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[engineer_adrift]

So after the fat is gone, it seems to me that there are basically three ways to continue cutting budgets.

1.  Salami slice: everyone gets the same cut.  Politically the easiest.
2.  Penalize the weak programs.  Cut weaker lines, reinforce successful ones, concentrate on 'core' and 'excellent'.  No fun if you are the 'weak' program, prone to much screaming, not always consensus on who is weak.  
3.  Penalize the (few) strong programs.  Who can best stand the cuts and still survive?  Shepherd the (many) weak programs through tough times to bloom again later.  (I know, mixed metaphor.  -.5)  But at the cost of growing the stronger programs.  

My school seems to have settled on #3.  

What's going on at other schools?  Is there a fourth or fifth way?

[helpful]

You cut budgets in order to balance them, right? Why not increase revenue instead? Charge for the use of the bathroom. Charge for the use of the hallway. Go over an inventory of what people get for free; then charge for each one of those things.  User pay rules!

You think it will cost to administer? Nah! Just give everyone a unique bar code they have to use to enter and leave the department; leave and enter their offices, etc. etc. Simple! If they are employees/faculty, the cost is deducted from their pay. If they are students, the costs are added to their tuition.

I wonder why the Governor of Wisconsin hasn't thought of this easy answer to his budget woes.

[madhatter]

#3 is my least favorite strategy. By cutting the strong, you save the weak and push the strong down toward mediocre. A few rounds of this strategy and it's no longer apparent why your entire institution is worthy of survival.

[glowdart]

I know of two different schools that decided to cut down on electricity costs by going through and removing half of the working lightbulbs on campus...and then they threw them all out.  

[engineer_adrift]

You cut budgets in order to balance them, right? Why not increase revenue instead?

We have actually been scrambling to raise revenue through a variety of methods, but it isn't enough to compensate for the loss in core funding. So back to the original question.

[helpful]

Actually, there is probably revenue your department is foregoing that is going to the administration. Ask for a full accounting of the tuition that students are paying. How much is paying for inordinate administrative salaries or functions?

Department and faculty based budgetting is just a way for admin folks to avoid looking at their own budgets.

[engineer_adrift]

Actually, there is probably revenue your department is foregoing that is going to the administration. Ask for a full accounting of the tuition that students are paying. How much is paying for inordinate administrative salaries or functions?

Department and faculty based budgetting is just a way for admin folks to avoid looking at their own budgets.

True, but still not enough to avoid cuts across campus.  So back to the question: how are / how should such cuts that reach academic programs be allocated? 1,2,3? or are there other ways that are being used?

[daniel_von_flanagan]

#3 is my least favorite strategy. By cutting the strong, you save the weak and push the strong down toward mediocre. A few rounds of this strategy and it's no longer apparent why your entire institution is worthy of survival.

It is hard to get agreement as to how to judge "weak", moreover weak programs are often cheap so you don't save much money.- DvF

[msparticularity]

Has there already been really substantive program review to look for overlapping areas that could be consolidated and/or actual redundancies? My former institution actually had three different nutrition programs in three different colleges, and really and honestly they weren't that different, despite the supposedly varied underlying fields.

Also, have the various programs been considered not only in terms of numbers for their own majors and grad programs, but also for their contributions to other areas, including service courses and/or essential training for those hoping to go on to grad school? Language programs, for example, have been getting the ax in a lot of places, but this has very substantial impact upon grad school admissions, so it seems pretty short-sighted to me. (Which, upon preview, probably relates to DvF's comment.) 

And finally, have the various grant-funded activities been examined closely to see whether they are actually paying their own way? There are way too many of these that actually end up costing money because of the commitments in infrastructure and/or staffing that they require--despite the supposed prestige and increases to funding.

[zharkov]

I think the "fourth or fifth way" is to have a clear and specific strategy of what the institution plans to be in 5 and 10 years, then allocate resources to implement that strategy.  But such a strategy must, of course, include plans involving revenue, ideally revenue growth.  Decisions that seem right for this year -- door 1, 2, and 3 -- may be the worst thing when taking a long view.

Number 3 seems like killing the goose that laid the golden egg. 

Professional accreditors may not let your school cut at will without risking professional accreditation.

You may want to read Prioritizing Academic Programs and Services by Dickeson.

[engineer_adrift]

Professional accreditors may not let your school cut at will without risking professional accreditation.

At the risk of outing myself, I asked the Engineering Accreditation Commission at the ABET meetings this month if they were going to take a stand on cuts to engineering programs.  They said it was not in their lane. 

I asked a similar question of WASC at their evaluator training, and they passed, too.

You may want to read Prioritizing Academic Programs and Services by Dickeson.

Thanks. 

[daniel_von_flanagan]

At the risk of outing myself, I asked the Engineering Accreditation Commission at the ABET meetings this month if they were going to take a stand on cuts to engineering programs.  They said it was not in their lane.

Accreditors are useless w/r to program cuts.  In most fields, you can run an accreditable undergraduate major (which is all they care about) with a very tiny faculty.  Even in Engineering.

You might find some advocacy documents at the IEEE.  My professional organizations (AMS, ASA, and ACM) all have such documents.

However - just to reiterate my point above - in my experience faculty (especially in STEM fields) are not very good at identifying "weak" programs on their campus.  I think that some of us like to use metrics (difficulty of major, relative grade inflation, strength of undergraduates) which favor our fields.  Having been through similar exercises on my campus, I know that our Engineering program is inferior (based on national ranking) to some of the fields (mainly in the Humanities and Social Sciences) people like to talk about cutting, meanwhile when tuition share and classroom costs are factored in Engineering is in the red while subjects like Slavic Languages and Ethnic Studies are in the black. - DvF

[amlithist]

I know of two different schools that decided to cut down on electricity costs by going through and removing half of the working lightbulbs on campus...and then they threw them all out.  

They seriously did this at our school this spring (don't know if they threw them away, but they did come to every office and classroom with light meters, and removed fluorescent tubes til at the minimum acceptable reading). 

Two weeks later, one of the staff electricians came to every room to install stickers on the switchplates, reminding us to turn off the lights when leaving the room.  (The stickers cover the entire plate, so the screws had to be removed--according to local code and union rules, this means a union electrician has to do it.)

So, you pull out relatively efficient light tubes to save money (and maybe, but most likely, tossed them in the trash) to save money, then put in fancy printed stickers (complete with college logo on each) that cost probably 50-70 cents each, for literally THOUSANDS of light switches across 4 campuses, and paid a union electrician some $30/hour to put the stickers on (taking at least 5 minutes each, plus the time to walk to the next one, unlock the room, lock it back up, record on his log what room he'd done, etc.)?

And you're telling me how poor we are, and how my faculty need to cut our photocopying to the bone?

Seriously? 

[august_leo]

I thought glowdart was kidding.

Now I'm speechless.

(I think my school is doing #2, it's hard to tell because it's all such a mess).

[glowdart]

I thought glowdart was kidding.

Now I'm speechless.

(I think my school is doing #2, it's hard to tell because it's all such a mess).

Nope.  

I like having company in speechlessness.  It is a quiet place.  Simmering with rage, but quiet... especially since the hum of the florescent lights is cut in half.