Thoughts from the Faculty Senate President regarding UTK Budget Hearings Louis Gross - March 14, 2007 Having sat through almost all the Campus budget hearings this year, and having sat through similar ones for many of the past few years, a summary of my views seemed appropriate to provide for faculty who have not participated. 1. Regarding the budget hearing process, though I concur with long-standing criticism that such an incremental-based request format (e.g. units presenting requests for additional resources based upon their needs, rather than providing a more complete overview of their current budget) is not very useful by itself for planning, I feel quite strongly that this process is useful. It provides (a) a somewhat standardized method for units that rarely interact to learn about each others major goals, (b) a fairly transparent means for faculty to both obtain information about detailed operations of units and ask questions of unit leaders in an open session, and (c) the potential for new connections and shared objectives to be developed. If the format of these hearings is to be changed in the future, I strongly urge that these useful aspects be preserved. 2. There are very real needs for additional resources essentially everywhere. The current plan for funding for next year from the Governor's budget provides little hope that significant additional resources will be either forthcoming from State funds, or feasible for us to obtain from tuition increases. UTK has very rarely carried out any formal effort to prioritize among its many programs in order to re-allocate resources. Even when this was attempted (e.g. the Review and Redirection effort of 3 years ago) the resultant resource reallocations had minimal impact. Given the oft-stated goal of AAU membership within the next decade, a plan to reallocate resources seems essential. The campus administration should be expected to provide such a plan, with mechanisms included for faculty comments and inputs. Saying we need more of "xxx" to get into AAU does little without a plan for how to get "xxx". 3. Hiring high-cost stars a la Governors Chairs is simply not a feasible major method to build towards AAU status. The individuals needed are too desirable elsewhere, we cannot afford enough of them to make a significant advance feasible (e.g we already tried this route with the Distinguished Scientist program which though successful in some ways did not get us to AAU level), and the required committment of space and new positions puts severe constraints on our ability to build in other areas. A far more efficient method to build towards AAU status is to focus on additional young faculty - hire well, adequately support those we hire, and we will move towards AAU status. It is the faculty who matter far more than anything else in this regard - set our sights high on faculty recruitment and we'll eventually succeed. It is here that a more pro-active policy on spousal/partner accomodation is not only needed but essential. 4. Regarding the hiring of new faculty at higher salaries leading to inversions, it is penny wise and pound foolish to not give our recently hired non-tenured faculty the small additional salary incements needed to maintain their salaries above those of the more recently hired. We invest tremendous resources (both in the time committment of faculty and staff for the search process, and funding associated with searches and start-up) when we hire. If we've hired well, then it makes sense to do everything feasible to keep the 5. Regarding salary compression for faculty at higher ranks, we really need a consistent policy on this that faculty are made aware of. This could be what it was for a while here (e.g. leave whenever you want - we will not make any attempt to match offers) or it could be what appears to be the more recent policy in some units (e.g. if you get a written offer for a non-administrative position from a comparable or "better" institution, some attempt will be made to increase compensation to match) or it could be something else. Whatever it is should be decided either centrally or by Colleges and made clear to all faculty. Though I don't think it is good for one Dean to have one policy on this and another Dean to have another one, I think that is up to the Provost as to how much he wishes to decentralize. I think complaints about compression will be more feasibly addressed by having a firm, stated policy such as stating that compression will be dealt with by matching competitive offers. As it stands it is hit or miss and the past policy regarding not matching other offers is still subscribed to by some on campus. Regarding the issue of not matching offers to faculty from other institutions for adminisitrative positions, I don't think this is very forward-looking from the perspective of losing leadership potential here. If we should be raising our own leaders then should we not view such offers as a goad to keep our own best future leaders? Hiring administrative leadership from outside is almost surely more expensive than hiring internally. 6. The gradual move to in-sourcing custodial seems to be uniformly appealing to all involved, even if the salaries are not as high as some might wish, due to the fringe benefits provided. Though it is not affordable to do this all at once, I have found that the past suggestions by the Budget and Planning Committee to do this and the plans by the central adminstration to carry it out, to be one of the most effective talking points about how UT has responded to charges that we do not pay a "living wage" to some workers. The program should be continued at as fast a pace as feasible. 7. It is far from clear why one unit is allowed to tack on significant additional fees for a degree, keeping these additional fees in their own College not centrally, while others are not. Business is not at all unique in supporting a large fraction of the College budget from non-traditional student sources - so does Engineering. It is not clear why only Business should be allowed to tack on an additional fee and keep it. A very large fraction of Engineerings graduate student support is from external sources. Having a separate fee as Business has would provide a way to better support their College using a funding stream they have become very proficient at developing (grant and contracts). At any rate, there is clear need for a policy as to under what circumstances fees similar to those in Business can be added and retunred to the generating unit. 8. The issue of what fee-waivers are to be used for needs to be articulated - if it really is ONLY for those teaching (as stated by the Chancellor), then this has major impact on units which have needs for assistants other than classroom teaching. If such a change is to be done, it must be articulated with a rationale for any differnces given. For example, the Senate GA does not teach, but gets a fee waiver, as do students in several Colleges. 9. It is clear that we really need better data. When there is basic disagreement between Deans and the campus Budget office about even as simple an issue as to how many full-time faculty we have, there is a real problem. No one trusts the numbers provided, not because they are "wrong" necessarily, but because the rules by which they are calculated are not clear. Now that we have IR reporting to campus, I strongly urge that each College have available for the Budget Hearings the same detailed budget information provided for many years by Engineering.