At a University Senate session held in McHugh Hall on Monday, March 4, University of Connecticut faculty members were presented with an opportunity to question President Radenka Maric regarding the university’s $70 million budget shortfall.
The University Senate, a legislative body made up of both faculty and student representatives, is endowed with the powers to establish and amend university policies not already under the purview of another institution. Following the presentation of the “Report of the President,” Maric took questions and concerns from university senators on the subject of the cuts and their projected impact.
In January, the UConn administration revealed plans to reduce their academic operating support budgets by 15% over five years, drawing intense criticism from prominent groups of faculty, staff and students. Projections indicate the cuts, if made, would result in increased class sizes, fewer class selections, the elimination of graduate student positions and in some cases, entire graduate programs.
The March 4 meeting marked the first time to date that Maric has been able to address the concerns of the University Senate in person. In a separate meeting on Feb. 5, she appeared virtually while traveling to discuss budgetary concerns with state officials.
First, Maric addressed lingering anxiety over the university’s contract with Huron Consulting, a management consulting firm linked to mass downsizing and layoffs at universities across the country.
She re-iterated that Huron’s role at UConn had nothing to do with the budget cuts, and that their consulting was instead used for the purpose of comparative data analysis.
“They compare us to other universities, Rutgers, Stony Brook, UMass Amherst, Vermont, UMaine…compare the size of the classes, enrollment in the undergraduate program, size of the faculty, and send all of that data to us,” she explained.
Maric noted that the university “couldn’t pick up anyone else fast enough to pursue what we requested.”
One senator engaged in a lengthy exchange with the president and UConn CFO Jeffrey Geoghegan over the cuts, questioning their necessity and the figures surrounding them, particularly the 15% reduction in operating support for academic units.
“In September, we had a meeting with legislators. They said, you are not doing any layoffs, cutting of programs, or tuition increases,” Maric responded. “We had to show something that we are doing [to address the budget].”
“We are asking for the full amount [of state support],” she noted. “But based on that request that we had, we had to put the 15% in over a period of five years.”
“The numbers will change as we continue to move forward,” indicated Geoghegan. “There was no magic number or calculation behind the 3%. It was the delta, or difference, we had to solve for.”
In response to a question regarding the alleged elimination of the history department graduate program, Maric expressed confusion over the idea that deans of departments in CLAS were already beginning to apply the cuts to their own departments.
“There was no directive from my office to say programs must be cut,” Provost Anne d’Alleva explained. “My directive was to be as efficient as possible… let’s modernize our degrees, let’s think about revenue-generating programs… these are the conversations we’re having [instead of cuts].”
In an attempt to end confusion about the status of budget cut proposals, Maric clarified the university’s next steps if the state were to meet the funding target UConn is lobbying for.
“The rescission will be off the table at the latest until the next year,” she said. “I don’t want any cuts… if we don’t get the money, we still have enough in reserves.”
“Legislators said ‘Are you going to do the cuts?’ And I said no.”
Associate Professor of political science Michael Morrell sought clarification on whether or not the administration had spent temporary state money on ongoing costs.
“That’s correct,” Maric admitted. “Because we spent it on new faculty. New faculty requires ongoing costs… You can’t accept more students without providing more faculty. We cannot put in a hiring freeze because they ask us to enroll more students.”
“How much more? They have their own ideas, and that’s why I have 86 meetings!”
Following the conclusion of the President’s Report, Maric received no applause. Many of the professors in attendance remained skeptical of the university’s rhetoric regarding the budget crisis.
“[Maric] didn’t respond to my question about changing the composition of the faculty to hire teaching faculty instead of research faculty,” Associate Professor of economics and Treasurer of the UConn AAUP Oskar Harmon lamented. “Even in December, they didn’t change the plans.”
“If you’re hiring research faculty, they teach three courses a year for the first five years. If you hire teaching faculty, they teach six courses a year plus some other service,” Harmon said. “So that would be an easy way to increase the faculty that we need for the larger enrollment that we’re expecting.”
While the university may have no choice to not hire faculty, in part because of the demands of the state legislature, Harmon indicated they still have a choice regarding what type of faculty they hire, and an important one at that.
“I think that the step back [for UConn] is to say ‘we’re not going to make you reduce your budget this year’,” Harmon said regarding the confusion over the history department cuts. “It doesn’t have the ‘warm and fuzzy’ when you tell people, we’re taking your money away and we want to work with you.”
In an address to the Board of Trustees titled “Recommitting to the Mission of UConn as the Flagship University of Connecticut,” Harmon outlined his concerns with the university’s approach to the cuts. While the projected deficit of $23 million is large, he noted, “it is by far not the largest we have faced,” and does not justify cuts that “jeopardize the future” of CLAS graduate programs.
“We are a university that has shared governance,” Harmon said. “I think they will work with the faculty to try and address this in a way that they haven’t done so far… as [the President] said, we’re all one UConn.”