Usually a Town Hall is a community meeting where everyone can attend and ask questions from the floor. The “Town Hall” held by the administration on Jan. 24 was a webinar with edited questions and scripted answers. It is no longer available online, and the promised summary in the form of FAQs has not appeared.
Even so, the “Town Hall” made certain things very clear. The upper administration has made very serious errors that have caused this budget crisis. Specifically, they used temporary funds to cover a permanent salary increase. They overspent and overextended themselves on expansion. And they did nothing about these problems for several months, even though they knew about them.
The administration is proposing to increase tuition, increase the number of out-of-state students and decrease what they spend on financial aid. They proposed cuts to the university’s core mission that will be immensely damaging to the university and state: a 15% permanent cut to all academic programs that will eliminate most graduate programs, dramatically increase class sizes and decrease the quality of instruction. Some schools and colleges will be cut even more: For example the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which awards 48% of undergraduate degrees at UConn and contains 52% of the university’s tenured and tenure track faculty, will be cut 19.1%.
At the same time, the administration has not curtailed their ambitious overspending. For example, they could have immediately imposed a hiring freeze. Instead, job searches continue, committing the university to millions of dollars in new spending. Most of these searches are for administration positions, not faculty.
The administration does not seem to us to have a coherent plan for the future. The 10-year strategic plan announced just before the budget deficit was revealed last month cannot be reconciled with the massive cuts they are proposing.
We need to focus on our core mission: providing a world-class education to the young people of this state and beyond by maintaining excellence in research and teaching across our undergraduate and graduate programs. The quality of our academic programs is central to our national ranking and reputation.
We are beginning to wonder whether the leadership that brought us into this mess can be trusted to bring us out of it.
Fiona Somerset is a professor of Literature, Cultures, Languages and English at the University of Connecticut, writing in collaboration with over 30 undersigned faculty members. The full list of signatories can be viewed here.