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[larryc]

Is anyone else sick to death of budget fights, program eliminations, and layoffs at their institution?

I have a joint position at a university and a state agency. I was hired in 2008 to build up a graduate program linking the two. Then the economy fell apart. It seems like a long time ago and I guess it was. But in our state the economy has hardly improved, revenues are down again, and we lurch from crisis to crisis every 4-6 months. We are in our fourth year of this.

The last few weeks I have simultaneously been fighting the closure of the university graduate program and the defunding of the state agency for which I work. The thing is that we fought both those battles last year and the year before. Our victories are temporary and come at great cost. Our defeats are permanent. The state agency  is a cubicle ghost town. Good people who did good work, so many of them, gone. Another was laid off yesterday and cleaned out her desk this morning. We could have our staff meetings in a broom closet.

My own job is safe--I got tenure in the spring and the worse that could happen is I teach undergrads full time with a heavy load of surveys. The same job I had in Missouri, but in the region where I prefer to live. But dammit I am so sick of this constant rear-guard fight that we can never win.

[conjugate]

I think we all are, though I concede it's not so bad where I work.

After my first year here, there were no more furlough days, and rumor has it that state revenues are on the way up.  I don't know when or if there will be raises again, but we're keeping our fingers crossed.

[marfa]

I work for a state school in Wisconsin.  'Nuff said?

I didn't go to Our Leader's state of the institution talk this week.  It's usually a pep rally, and I couldn't handle that and if it was more honest, well, that would be depressing too.

So I sat here reading Jedi Mind tricks to psych myself up.  What would I do without you all??

[mountainguy]

My sympathies, Larry. What's scary is that your state is more liberal than a lot of other places. It's a bloodbath in Tea Party-controlled states.

In EagleState, there are some wackadoodles bureaucrats who think it would be just great if the universities offered Public Speaking or First-Year Writing in 200-seat hybrid sections with one instructor and an army of hourly-paid graders. So far, the people in charge realize that's a very, very dumb idea. But if the decisionmakers were ever to be appointed by a governor like Scott Walker or Rick Scott, all bets are off.

[reener06]

Yeah, our faculty haven't had raises since I got here to start grad school, 7 years ago. As a now-graduated adjunct, I just found out they will no longer hire me starting in the fall to save money (a whole 3K). And they are going to begin charging faculty 2 cents/page for copies (not including syllabi, which are done on a duplicating machine). The other place I adjunct (at 2K/course) has not increased adjunct wages in over 10 years. Our governor, in his state of the state address, just proposed cutting our budget even more.

And yeah, I'm ready to stop adjuncting and am trying to get a TT job, but the economy isn't going along with that. Meanwhile, we are cutting costs at home sharply. Hell, I'm back to using cloth diapers to save money.

I also found out a friend who was a state employee got axed in the last few months, but was able to get a new job.

[zuzu_]

My sympathies, Larry. What's scary is that your state is more liberal than a lot of other places. It's a bloodbath in Tea Party-controlled states.

In EagleState, there are some wackadoodles bureaucrats who think it would be just great if the universities offered Public Speaking or First-Year Writing in 200-seat hybrid sections with one instructor and an army of hourly-paid graders. So far, the people in charge realize that's a very, very dumb idea. But if the decisionmakers were ever to be appointed by a governor like Scott Walker or Rick Scott, all bets are off.

Liberalism does not necessarily correlate with good state finances. I live in a conservative state. Due to ongoing fiscal conservatism, our budget "crisis" involved me getting a 1.5% raise in 2008 instead of the usual 3.5%+.

I'm tend liberal in many matters, but I am grateful for the way the conservatives have handled the state finances in these parts.

[larryc]

I live in a blue state but we also have an initiative process that has been hijacked by anti-government activists. Any tax increase now has to get a super majority in a public vote. Recently Costco decided they did not like our liquor laws so they drafted their own law, hired paid signature gatherers get it on the ballot, and flooded the airwaves with ads in its support. They won. Our laws are for sale and we are paying the price.

And I do know that it is happening in many states. At a history conference last fall I heard two senior scholars exchanging greetings. The first asked "How is it going at your university?"

"Oh you know," the second replied, "I am spending the last two years of my career dismantling all the things I worked so hard to create in the last two decades. And you?"

"Same thing."

[genius_at_large]

My only faculty jobs have been in private unis and the situation isn't much better. After several years of no raises, we got one this year that almost equals inflation.

[systeme_d_]

This is exactly why I left a great tenured job at an excellent state school to start over, untenured, at a private.  (They've had COL raises and merit raises every year at my new private U.)  I saw quite clearly that even though my own job at my former public U would be safe, the battle with ax-wielding administrators and idiotic legislators would never end.

I felt bad in some ways, like I was giving up on public education in that state, and I guess in a sense I was.  But the daily, grinding, continual need to justify my own existence wore me down.  

At my new place, they think my discipline is central to their enterprise, not as a nice liberal-artsy treat that is actually quite dispensable.  What a huge freaking difference this has made for my mental health.

[alastrina]

Rick Scott is my governor. Do I need to say more?


Between him and Crist, we've lost over $100 million in state funds in the past 4 years. Whole departments and majors have either been consolidated or eliminated. Part of the staff got a 1% raise last year. I'm not part of that category though. I haven't had a raise since 2009.

[totoro]

It feels exactly the opposite over here on the other side of the world...

[spectacle]

And they are going to begin charging faculty 2 cents/page for copies .

Whaaaaaaaaaaat.  That is just insulting. 

[peitho]

New U recently sent out an exciting letter in which the governor of the state announced a generous 2% raise for the faculty in--wait for it--January 2013.   

And in a recent faculty meeting, the representative of the B of T/state liaison was asked about the possibility of raises for staff.  He stood up with his perfectly coiffed hair and his tailored 3-piece suit and retorted, "Well, we have been letting some of them work overtime.  And we paid them for the extra hours they worked."  Gosh, maybe they should pay us for letting them erase the chalkboards.

It's all quite disgusting and demoralizing.

[rebelgirl]

I live in a blue state but we also have an initiative process that has been hijacked by anti-government activists. Any tax increase now has to get a super majority in a public vote. Recently Costco decided they did not like our liquor laws so they drafted their own law, hired paid signature gatherers get it on the ballot, and flooded the airwaves with ads in its support. They won. Our laws are for sale and we are paying the price.

And I do know that it is happening in many states. At a history conference last fall I heard two senior scholars exchanging greetings. The first asked "How is it going at your university?"

"Oh you know," the second replied, "I am spending the last two years of my career dismantling all the things I worked so hard to create in the last two decades. And you?"

"Same thing."

I'm in your state and share your concern.  I had hoped that the pendulum would swing - not just here, but nationally - in a more reasonable direction.  But the laws have, as you say, been hijacked, and the Supreme Court's rulings about campaign financing have, I fear, sealed the deal - it's even more government by, for, and of those who've got the money to buy legislators than ever, and I'm not sure what can undo that. Our elected officials have no vested interest to change what enriches them.  It's grim indeed.

[marigolds]

I feel you, Larry. And I'm only a grad student.  The academia I go into -- if I ever do -- will look very different, I suspect, from the academia of the past 100 years.  I wonder if it will even be recognizable as the same system.

I'm sorry things are so awful.

Occupy higher ed?