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Twin Cities Chapter
Statement on CLA Instructional Cuts |
Statement on CLA Instructional Cuts, April 25, 2023
The College of Liberal Arts (CLA) recently informed department chairs that the instructional budget that pays contingent faculty and graduate students (TA/UI) for the next fiscal year will be cut ~11%, and, for some departments, up to 50%. These are just the latest in a series of cuts to instructional budgets in the College and will be catastrophic for our undergraduate and graduate programs. Their scale— approximately $3.4 million—will adversely affect and possibly shutter programs. The timing of their announcement—on Friday, April 14, after registration had already opened and teaching assignments to incoming graduate students had already been made—has left departments across the college scrambling to meet their commitments to our students. To balance their budgets and fulfill funding guarantees to incoming graduate students, departments will cancel courses in which undergraduate students have already enrolled and raise the caps in remaining courses. The canceled courses will be those taught by those most precariously employed at our University—faculty on short-term contracts who are already paid a poverty wage despite their essential contributions to undergraduate education in the College. Our chapter’s One Faculty campaign has stressed that the College and the University should be moving in the direction of providing better pay and more stable contracts for contingent faculty at the University. We therefore condemn in the strongest terms balancing the budget on their backs.
Cutting the budget that supports contingent faculty and graduate students devalues the educational experience of undergraduates and diminishes the range and depth of course offerings that drew students to CLA in the first place. While missteps by the CLA administration have contributed to this disastrous state of affairs, the central administration cannot wash its hands of this matter. Colleges have extremely limited control over their annual budgets. On the revenue side, central administration sets tuition, tells colleges how many students they may admit, and determines their allocation of state funds. On the expenditure side, central administration requires colleges to fork over a significant portion of their budgets in cost pools—approximately 35 per cent of CLA’s revenue is clawed back to central administration through this process—and to contribute a variable proportion of their revenues to fund central’s strategic objectives. University administrators have not used these tithes to bolster instructional spending, which has declined precipitously at the U since 2008. Almost 30% of University resources were devoted to instruction in 2008. Since then, that number hasn’t risen above 23%, even as the U’s overall budget has grown and administrators’ salaries have soared.(1) At the same time, tuition has risen and the U’s endowment has grown substantially. Undergraduate students at the U, as a result, are being asked to pay more for an educational experience that university administrators are actively eroding. CLA is the largest college in the University and the largest liberal arts college in Minnesota. Our students deserve a world-class education and our employees deserve stable and decently remunerated jobs.
The legislature has an essential role to play. The state’s chronic disinvestment in higher education has contributed to both rising tuition and eroding instructional budgets. In 1990, 39 per cent of the U’s annual budget came from recurring state funds; today it is just 17 per cent, placing Minnesota 20th in the nation in per capita investment in higher education, behind Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee (MinnPost, 17 February 2023). With a huge budget surplus at its disposal, it’s time for the state to reinvest in the instructional mission of the University.
Sincerely,
Sumanth Gopinath, President, AAUP-UMTC
Heather Holcombe, Vice President, AAUP-UMTC
Teri Caraway, Treasurer, AAUP-UMTC
Gopalan Nadathur, Secretary, AAUP-UMTC
Nathaniel Mills, Member-at-Large, AAUP-UMTC
Ruth Shaw, Member-at-Large, AAUP-UMTC
(1) Calculations of instructional spending are based on figures in Board of Regents dockets for the annual June budget meeting.
Cutting the budget that supports contingent faculty and graduate students devalues the educational experience of undergraduates and diminishes the range and depth of course offerings that drew students to CLA in the first place. While missteps by the CLA administration have contributed to this disastrous state of affairs, the central administration cannot wash its hands of this matter. Colleges have extremely limited control over their annual budgets. On the revenue side, central administration sets tuition, tells colleges how many students they may admit, and determines their allocation of state funds. On the expenditure side, central administration requires colleges to fork over a significant portion of their budgets in cost pools—approximately 35 per cent of CLA’s revenue is clawed back to central administration through this process—and to contribute a variable proportion of their revenues to fund central’s strategic objectives. University administrators have not used these tithes to bolster instructional spending, which has declined precipitously at the U since 2008. Almost 30% of University resources were devoted to instruction in 2008. Since then, that number hasn’t risen above 23%, even as the U’s overall budget has grown and administrators’ salaries have soared.(1) At the same time, tuition has risen and the U’s endowment has grown substantially. Undergraduate students at the U, as a result, are being asked to pay more for an educational experience that university administrators are actively eroding. CLA is the largest college in the University and the largest liberal arts college in Minnesota. Our students deserve a world-class education and our employees deserve stable and decently remunerated jobs.
The legislature has an essential role to play. The state’s chronic disinvestment in higher education has contributed to both rising tuition and eroding instructional budgets. In 1990, 39 per cent of the U’s annual budget came from recurring state funds; today it is just 17 per cent, placing Minnesota 20th in the nation in per capita investment in higher education, behind Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee (MinnPost, 17 February 2023). With a huge budget surplus at its disposal, it’s time for the state to reinvest in the instructional mission of the University.
Sincerely,
Sumanth Gopinath, President, AAUP-UMTC
Heather Holcombe, Vice President, AAUP-UMTC
Teri Caraway, Treasurer, AAUP-UMTC
Gopalan Nadathur, Secretary, AAUP-UMTC
Nathaniel Mills, Member-at-Large, AAUP-UMTC
Ruth Shaw, Member-at-Large, AAUP-UMTC
(1) Calculations of instructional spending are based on figures in Board of Regents dockets for the annual June budget meeting.