With state funding and student enrollment in decline, managing limited resources has become critical for NMU and many other institutions of higher learning. To help NMU address budget and planning for the future, the administration has hired consultant Larry Goldstein from Campus Strategies. Goldstein was on campus from January 31-February 1 to hold several Strategic Resource Allocation sessions for faculty and staff.

Goldstein is a certified public accountant who worked as a tax associate with Touche Ross & Company and later served as the chief financial officer at the University of Louisville. Goldstein’s model for strategic resource allocation is based, to some degree, on the work of Dr. Robert Dickeson who’s book Prioritizing Academic Programs and Services has been used by hundreds of colleges.

During the February 1, session from 12-3 pm, Goldstein began with a ten
minute Q & A with audience members. He then launched into the program he summed up as “reducing and redirecting resources.”

He began with an assumption, based on the Dickeson model, that higher education adds programs but rarely subtracts them, and that universities try to be too many things to all people. He also feels across the board cuts do not work. In other words, “Fair does not mean equal,” said Goldstein. Programs within this framework are defined as any major, sports team or service that requires resources (not just academic programs). “People are resources,” said Goldstein.

The process Goldstein has used at other universities includes the creation of two task forces. Goldstein recommends the Academic Task Force be made up of 75% faculty and 25% middle management (no higher than department head). The Support Task Force should be comprised of 25% faculty and 75% staff. “We don’t want upper management in the room, we want lower level people to contribute to the process,” said Goldstein.

Once the task forces are assembled, they will be charged with putting a “program” into one of five categories: 1) candidate for enhanced resources; 2) continue with current resources; 3) continue with reduced resources; 4) requires transformation; and 5) candidate for phase-out: subject to additional review by senior leadership.

The criteria the respective task forces will be using will likely come from a template of ten criteria including “What negative consequences would take place if a program were to be phased out?” For a complete list of these criteria, go to the 13:00 mark of the 12-3 session on Feb 1. You can find it at http://bit.ly/2kAptC6.

While the process will be based largely on a snapshot of where all of these programs are right now, Goldstein cautioned against using just one year as a means of evaluating programs. For instance, a department might have purchased a new piece of expensive equipment in one year, and this would make it look more costly in that one year when the average cost is much lower over ten years.

Goldstein covered eight items that lead to successful resource allocation. At the top of the list was transparency. “Credible participants are essential for the process to be trusted. Transparency is also critical, ninety percent of you are going to judge the process as soon as you see the list of who is on the two task forces. Not on person should be appointed to the task force by virtue of their title,” said Goldstein.

While Goldstein’s model has sizeable faculty involvement, he strongly recommended that non-tenured faculty not be placed on the task forces. He feels the service required in this process will take time away from the other demands of earning tenure. He also felt they would be exposed to potential retribution when they go up for tenure if they were part of a task force that recommended eliminating programs affecting faculty members who might be sitting on promotion and tenure review committees.

Goldstein also cited eight reasons the process fails. This included “Sacred Cows” and “Corrupt Data.” He did indicate that departments would have the opportunity to review data that is being used to represent them in order to verify numbers on major counts and other critical data are not way off. However, he said departments will not get to see their ultimate score based on the criteria.

Goldstein estimated the process will take 7-12 months to complete, and he said the task forces would work intermittently during the summer and complete its work by the end of the fall semester.

The ultimate goal is create what Goldstein calls an opportunity analysis that can help guide the university toward initiating new programs, augmenting successful programs and phasing out under performing programs.

Again, to view the sessions, you can go to http://bit.ly/2kAptC6

You can nominate yourself or a colleague by clicking here.

It has been four years since “Right to Work” legislation was signed into law in Michigan. Fortunately for the NMU-AAUP, our membership has remained quite strong in the face of this effort to break unions in Michigan and other states. The overall percentage of union participation in the NMU-AAUP is 91.6 when considering all ranks (319 out of 348 faculty members). Contingent faculty had the lowest rate of participation at 82%, while instructors had the highest rate of participation at 100%. The following chart breaks down the total number of NMU faculty by union membership and rank.

Ninety-four percent of all full-time NMU faculty members are currently dues paying members of the NMU-AAUP. While this is quite good, we certainly would like to see that percentage increase to 100.

