Faculty raise budget deficit concerns at forum
Published Oct. 26, 2007
Faculty members were able to air their complaints on salaries and other budget issues during two forums this week. MU Provost Brian Foster invited 50 faculty members to attend each of the two forums, held Monday and Tuesday.
Foster said he thought the meeting was a useful venture.
"I think it's very important we get information out to people," he said.
History professor Kerby Miller said in an e-mail that he felt administrators at the meeting were trying to foster faculty support and goodwill for their efforts.
"Ideally, I suspect the administrators hoped that, when we returned to our departments after the forum and when we heard our colleagues complain bitterly about MU's situation, we would respond with pacifying noises to the effect that we had just talked with MU's top administrators who had assured us that they're doing the best they can," Miller said.
He said some issues that were raised at the forum were never actually discussed.
"Well, whenever faculty asked specific or difficult questions, we were told that ours were 'good questions' but they addressed 'complicated issues,'" Miller said.
Math professor Stephen Montgomery-Smith said he felt the meeting was meant to drum up opposition to the legislature but the legislature wasn't really the problem.
"Instead of looking at the state and asking for more money, perhaps we should be looking in ourselves to see if we're running things inefficiently," he said. "I've been looking at the way the university does things for the last five years, and I think there's a lot of fraud, waste and abuse."
Other faculty members said they felt the legislature was a major problem. Schmidt said his concerns stemmed from issues with the legislature.
"Concerns are that we are being hamstrung by the political process," he said.
Miller said he would like to see action taken to prevent these issues. He said he would like to see the political issues behind the under-funding of Missouri's higher education and the negative consequences of that for the people of Missouri.
Foster said he disagreed with Miller's perception of an attack by the legislature.
"In a certain sense, we're victims of our own success," he said. "I think it would be wrong to say this is an assault on higher education."
Foster and Provost Planning Assistant Pat Morton presented the forum. It began with a presentation by Morton that explained the university's budget for the 2009 fiscal year and faculty members asked questions and providing commentary afterward.
Foster said he thinks the opinions of the faculty are important.
"It's very useful to have a lot of perspectives represented," he said.
Morton said the total budget of campus for 2009 is just more than $1.1 billion, with more than $350 million in revenue coming from areas deemed miscellaneous. These include athletics, student life and the bookstore.
Morton said the current budget projected an estimated $7.1 million budget deficit. Foster said there had been discussions about how to deal with the deficit.
"We said we would like to come up with another $2 million in savings," he said. "We've done a lot of savings in the administration area."
He also discussed the possibility of continuing to leave vacant staff positions open, but he did say the university was going to continue looking for more savings and was not immediately in danger of losing any of its accreditation.
"A lot of the programs people are telling me that we ought to cut are profit centers," he said.
Foster said there were certainly issues, but a disaster was not imminent.
"This is a world-class university," he said.