What areas would you recommend a budget cut for a university department?

Question

Department expected to make a 20% budget cut. what info do you need to effectively propose a cut and what would be your approach to a proposal? they have £3m in research funding, offer 12 courses, with 8 counting towards an undergraduate degree

Answer 1

We went through 2% budget cuts last year, which were very painful because in many departments, 90% of the budget was tied up in faculty salaries, which in the case of tenured professors, could not be changed. That meant that the 2% became 80 or 90% in some cases. I can't even imagine 20% - that would have meant firing tenured faculty for us, which would have put us in trouble with the AAUP.

You need to start with knowledge of the mission and strategic plan of both the university and the department, and the things to be eliminated should be those most distantly related to those. For example, if your major goal is research excellence, you want to do as little to disturb that as possible. If the university is focused on diversity, regardless of whether you personally consider that important or not, they won't easily accept your reducing funding for diversity programmes.

Probably the biggest impact for us was with eliminating part-time faculty salaries. Faculty will have to have larger classes (or students will have a harder time getting into classes), but it will have less of a long-term impact than anything with a direct effect on your permanent faculty and will not kill their research programmes. Everyone cut out extras - no more food at meetings, for example. We stopped paying for association memberships. When it came to reducing expenditures on research, we looked at what would have the least impact overall. For example, we made sure that our junior people would have the money they needed in order to be able to progress, or we would lose them. More senior people, except for those who were most vulnerable, had their travel money cut.

I will say that the departments which did this best were those which involved the faculty in the process in selective decisions. For example, you can't usually ask them which faculty members' work should be supported and which should not (everyone will become defensive about his/her own work), but if you don't know which of several student programmes is more important to them, you can ask them. The more they feel they were involved in the process, the less upset they will be by it.

Also, if the cuts are expected to be temporary, include a plan for restoration of resources. There is a big difference between taking on a few more students for a year or two, or knowing that from this point forward, your classes will be bigger. Or thinking that the funding for your research is being eliminated, rather than thinking of it as being delayed. Faculty may believe that the goal is the eventual redistribution of funds when funding is restored, so you need to reassure them about how things will be done when the money reappears. You may also make explicit your plans for replacing the money. I was actually in central administration last year when we went through this, but had I been department chair, I would have looked at what we might have approached donors or applied for grants to cover, rather than just looking at the cuts. That could have given assurance to the department that we were being resourceful, rather than just punitive!

Answer 2

no longer probably, for the main area particularly properly different than while Congress would not hear to the Pentagon and proceed classes that they do no longer choose and cancel classes that they do choose. confident, a 5% cut back above spending for the endured wars is purely too plenty. I observed first hand what occurred the final time that a Democrat desperate our protection rigidity develop into too vast, 8 years later some terrorists flew into homes killing greater or less 3000 people. previous to that we had the united statesCole, embassy bombings, Somalia, the German night membership bombing of our protection rigidity, and what began the excellent ball of wax develop into the 1st international commerce midsection bombing in 1993.

Answer 3

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They say that stone sculpture is a matter of chipping away what is un-necessary to reveal what is necessary. So, I would ascertain for myself what is necessary.

* I would keep in mind everyone's point of view
* Treat the cut as though it were your money, and decide where you want to spend it most, trim the rest

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