Editor’s Note: This article is a summary of a larger article that appeared in Works. For the complete article and citations click here.
Higher fees, larger class sizes, fewer faculty
In 2010, the University of Cincinnati implemented a new budgeting system known as Performance Based Budgeting (“PBB”). According to the PBB model, each college must meet a pre-determined budget deficit through growth or cost-saving measures, or some combination of both. Advocates of PBB believe it ensures transparency and accountability.
PBB is transparent in the sense that reports are readily available and in that there is a clear formula by which indirect expenditures are calculated and assigned to each college, however, it is also a very blunt instrument that generates many negative impacts for students and faculty.
The PBB Process
Each college must submit a threshold plan (“Plan”) for how it will meet its target and where the “cost savings” and “efficiencies” will come from. Several months ago, the UC Chapter of the AAUP obtained via a public records request copies of these plans. Undeniably, the PBB model appears to have inspired some measure of creativity and innovation among the colleges in the development of new degree programs, as well as prompting hard looks at potentially wasteful or duplicative administrative and academic expenditures. However, these plans also make clear that PBB has exacted significant “costs” on faculty and students:
- Colleges that cannot “grow” their way out of the problem are particularly penalized.
- Increased class sizes, unfilled faculty vacancies, and increased reliance on teaching assistants are frequently touted as solutions.
- Tuition and/or fee increases are used to generate “revenue growth.”
- The impact on the student and faculty experience varies from college to college.
The following is a look at PBB’s impacts on some colleges within UC. AAUP-UC respectfully acknowledges that faculty and administrators in all colleges have expended tremendous efforts within the PBB framework toward improving their programs, creating new degrees and certificates, and other innovations. The following discussion is not intended to diminish these efforts, but to bring to light the “collateral damage” that PBB has exacted on faculty and students.
Law
In its 2012 Plan, UC’s College of Law (“Law”) noted that increasing enrollment was not an attractive option. An increase in enrollment could result in a decrease in median LSAT scores and a resulting decrease in U.S. News and World Report rankings. Law’s ability to attract and retain quality students and faculty is intrinsically related to these ratings.
Law thus proposed to meet its goal through a small increase in enrollment and a 6% tuition increase, noting that the former would have a “potential adverse impact on [U.S. News and World Report] rankings.” The Board of Trustees subsequently approved the Plan and a 6% tuition increase for the College of Law in 2011.
The following year the dean informed then-Provost Santa Ono that the “College’s administration and faculty have great reservations” about a scenario that would involve meeting a 7% budget cut by increasing tuition by 6% and growing enrollment from 409 to 419:
“Our current students already are shaken by the depressed legal job market and rising debt loads. A further increase in tuition, to support internal redistribution objectives of the University, asks much from them if no other adverse consequences were involved. But the College’s median LSAT will drop from 160 to 158, and there would be every reason to forecast a rankings downturn. No discipline is more rankings-sensitive than law, and a drop in rankings will be received in many quarters as a decline in quality and a depreciation in the value of the degree conferred.”
Despite Law’s concerns, the Board of Trustees approved another 6% tuition increase in 2012.
The 2015 plan, although it does not contain the same urgency, demonstrates the painful and at times even absurd measures to which Law has resorted in order to meet its PBB goals:
- “Eliminated senior banquet for graduating students”—“cost savings” of $10,000
- “Eliminated several orientation lunches for new students—“cost savings” of $6,000
CCM
The imposition of PBB prompted early and repeated pleas for relief from the College Conservatory of Music (“CCM”). For example, in 2010 the dean responded to a request for a 20% budget cut, indicating that growth in enrollment was not feasible because CCM is “constrained by space, as we are already at a significantly higher enrollment than our facility was built for just twelve years ago.” Further, the dean explained that cutting faculty positions was not an option “because of the amount of one-on-one instruction as well as the specialization of such instruction (a clarinet faculty member cannot teach a flute major, for example).” Concluding, the dean stated: “I hope it is clear that to make the cuts in this plan would be a suicidal move on CCM’s Part.”
In succeeding years, CCM faced smaller deficits, but in 2014 this still necessitated a new $500 per year fee for new undergraduate and graduate students.
UC Libraries
UC Libraries (“Libraries”) has consistently alerted the administration to the impacts of the long-term decline in its investment in the library system. In its 2011 Plan, Libraries noted that its library staff had been “already reduced by 35%.” UC Libraries has also continuously alerted the university of its sharply declining ranking in the annual report produced by the Association of Research Libraries (“ARL”), a “nonprofit organization of 124 research libraries at comprehensive, research institutions in the US and Canada.” In its 2015 Plan, UC Libraries noted its current ranking of #72 ARL, down from #52 in 2003.
CECH
In 2012, the College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services (“CECH) noted:
“A decade ago the student to full-time faculty ratio was 21 to 1 and now this ratio is 39 to 1. […] Without question, the faculty and staff in this college are doing more with less and doing it exceptionally well.”
Clearly, the CECH 2012 Plan did not cause significant alarm or prompt the administration to direct that CECH change course, because in its 2013 Plan, CECH again trumpeted the disproportionate growth in student enrollment in relation to faculty hiring:
“One of the most important indicators of our cost reduction efforts is the comparison of our student growth to our faculty growth. Student enrollment has grown from 4,008 in 2006 to 5,446 in Fall 2011, an increase of 53%. Faculty has only grown 6.6%. Students have outgrown faculty by 798%, resulting in a 30% increase in our student-to-faculty ratio.”
A&S – Cutting Closer to the Bone
The McMicken College of Arts and Science’s (“A&S”) Plan paints a picture of a college in which financial pressures are prompting changes that are detrimental to students and faculty alike.
In multiple years, A&S cites increased class sizes in its lists of cost savings and efficiencies. In its 2011 Plan, A&S informed the administration that class sizes would be increased and/or enrollment caps raised in the following departments: Communications, English, Political Science, Psychology and Women’s Studies. In its 2013 Plan, A&S stated “We have increased class size virtually across the board.” Again, in its 2014 Plan, A&S noted that it had “increased class size” in Chemistry, Communications, Judaic Studies, Physics and Psychology. These increased class sizes are clearly detrimental to students and negatively impact the learning environment.
A&S’s Plans also indicate negative impacts on its graduate students, including higher teaching loads and potentially greater debt burdens. In its 2012 Plan, A&S proposed to meet its goal in part by reducing funding for graduate assistants by $300,000. In its 2015 Plan, A&S indicated that its Biology Department “doubled TA workload in Sophomore Bio and cut in half the number of TA’s needed (14 to 7),” with a “savings” of $70,000.
DAAP
Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (“DAAP”) painted a bleak picture of its situation in 2012:
“Currently DAAP does not have sufficient qualified faculty and staff in the schools, the Business Office, the technical service areas, and Student Affairs. The School of Design, with four programs and over 1000 students, operates with one secretary. […] Further cuts will have a devastating impact on our already ‘stressed’ operation and begin to dismantle the integrity of our ‘DAAP brand.’”
DAAP accompanied its 2014 Plan with a presentation with slides showing 120 students crowded into one Architecture and Interior Design Studio, as well as overflowing trash bins with the caption “scrap pours into the halls.”
Conclusion
PBB is a blunt instrument focused on short-term, year-to-year gains and losses, and is often oblivious to long-term needs. The means by which colleges often have addressed the financial challenges imposed upon them—increasing tuition, fees, and class sizes, while keeping faculty hiring at a slow pace—are not beneficial for either students or faculty. PBB’s end result unfortunately has been a shift of resources away from the university’s colleges, as well as the core academic mission and its traditional focus on students and faculty.