Budget Cuts and Shared Governance
Restructuring at the University of Maryland, College Park, 1991-92
The following articles appeared in the November-December 1993 issue of Academe.
Academe is published by the American Association of University Professors.
Miller, Gerald Ray. "Budget Cuts and Shared Governance: A Faculty Member's Perspective." Academe Nov.-Dec. 1993: 12-14.
The University of Maryland at College Park has lost 20 percent of its state support in two years. Most of this decrease came in the first year (1990-91) in a series of rescissions. These cuts began at the start of the academic year and came with virtually no warning. Within twenty months, the university had acted to close seven departments and one college, while preserving the tenure of the affected faculty and the ability of students to complete their programs. Homes in suitable departments were found for all the displaced faculty members. We made these very difficult decisions using a series of collegial mechanisms, some long in place and some ad hoc.
In facing such fiscal adversity, we were fortunate in having a history of good communication between the university administration and the leadership of the campus senate. Both our president (and former provost) Brit Kirwan and our provost, Bob Dorfman, rose through our faculty ranks, and both value senate and faculty participation, advice, and action. The Senate Executive Committee advised the president and provost on many issues, formally and informally, during the continuing crisis and contributed to presenting the university's needs to the state. The willingness to share responsibility within the university community was a key to making the best of a bad deal.
Provost Dorfman began the formal campus response to the budget cuts by requesting that the colleges review their programs and then propose reductions. At the same time, he came to the Senate Executive Committee and asked that we develop "criteria" for judging the various proposals for program reductions that would come forward. The Criteria for Planning that we developed under the leadership of senate chair Bruce Fretz included preserving quality, maintaining academic programs central to our mission, and maintaining the balance between undergraduate and graduate education. It was very clear from the beginning of our discussions that we didn't want across-the-board budget cuts that would sap the strength of all our academic programs. No one at College Park would argue that all the colleges were as fully involved in the initial reviews and recommendations as they could have been, or that the "criteria" led to quick and easy decisionmaking. Nevertheless, these efforts openly invited the best ideas from the campus community and set high standards for decisionmaking on the part of administrators, committees, and the senate.
Review of the college proposals and the initial discussion of alternatives was undertaken by the Academic Planning Advisory Committee (APAC), chaired by the provost and staffed by his office. APAC, established in 1983 upon the recommendation of the campus senate, advises the university administration and the campus senate on the resource requirements of academic program proposals. The majority of APAC's members are non-administrative faculty, but APAC has strong representation from deans and department chairs as well as two student members. APAC's composition brings together faculty, administration, and student perspectives on critical issues in the academic sector. Seven years of operation before the financial crisis hit gave APAC the experience and credibility to handle the difficult job of formatting program elimination proposals for consideration by the campus. This is a very delicate point for me to make, since in the early 1980s I saw the need for a way of evaluating the resource requirements of new programs. Ultimately, I led the task force that recommended the formation of APAC to the senate. A peculiar twist of fate then led to my election to the senate leadership just a few weeks after the first budget cut and to my service as chair when the final proposals came to the senate. In all honesty, though, trying to invent such a collegial process when the crisis hit would have been extremely difficult.
In the spring of 1991, Provost Dorfman released his preliminary report, identifying programs for possible closure. (Before this report, the various proposals and alternatives under consideration were not publicized.) For the next year, until the final decisions were made, we had a remarkably open process. For each targeted program, the provost appointed an ad hoc review committee composed predominantly of tenure-track faculty. He asked them to examine thoroughly the consequences of carrying out the proposal and asked that they report by the beginning of the following semester. These committees met with faculty and students affected by the proposals. One hundred and twenty faculty members--about one out of every twelve on the campus served on these committees!
In the fall, APAC reviewed the committee reports and held open hearings, as its procedures required, on each program considered for closure. Some programs initially targeted were dropped from the list as a result of these committee reviews and hearings.
Meanwhile, the senate geared up to consider the final proposals expected from the provost. Our bylaws require the senate Programs, Curricula, and Courses (PCC) Committee to consider any proposal for eliminating a department before such a proposal reaches the senate floor. We were very fortunate in being able to convince a former chair of the senate, Don Piper, known for his fairness and excellent judgment, to chair the PCC Committee for 1991-92. The PCC Committee is recognized as one of our most important and hardest-working committees and appointments to this committee are always carefully made. The PCC Committee, however, generally concerns itself mostly with undergraduate program approvals. Because of the likely impact of programmatic eliminations on both our undergraduate programs and our graduate programs, all faculty vacancies that year were filled by faculty noted both for their teaching and for their research. Three of the four newly appointed faculty had, in fact, won university awards as distinguished scholar-teachers.
The PCC Committee was charged in advance to hold open hearings, to consider the impact of the final proposals on minorities and women, and to present to the senate not only its recommendation on each proposal, but also to present the pros and cons of each proposal.
