Editorial:

Budget cuts shouldn't affect quality of education

Published Oct. 10, 2008

With the economy in its current dismal condition and state funds not looking to increase dramatically any time soon, it's unlikely that we'll be given much more money next year by the Missouri General Assembly.

Because we aren't receiving enough money from the state and state legislators passed a bill capping tuition increases at the rate of inflation, we're stuck - we have no way to bring more money in. This means we're essentially forced to find places where we can cut funding, and that isn't an easy endeavor.

The plan in place is dissatisfactory at best: defer building maintenance, raise enrollment and raise tuition (only at the rate of inflation).

Another administrative attempt to cut down on spending is Compete Missouri, a proposal that tries to make faculty salaries more competitive by hiring fewer new professors and giving salary priority to interdisciplinary positions, endowed chairs and faculty members who teach cross-listed courses.

Deferring building maintenance isn't appealing for obvious reasons. Although it refers mainly to jobs such as painting, we take pride in the campus where we learn and appreciate when our classrooms are well kept and our facilities are in working order. Raising enrollment is a questionable pursuit as just this year we had to cap the entering class and many freshmen were shipped to off-campus housing. Raising tuition won't be sufficient because legislation capped tuition at the rate of inflation. And Compete Missouri places many faculty members without tenure in uncomfortable positions where they are don't want to speak their opinions or start in-depth research for fear that their job might be the next to be cut. Stagnation of faculty member salaries has given the administration a little more dough to work with as well, but it shows little appreciation for the teachers that make MU the special institution that it is.

We understand that legislators only have so much money to work with and might not be able to allocate more in the near future. But as they look at making funding decisions and budget cuts for the next fiscal year, we want to emphasize the importance of higher education in Missouri and stress that we're already stretched thin in terms of educational funding - giving us any less money would be an abysmal mistake.

As for UM system and MU administrators, we need them to evaluate the importance of all that they spend and make the cuts where they'll hurt less. This means avoiding cutting faculty salary spending as much as possible in order to retain the qualified, experienced faculty members we already have employed and making more conscious decisions to save money in the long-run.

If administrators do find it necessary to stagnate faculty salary spending, we'd like to see them do the same for administrative salaries to save a little extra money and show that they feel that measure is really appropriate.

But that won't do nearly enough. We need wide-scale change that will accumulate a lot of money from somewhere, and one way to get there is by strongly stressing sustainability and making decisions that will conserve energy, reduce waste and save money in the long run. Little changes like printing on both sides of paper and using less paper in general are simple, but must be enforced. New construction projects should take into consideration solar power and other options that reduce unnecessary energy use.

The key to saving money is thinking in the long term, but we want to emphasize that cutting faculty salaries and causing them to take jobs elsewhere is not the way to do it. We value the quality of learning at MU, and experienced faculty members are what make the difference.