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Progress of UB 2020 being hindered
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“We’re doing everything we can to enable ourselves to get through the situation as it exists now and that our long-term goal has not changed.”
The state budget situation has hindered progress of UB 2020, President John B. Simpson told the UB Council at its meeting on Monday.
Simpson reviewed with council members the state’s and SUNY’s budget situation, pointing out the cuts UB has received in the past two years: $6 million in April/May 2008, $15 million in July/August 2008, $6 million last April/May and another $13 million last month. The grand total so far, he said, has been a $40 million permanent reduction in UB’s state operating budget, close to 20 percent of the support UB receives on campus to spend from the state.
Simpson explained that UB has dealt with the budget cuts in two ways: It has assigned cuts differentially to the individual units and has taken money from central reserves. Cuts to the units comprise $30 million—geared more toward the support units rather than to the academic units themselves, in order to “maintain best you can the academic mission.” Much of the $10 million taken from central reserves was money that had been saved through changes in operating procedures achieved through such initiatives as the IT and HR transformations—money that was being used to fund UB 2020. “That money is gone; it is pretty much wiped out,” he said.
There is some good news to report, Simpson noted. UB has maintained its overall employment and enrollment levels; begun restructuring efforts in IT, human resources and development; and avoided cuts to major programs, as well as a decline in morale on campus, he said.
In addition, the university is having “a banner time” in capital development, beginning a number of projects, among them the new engineering building, Kapoor Hall, a new building for the Educational Opportunity Center at the UB Downtown Gateway and the South Ellicott student housing complex.
“We’ve worked hard to do this,” he said. “We’ve worked hard specifically to keep reminding everyone that 2020 is our long-term goal. We’re doing everything we can to enable ourselves to get through the situation as it exists now and that our long-term goal has not changed.”
On the other hand, there are some negative trends associated with the budget situation, Simpson said:
• UB has stopped growing the faculty, and has 30 fewer faculty members than three years ago; faculty who retire or leave the university are being replaced, but no new positions are being created.
• The quality of service in such areas as facilities, IT support and student support services is beginning to erode.
• Enrollment in some course sections has been capped and some sections have been cancelled based on enrollment and other strategic considerations.
• Money used to seed research funding has been suspended and the amount money used to fund the research infrastructure also has declined.
What does this all mean for the timing of UB 2020?
Simpson said that the budget cuts, coupled with what could have been a tremendous amount of revenue from last year’s tuition increase—however 90 percent of the increase went into the state’s general fund—“means we’re about $70 million behind where we were three years ago, where we thought we were to start implementing UB 2020.”
He estimated that if a yearly 6 percent increase in tuition was imposed now, it would take six years to get back to ”our start position—where we were three years ago”; a 4 percent annual increase would take eight years.
The idea, he said, would be to peg the tuition increase to the Higher Education Price Index, which has run at about 3-4 percent over the past several years. “The more likely of these two scenarios would be 4 percent, which means it’s about 8 years to get back to where we started this process,” he said.
“In short, the financial base of 2020 is eroding. Not only is it eroding, it has also pushed the timetable back,” he said, adding that unless there is a major change in the financial picture, UB 2020 could be pushed back as much as a decade.
On top of the budget cuts, Simpson told council members that UB faculty and staff received a 3 percent salary increase on July 1, plus a 1 percent discretionary increase, and are due to receive the same increases on July 1, 2010.
He pointed out that while salary increases are a good thing, as UB competes in the national marketplace for faculty and staff, they also mean that the state has “preferentially invested in individual salaries, while at the same time disinvesting in the university as a whole.”
UB and SUNY, he said, differ from other public AAU institutions in that faculty and most staff are members of unions, with the state negotiating the contracts governing salaries and other benefits.
“I don’t have control over what I call management tools to be able to cope with, and cope effectively and strategically with, the budget cuts,” he said.
Unlike some of his peers, Simpson said he can’t use furloughs or layoffs, or manage fringe benefit costs or implement pay reductions—to deal with the financial situation.
UB and SUNY are looking to change operating procedures, such as having the SUNY Board of Trustees set tuition instead of the state Legislature, and being able to set fees for such things as parking, “which virtually every other university charges for, which in this environment I’m precluded from doing,” he said.
“The tools we have available to us are less than they should be,” he said. “The legislation we have now in the Assembly (UB 2020 Flexibility and Economic Growth Act) goes a good way toward mitigating, if not reversing some of these things.”
In other business at Monday’s meeting, the council unanimously endorsed SUNY’s strategic planning process, and also approved resolutions naming the mezzanine on the third floor of the Alfiero Center in the School of Management the Michael J. and Catherine G. Murray Mezzanine, and the study space on the second floor of the Alfiero Center the Ernst & Young Study Center. The namings recognize gifts to the School of Management from Michael Murray, BS ’75, MBA ’85, and his wife, and Catherine, and nine management alumni who are partners in Ernst & Young.
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