To review a list of all NMU-AAUP members as of November 27, please click here. If you are not on this list, and you are a dues paying member, please contact the NMU-AAUP office at 227-1602 so we can update the list.

The pie chart below offers a quick profile of our current membership by rank.

Health care refunds, pay increases and reducing paper copies for the promotion and tenure applications were just three of the main accomplishments of the NMU-AAUP for its members in Fall 2016.

Even before the semester began, our Grievance Officer Leslie Putman held a promotion and tenure workshop. If you didn’t attend, the PowerPoint slides can be found here.

We started the semester with our Fall Chapter Meeting on August 17, and we followed that up with the 2^nd Annual Fall Semester Party at Presque Isle on August 25, and the Labor Day Parade on September 5. We held three Faculty Council meetings and two Ore Dock socials during the semester and distributed coffee and cookies to students on December 6, at Jamrich Hall.

The Executive Committee voted to redefine the duties of the NMU-AAUP vice president to include outreach through events and attendance at Marquette area Labor Council meetings. In order to use union dues more efficiently, the Executive Council voted to eliminate the EC’s secretary position. The NMU-AAUP office secretary Andrea Jordan attends all EC and FC meetings anyway, and she will serve as our meeting secretary.

Thanks to the careful review of health care payments, Brandon Canfield determined NMU-AAUP members had overpaid, and we were able to secure a $262 dollar refund for faculty who paid into the plan during 2015. BTW, Brandon has accepted the position of data analyst for the NMU-AAUP. He will replace George Wilson who had previously served in that role.

Brandon also used health care records as a way to clearly show the number of employees receiving benefits increased for administrative positions, while it decreased for faculty members. If you haven’t read this article, you can find it here.

The Faculty Salary Inversion Review Committee examined the list of fall 2016 faculty salaries for inversions that may have occurred due to promotions. (See 9.1.2.3 in the Master Agreement.) Eleven full-time faculty were given salary adjustments that totaled $28,457. There are some faculty who were “exceptional hires” and therefore fit into the “exempted faculty” mentioned in 9.1.2.3. When they are promoted they do not trigger salary inversions.

After all these years of making 10 copies of our promotion and tenure documents, we are finally formally moving to electronic submission of tenure and promotion documents. Of course it is not that easy, so those involved have prepared instructions for electronic submission. You can view the instructions here.

The College of Business has been operating without a department head for about 2 years. Since Marge Sklar retired, they have been functioning by having department chairs (faculty members) presiding over disciplines they grouped together. We issued a “stop counting” memo to the administration to reconcile this situation. That means we will go through informal discussions to try to remedy this. Of course, everything is in flux with reorganization efforts, so it probably won’t be resolved until that is settled. This was done not with the intent to penalize the COB, but to remind the administration to honor the current contract that requires department heads.

The EC voted in November to contract with the NMU Archives to organize and preserve NMU-AAUP records. The $3,000 contract will pay for a student (working under the direction of Marcus Robyns) to make the records easier to find while also developing greater security regarding access to these documents at the same time.

Some of the issues we will continue to monitor into next semester include enrollment, retention, faculty numbers, contingent seniority, budget/spending, Academic Affairs restructuring, Heads vs. Chairs, program prioritization, programs online v. in-person teaching. A number of programs are looking to move on-line or have an on-line track, and some departments are utilizing companies that recruit students for the on-line program. There are more details to be worked out for this.

The main agenda item for now is for you and yours to have a relaxing and safe break. Happy Holidays from the NMU-AAUP!

The analysis below was sent to President Fritz Erickson, Vice President of Finance and Administration Gavin Leach, and Athletic Director Forrest Karr last week, and an earlier draft was given to them over three weeks ago. There has been no response indicating that any of my numbers, analyses, or assertions are incorrect. I shared this with departmental representatives on faculty council last Thursday, so some of you may already have seen this.

My job as President of NMU-AAUP is to represent the faculty. Faculty are frustrated and upset with the lack of attention and funding for the core academic mission of the university. We see decisions that we feel will have significantly damaging long-term effects on the university. The following come from NMU’s report to NCAA and NMU’s publicly released budget numbers and this documentation can be provided.

