Budget cuts strain hiring efforts, work loads

By Brian Mattmiller

WHITEWATER—Few in higher education would argue that quality education starts with attracting and keeping talented faculty, and creating a personalized learning environment for students.  Ironically, these two benchmarks of quality may be most sensitive to state budget cuts.

In the marketing department, for example, work loads are complicated by an explosion in student popularity. Lois Smith, chair of the marketing department, said the department has grown from 170 majors five years ago to 269 this year, a 58 percent increase. Enrollment in the department’s vaunted MBA program has also increased dramatically.

At the same time, market forces are causing the department to lose faculty positions. Last spring, when two faculty resigned to take higher paying positions out of state, the department could only afford to hire one replacement because of the lack of funding for competitive salaries, Smith said.

“The impact of this combination of reduced faculty and increased student demand has caused us to change the way we serve our students,” she said.

That has meant more large-format marketing principles courses. These entry-level courses used to average about 45 students per class, but have ballooned to more than 100 students in some cases. “Obviously, the kind of education students have in these classes is not as personal or interactive as they would receive in smaller classes, no matter how excellent the instructor,” Smith said.

To manage enrollment, the department also raised standards for declaring a marketing minor, contributing to a drop of minors from 172 students in 2002 to 138 students today. Smith noted that the change “does not serve our campus community well in that we are limiting access to information and to careers that students want.”

Faculty recruiting a tough sell

Faculty hiring is especially compromised by the budget cuts and the lack of salary increases. Chris Clements, dean of the College of Business and Economics, said the cuts have exacerbated a decade-long trend of having to collapse positions to find enough money to make one reasonable faculty offer.

“For the last three years, we have been able to fill half of our faculty positions with faculty before running out of money,” Clements said. “The rest we fill with academic staff. Next year, three academic staff positions have no funding left in them. We have to dry them up or find ‘soft money’ (grant money) for one year.”

Money is not the only reason good faculty leave, Clements said. Regional comprehensive universities like UW-Whitewater place great expectations on faculty for research and service productivity, yet offer less relief in classroom workload. Many faculty look to find a better professional balance elsewhere.

“We’ve just got to hope they either love the location or love the campus,” she said.

Retention woes continue

John Heyer, dean of the College of Arts and Communication, has noticed two new trends in faculty hiring. The first is that leading candidates in many searches are declining to even come for interviews after learning of the salary limits and teaching loads in Wisconsin. And for the first time in his 24 years of administration, Heyer said he is losing his top candidates to schools in the South, including South Carolina, Louisiana and Mississippi.

“That never happened to me before three years ago,” he said.

Last fall, Heyer lost one of his most distinguished faculty members, who was in the peak of her career. Former music department chair Janet Barrett accepted a position on the music faculty at Northwestern University. Clearly the new job was a great opportunity, Heyer said. But as a dean, he said he is left with little ammunition in trying to keep faculty stars like Barrett — and he fears losing more of the same leadership and experience.

“My philosophy of leadership is that you hire the best people possible, and you do everything you can to keep them,” said Heyer. “The prospects for that do not look good right now.”

Teaching loads increase

Increased work loads are another reality of the budget cuts.  To preserve course sections with fewer faculty and staff, the university adopted a “5-4” teaching plan that requires academic staff to teach nine courses per year, rather than eight. Academic departments are adapting to the change, but some staff worry about maintaining high quality with additional students.

The department of languages and literatures is one such example. By teaching four classes per semester, a load that was lower than many UW System campuses required, the department helped establish a reputation for excellence, including a prestigious Regents Teaching Award in 1999. But with the fifth course, staff members in languages and literatures are now responsible for about 120 students during that semester, up from 100 a year ago.

Patrick Moran, an instructor in the department, said most English composition courses require four written essays each semester, which means an instructor will be evaluating and grading approximately 480 essays that semester. “The quality of learning, the development of ideas and the amount of interaction with students are all reduced,” Moran said. “We can cram more concepts into fewer assigned essays, but it really goes against the incremental development of good writing skills.”

Moran is not alone in concern over how workload issues will impact the quality of student writing at UW-Whitewater. A petition signed by more than 50 faculty and academic staff was delivered to the UW-Whitewater administration in early January.

George Savage, chair of the department, said the increased academic staff work load affects faculty as well. To focus on teaching, academic staff no longer have time for service work that was once a shared responsibility. Work on curriculum committees and the superior writing awards now falls almost entirely to faculty, he said.

But of all the perspectives on state budget cut impacts at UW-Whitewater, the most telling ones may never be heard, said Chancellor Jack Miller.

“We’re always concerned about maintaining quality education for the students we do admit,” Miller said. “But I’m also concerned about what happened to those students who weren’t enrolled last year due to budget cuts. Our decisions were geared toward reducing access in order to protect quality and options for the students already enrolled. Perhaps the biggest pain felt is from people who aren’t here to express it.”

Access is one of the cornerstones of public universities in Wisconsin, Miller said.  If the trend of cutting university budgets continues, campuses will have to continue making unfortunate choices between access and quality.

Brian Mattmiller is the director of news and public affairs at UW-Whitewater.