Uncommon Sense

The Newsletter of the USF Chapter of the United Faculty of Florida

(UFF is a Florida Education Association affiliate)

Volume 16, Number 1 Fall 2008

Join UFF today: visit our membership website at faculty.ourusf.org/join-uff/

Faculty Say They Are Unheard

Hundreds of USF faculty and other USF employees responded to an online UFF survey in July, largely blaming the legislature for budget cuts and expressing concerns that they had little input into the budget-cutting process and Provost Wilcox’s reorganization in Academic Affairs.
The survey results are available online (at tinyurl.com/uffsurvjul08) and represent the views of 622 total respondents, including 316 in-unit faculty, 41 in-unit professional employees, 115 other unionized USF employees, and 150 other USF employees. More than 85% of all respondents finished questions on all sections of the survey.
Respondents were solicited by the UFF biweekly e-mail newsletter during July. (If you are not currently receiving the e-mail newsletter, see the Logistics article on page 2.)

When asked about the causes of the budget crisis, faculty and staff are more likely to blame the legislature's priorities than any other factor: 88% of in-unit faculty respondents and 81% of all respondents believe that the legislature’s priorities are either a significant or key contributor to the budget crisis. USF employees understand the role of the economy, with 73% of in-unit faculty and 69% of all respondents believing that the state’s and country’s economic woes play more than a moderate role in the budget crisis.
In-unit faculty respondents are also concerned about USF’s strategic choices and management: 54% thought that USF’s strategic choices over the past decade was a more than moderate contributor to the budget crisis, and 43% thought that mismanagement at USF was a more than moderate contributor to the budget crisis.
Faculty and staff respondents believe that they did not have substantial input on budget cuts, and respondents did not believe the process was transparent: 87% of in-unit faculty respondents believe that faculty had no or marginal input on budget cuts, and 72% of in-unit faculty respondents believe that the administration either made no efforts to be open about budget-cutting choices or that communication efforts were seriously flawed.
Significant numbers of faculty and staff believe that USF could and should have made different choices in budget cutting: 50% of all respondents and 47% of in-unit faculty respondents wanted USF to use its unrestricted assets to save staff positions, and almost three of every five respondents (both faculty and all respondents) wanted USF to demote or lay off administrators to save staff positions.
Faculty in Academic Affairs are deeply troubled by the reorganization plan announced by Provost Wilcox on June 12: 41% of Academic Affairs in-unit faculty respondents disagree with the substance of the plan, 53% of those respondents have “deep concerns about the decision-making process,” 51% believe that the reorganization will either save no money or cost USF money, and 63% believe that the Provost “took advantage of the budget cuts to reorganize colleges into a structure close to what he previously thought USF should look like.”

UFF invites Michael Bérubé

Michael Bérubé will speak on Tuesday, Sept. 23, at 5:15 pm in CHE 100 on Tampa Campus. His lecture is free and open to the public; members of the USF community are especially invited to attend.

Bérubé is the Paterno Family Professor in English Literature and Science, Technology and Society at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of six books, including the award winning Life As We Know It: A Father, A Family, and an Exceptional Child and the more controversial What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts? Classroom Politics and “Bias” in Higher Education.

Bérubé has written over a hundred and fifty articles for publications ranging from the Yale Journal of Criticism to The New Yorker to The Boston Globe. He is a leading figure in the academic “culture wars”, and the leading right-wing pundit David Horowitz listed Bérubé as one of the 101 most dangerous professors in America.

UFF is proud to present a dangerous professor, and we invite everybody to come.

Legislators are only Human

It’s one of those “one thing leads to another” stories. Florida’s Prepaid College Plan helps parents save for their children’s college while the Bright Futures program provides lottery money to students. Both plans are at the mercy of tuition and fee inflation: if tuition and fees rise too faster, parents’ investments in the Prepaid program won’t cover tuition, while Bright Futures won’t help as many students.

So while other states gradually shifted the financial burden to parents by lowering state support and raising tuition, Florida has spent the last two decades lowering support and having the universities eat the difference.

By summer of 2007, Florida’s tuition was almost the lowest in the nation, the universities had gone through nearly two decades of cuts, the state was projecting a billion dollar deficit, and Florida had already settled one lawsuit by admitting that the Board of Governors has the constitutional authority assigned to it by the voters in 2003.

In June 2007, after Board of Governors Chair Carolyn Roberts had spent a year trying to quietly persuade the legislature to do something, several senior statesmen led by former Senator Bob Graham filed suit saying that the legislature did not have the authority to set tuition and fees.

Senate President Ken Pruitt, R – Port St. Lucie, had been denied a college education by his own family’s limited resources. He had authored the Bright Futures program, and he wrote, “This lawsuit is nothing more than an attempt to get unbridled tuition increases. God help our students if they win.” But the Board openly made quality a higher priority than access, and soon it joined the suit, as did the United Faculty of Florida.

The publicity did what Roberts’ quiet lobbying had not, and the legislature and the governor decided to raise tuition on their own. But the bursting housing bubble soon had the state making across-the-board cuts. By February this year, the St. Petersburg Times editorialized that “Lawmakers Let Universities Slide Into Mediocrity.”

The meltdown was in March, when the legislature took up a proposed amendment to eviscerate a Board of Governors that presumed to sue them. When Chancellor Mark Rosenberg spoke to the Senate Education Committee, senators were barely civil. Board Chair Roberts complained of a “vendetta” in the legislature, while Pruitt proposed that instead of raising tuition, universities could cut frills, like psychology.

As the amendment moved forward, an attorney in the previous lawsuit said, “It's all about power... The legislature wants control of all the funds going into higher education so members can look good in their own districts.” (The old Board of Regents had been dissolved for presuming to oppose creating new professional schools.) On the amendment, the Florida Council of 100 wrote, “We sincerely believe that higher education in Florida could suffer,” and the Florida Chamber of Commerce opposed “Politicizing Higher Education.” UFF started lobbying, and posted talking points like: politicizing the universities “is what voters rebelled against in their passage of the 2002 referendum to establish the Board of Governors and University Boards of Trustees.”

In the end, the proposal failed, along with legisla-tion mandating that teachers be required to present alternatives to evolution and that students be barred from wearing baggy pants. The lawsuit continues, and as prominent faculty and administrators depart for other states, the Board of Governors is asking for $ 56.8 million in the coming year to fund pay raises. And UFF continues to fight the good fight.