According to NMU’s report to NCAA, last year’s athletic budget was about $9.3 million dollars. They raised about $1 million, so 89% of that ($8.3 million) came from institutional support. This year, we cut $250k from athletics, but added $438k to start two new teams. Plus, we spent $400k on a scoreboard. So this year, NMU will spend about $8.9 million on athletics. There are about 6800 full-time equivalent students at NMU. Therefore, we are spending over $1300 per full-time student to support athletics (I really doubt whether students know this or would be happy about it). There are 506 NCAA and US Olympic Training Site athletes at NMU. Therefore, we are spending over $17,500 per athlete to support athletics, on top of what it costs for their education, room and board. In contrast, the budget for academic affairs last year was about $57 million and that was cut $2 million this year. This is used to educate about 6800 students, so we are spending less than $8100/student on education.

President Erickson says that this year we will spend $3.4 million on athletics (that is only the base budgeted portion), but Athletic Director Forrest Karr’s numbers (from last year) suggest $7.8 million in institutional support and our report to NCAA indicates $8.9 million in institutional support this year. I do not understand why there are such huge discrepancies in reported costs of athletics, nor have I been able to find out. President Erickson claims that this expenditure generates $6.1 million in revenue. That is a profit of $2.8 million if you use President Erickson’s number for cost, but a loss of $1.7 million if you use Forrest Karr’s numbers and a loss of $2.8 million if you use the numbers reported to NCAA. Furthermore, I cannot understand where we get $6.1 million in revenue. The cost for institutional support already subtracts all money generated by the athletic department from the total cost of NCAA athletics.

How much revenue comes from athletics? Student athletes receive an average of 30.3% of tuition, room, board, books, etc in athletic scholarships. Plus, they are eligible for all of the other NMU scholarships that any other student gets. The average non-athlete gets $2,063 in NMU financial aid and the average athlete gets $1,976 ($2,024 for NCAA athletes, excluding OTS athletes). The average athletic scholarship is $7,495 ($8,314 for NCAA athletes alone) for a total of $9,471 per athlete ($10,338 for NCAA athletes). The Athletic Department estimates for total cost of attendance (tuition, fees, room, board, books) seems to be about $27,666 for out-of-state students (OS) and $22,170 for in-state students (IS). There is some variation, but I cannot figure out why. So subtracting the average scholarship means that athletes are paying about $18,195 OS and $12,699 IS to attend NMU. However, $9838 of that is for room and board, and only half of NCAA athletes live on campus, so we need to subtract $4919 from the income resulting in $13,276 OS and $7,780 IS. If half of student athletes are IS and half OS, the average is $10,528. So there is about $5.3 million in total. Now the important part is that this money goes to pay for all of the things that every other student’s money goes for; books, room and board, facilities and faculty, administration, and staff salaries. It is absurd to think that all of those things are simply provided to student athletes for free, while all of their money goes straight to supporting athletics.

Even if we simply look at the two new teams that were started this year (women’s golf and men’s swimming/diving), they seem to cost more than they generate. These two teams were budgeted $438,000. Fritz has claimed in public several times that this generates $1.2 million in revenue, but has never explained where that number comes from. There are 35 students on the two newest team’s rosters posted on the athletics website. At $10,528 total revenue/student, that generates $368,480, which must pay for their room and board, education, university overhead, and the $438,000 in direct costs (does not include non-base budgeted costs) to run their teams. This is nowhere near President Erickson’s claim of $1.2 million in revenue, nor is it anywhere near enough to cover the costs. My guess is that we are chasing headcount at all costs (probably because of performance criteria articulated by the Board of Trustees), even if those costs are greater than the benefits.

Gavin Leach (Vice President for Finance and Administration) told the Board of Trustees that the new scoreboard would pay for itself in 3-5 years. If we grab the middle time span, that means the scoreboard must generate $100,000 per year in NEW advertising income. Last year, the athletic program reported to NCAA that it raised a total of about $41k in “royalties, licensing, advertisement and sponsorships” revenue. I will be very interested to see whether next year’s NCAA report shows $141k in this category. We were told at Academic Senate that there is a philanthropist who is likely to donate the full $400,000. I sincerely hope that this happens and that this piece of equipment generates new revenue for the university.

