we used to be.
“We graduated a big class, that’s a good thing, but the last two years our incoming class has not been as big [and] our transfer. That’s true not just for us but across SUNY. It’s been a real challenge, especially given the press I think the message people are get is, ‘college costs a lot’ and you might not get a job anyway,’” she said.
“I think fewer people are deciding to go to college or they might be going to community colleges and not having the residence part of it but community colleges are having the same issue. Western New York’s population is much lower of the high school population, so there are not as many students. So this is not unusual in SUNY and even in private institutions.”
When enrollment was higher, Fredonia had unexpected tuition from more students than expected and that money went into a reserve account. “But they’re aren’t not a lot of dollars in reserve. That’s one of those things say a roof leaking, in a residence hall, we’re not going to say to students, we don’t have the money. By law we have to keep a certain amount of reserves, just for a rainy day fund and to take care of the types of things that come up,” Horvath said.
There has been a slight tuition increase that has been helpful to the budget. “This is not exorbitant compared to privates [schools] that might raise their tuition by 5,000 dollars a year. It’s pretty minor, 150 [dollars] a semester. But there is not going to be an increase after that time, that we know of, there might be something statewide,” Horvath said.
A third of that increase went toward a math and science scholarship. Horvath explained that money does not help with the operating budget. She said that with the creation of the new building, it was important that students are able to use that building.
President Horvath will be giving a presentation on Friday, April 11 in Rosh Recital Hall at 9 a.m. She will be giving more information and details about the long-term budget plan. The presentation is open and students are welcome.