The provost's final report was released and sent to the committee at the beginning of the spring 1992 semester. Taken as a whole, the targeted programs had about the same percentages of minorities and of women as the university itself After each hearing, the PCC Committee met to consider the comments and submissions and to review the large amount of information previously submitted to APAC. The PCC members devoted nearly a day a week to hearings and meetings for two months. They did not vote, however, until all the open hearing were completed. By secret ballot, the PCC Committee then voted without dissent (and with at most one abstention) to support each of the provost's final recommendations.
The senate scheduled three meetings to consider the proposals in April 1992. It set a one-hour time limit for debate on each proposal and imposed a five-minute limit on speeches. There was vigorous debate on many of the proposals. Some proposals had the support of the affected department and, therefore, did not engender much discussion. The senate approved every proposal by decisive margins (ranging from two-to-one to forty-to-one). What we hadn't anticipated, however, was that the senate would complete its review and vote on its recommendations in just one very strenuous three-hour meeting. In looking back, however, the public airing of these proposals in three different campus forums before senate consideration offered the entire university community opportunities to consider the proposals and their consequences.
President Kirwan accepted the recommendations of the senate and forwarded the proposed department and program eliminations to the University of Maryland system. The board of regents approved all these proposals in June 1992.
This abbreviated summary makes the decisionmaking process appear more smooth and much less painful than it really was. Cutting programs is never an easy task, even when the alternatives are worse. There were suggestions--some would call them pressures--to merge APAC's open hearing with PCC's. This idea was rejected, and in retrospect it is quite clear that the university benefitted from separating the formulation of the program reduction proposals from the evaluation of these proposals.
Some suggested that the senate take a single vote on the provost's proposals as a package. This, too, was rejected, taking a literal view of the bylaw requirement that the PCC Committee and the senate consider each program elimination proposal. Having a separate up-or-down vote on each program provided a definitive end to the campus deliberative processes. Had we taken a package vote, a year and half later we would still have programs claiming that they went down only because they were grouped with much weaker programs.
Some whose own program was targeted requested an ab initio review of every program on the campus before any action was taken. These requests ignored the fact that regular five-year program reviews and periodic accreditation reviews were already an integral part of the process. The acceptance of such requests would have ignored the valid, ongoing evaluation efforts of the university and would have paralyzed the decisionmaking process. These requests were also rejected.
Looking back, no one would claim that College Park's process was flawless, and it certainly wasn't speedy. But it was deliberative process. It was a largely open process. And it was certainly a decisive process. The administration, APAC, the ad hoc committees, the senate and its committees, all worked hard and effectively in the best tradition of shared governance. Together, we made decisions critical to the future of our university.
Griffith, Robert. "Budget Cuts and Shared Governance: An Administrator's Perspective." Academe Nov.-Dec. 1993: 15-17.
Within a period of eighteen months, our university lost 45 million dollars--fully 20 percent of its state budget. This sudden and massive loss of state support posed a crisis with which the university would struggle for the next three years. Indeed, we are still struggling with its aftermath.
The university's response to this crisis, which began in the fall of 1990, included a series of budget reductions (some of which involved staff layoffs and furloughs for faculty and staff), steep increases in student tuition and fees, and a campaign to mobilize public support to prevent further cuts. The university's most significant response, however, was the programmatic review described by Gerald Miller, which resulted in the elimination of twenty-nine degree programs, seven departments, and one college. The first, which took place early in the crisis, considered whether the university should allocate reductions across the board, the traditional approach at many institutions including Maryland, or whether the reductions should be targeted on the basis of program quality, centrality to the mission of the university, and other similar criteria. Some, who believed that the crisis might prove short-lived, argued that across-the-board cuts would be quicker, more easily administered, and more politically expedient. Others argued more pessimistically that more drastic measures were needed if the university was to preserve the quality of its best programs. The university had to choose, the pessimists argued, between continuing to do many things (but doing them poorly), or doing fewer things (but continuing to do them well). In the end, the pessimists won. The university elected to begin a process that would lead to selectively targeted reductions and, eventually, to program closings.
The second debate, which waxed and waned throughout the crisis, involved implementation of process. The process initially established by Provost Dorfman, following consultation with the university's Academic Planning Advisory Committee (APAC) and with the executive committee of the Campus Senate, was open, consultative, sensitive to shared governance, and designed to conform carefully to university procedures. It also honored tenure, guaranteeing tenured faculty in departments identified for possible elimination transfer to other academic units. Tenure-track faculty were offered an opportunity to compete for tenure in their new units. Students in affected units were assured that they would have a reasonable amount of time to complete their courses of study.
The provost would later spend an enormous amount of time communicating with departments identified for possible elimination, with the individual faculty and students, and with the leadership of the Campus Senate. Faculty were involved in key roles at virtually every point in the process. This carefully crafted, consultative approach was clearly a key factor in assuring broad faculty support. SO, obviously, was the decision to honor tenure.
As the recession deepened and reductions mounted, however, both the process and the decision to honor tenure were debated heatedly within APAC and in meetings of other senior campus leaders. The more radical voices within these groups urged a much swifter ("surgical," some called it) and less consultative process. They also advocated abandoning tenure for faculty in targeted units. They argued that only a more rapid response could generate the savings necessary to meet the sudden loss of so much state funding. The more moderate among campus leaders argued that such drastic action would shatter faculty morale, undermine shared governance, embroil the campus in years of litigation, and, most likely, fail to achieve the goal of selective reductions. In the end, with the support of the provost and the president, the moderates prevailed.
What were the results of these critical decisions? First, the process was very long and time-consuming, lasting from the fall of 1990 until the spring of 1992. This clearly limited the immediate savings that could be generated. Second, potential savings were also limited by the university's decision to honor tenure and not attempt the deep cuts that had been advocated by some. Third, the elimination of seven departments, a college, and twenty-nine individual degree programs nevertheless marked an unprecedented step for the university. Fourth, the entire process was accomplished with a remarkable degree of participation and support by faculty. Finally, as a result of the targeted reductions, the campus realized savings of over $6 million.
The impact of this process may be illustrated by what took place within my own college. First, some background: With almost 380 tenure-track faculty in twenty-four departments, programs, and centers, the College of Arts and Humanities was the largest and arguably most complex academic unit on the UMCP campus, generating over a quarter of all credits offered by the university. When I arrived at College Park in 1989, a year before the onset of the crisis, the college already faced challenges. Although its budget had increased during the late 1980s, its aspirations far exceeded its grasp. Thus many of its operations were dependent on "soft" funding of one kind or another, and several of its programs had incurred large debts. More importantly, the university had just adopted a new core curriculum that mandated more coursework in the arts and humanities and smaller classes with a greater emphasis on active learning. As dean, I worried about the college's ability to implement the new curriculum, even before the onset of the recession. My worries naturally deepened as the recession and resulting budget reductions began.
At the very beginning of the crisis, I began a broad "conversation" with faculty and staff throughout the college. In discussions with the college's chairs and directors, with its elected collegiate council, with its Academic Planning Advisory Committee, and in a speech to its annual fall assembly, I emphasized the seriousness of the crisis and the necessity for making hard choices. We could not avoid making decisions, I argued. The challenge was to make them in ways that were consistent with our own values and aspirations, to shape our own destiny.
In the months that followed, we implemented the programmatic review mandated by the university. We began with recommendations from the departments, which were then reviewed by a college-wide committee of faculty and staff working within the guidelines prepared by the campus, we made some very difficult decisions. We sought to protect our best programs while honoring our instructional obligations to the campus.
We sought to accomplish this goal by recommending a series of highly selective reductions that would eventually lead to the elimination of two large departments. Both departments (Housing and Design; Radio, Television, and Film) had many fine faculty members and were popular among students. But neither program was among our most academically distinguished. Neither was viewed as central to the mission of a liberal arts college. Neither contributed courses to the core (or general studies) curriculum. Nor, for that matter, was it possible for students majoring in other departments to take electives in these programs. Reducing them, we believed, was preferable to lowering the quality of our best programs and imperiling our ability to meet our fundamental instructional obligations as a liberal arts college.
The college was able over the next eighteen months to meet almost 40 percent of its overall budget reductions through cuts in these two units. Both units had vacant lines that were easily sacrificed. Both units had large operating budgets that could be cut. Both units had funds to hire temporary and part-time faculty that could also be recovered. Tenured faculty in the two units reluctantly supported the elimination of the programs. Almost all of them found congenial homes in new departments. The transfer of these faculty members, moreover, provided a second form of "savings" to the college. So long as these faculty taught in their original departments, they could provide no seats for students seeking to fulfill their general education requirements or for students seeking electives in the liberal arts. In their new departments, however, the faculty members now offered courses that were now available to students throughout the university. To put it another way, their teaching effort was "reallocated" to other departments where it now contributed to meeting some of the college's primary instructional obligations.
I don't want to understate the pain and disappointment that were felt by faculty, staff, and students in both programs. These cuts, however, enabled the college to protect its core programs, recruit at least some new faculty, increase the racial and gender diversity of its faculty, and proceed with the implementation of its plan to connect all faculty and staff to the campus computer network.
The college still faces many challenges. Budgets are tight and financial discipline remains the order of the day. But we have emerged from the crisis of the past three years far stronger than anyone might have predicted. For our college, at least, making "hard choices" paid off.