Academic Affairs has been told to cut 3.4% from the budget ($2 million). President Erickson has said that we cut athletics by 7%. My guess is that the figure is derived by only counting base-budgeted athletics ($3.4 million last year) and $250k in budget cuts. This ignores the $438k allotted to starting two of four new sports teams and the $400k for a hockey scoreboard. Institutional support for athletics was $8.3 million last year and $8.9 million this year (according to NMU’s report to NCAA and the information that I can gather) for a 7.2% increase. This happens while full-time equivalent faculty have fallen 13.6% and full-time equivalent students have fallen 12.9% in the past three years. Already large classes are being combined or simply cancelled. We are losing our ability to provide the personal attention that students come to NMU to receive.

Even if it is true that 506 students came here solely because of athletics (which I doubt), the other 6576 NMU students came here for academics. Investment in athletics may generate revenue (although not nearly as much as they cost, in my analysis). Investment in academics generates revenue as well. In fact, that is where the vast majority of our revenue comes from and we are having budget problems largely because that revenue is falling. How do we attract more students? I contend that we do that by running quality academic programs. We are constantly told that enrollment is falling because of demographics and our remote location. Michigan Technological University faces the same issues, yet their undergraduate enrollment increased 1.9% this year and their freshman class is up 8.1%. We are told that is because they have selective admissions and simply need to admit a larger proportion of applicants as applications fall. However, their applications are up 4.0% while ours are down 10.6%. Furthermore, that explanation would require them to lower admissions criteria, but their average freshman ACT scores increased from 23.6 last year to 25.6 this year. We have been told that MTU’s enrollment is up because they are a “niche school” (i.e., engineering). However, only half of their increase in enrollment is in engineering; the other half is in sciences and the arts. This has happened because MTU invested in academics and student scholarship, not because of their sports teams.

We are spending large amounts of money to attract a few students who play sports. At the same time, we are significantly cutting academic budgets and are losing large numbers of students who choose their university for an education. Our enrollment and applications are falling much faster than the number of Michigan high school graduates; we are losing the competition for students. Similarly, some of our best faculty are leaving. They have told me that they do not feel that trying to build a career at NMU is a safe bet. There are large discrepancies between the rationale for support of expenditures on athletics, the numbers that we are given, and apparent reality. With very few exceptions, universities have athletics to build community, diversity, and identity, not to make money. And that is common knowledge. It might be instructive to do the same sort of analysis of administrative expenditures and their impact on the financial health and educational quality of NMU. A valid argument can be made that we are not making good decisions about effective strategies for moving NMU to where we want to be.

Budget crises have hit NMU hard over the past few years; have the various divisions of the university felt this pressure at a level proportional to their relative institutional size? Head-count is a popular metric used by this administration to describe enrollment; have the head-counts of the various groups of employees across campus divisions been equally impacted by the changing budgets?

This latter question is an interesting one which highlights one of the primary problems with such a metric. Should a student who takes a single 4-credit course be counted as equivalent to a student taking a full load of 16 credits? Similarly, should an employee who worked one month of the year be counted as equivalent to one who worked all 12 months of the year? The answer to both of these questions should obviously be no if the intention is to accurately describe a given population. The past and ongoing impacts on various employee units across campus divisions remains an important consideration as new budget cuts are proposed or enacted, however it is clear that a more useful metric than head-count is required. More often than not, faculty complete full academic years of employment, such that a comparison of fall faculty numbers from year to year gives a reliable representation of the changes and trends, however the same is not true for other employee units on campus, who more commonly have personnel turnover throughout the year.

A review of data provided by Human Resources, which was previously used in the recent investigation which ultimately led to the $262 health care refunds to NMU-AAUP members for over-payments made in the 2015 calendar year, reveals a useful and different metric for comparing the campus personnel trends: months of health plan coverage. Although not all employees on campus enjoy the benefits of the health plan, including the contingent faculty among our own membership, those who do are carefully tracked by HR in order to ensure that benefits are only received for actual periods of employment. Thus a full-time employee who worked an entire year received 12 months of health plan coverage; a new full-time faculty member who began teaching in the fall semester would receive 5 months of health plan coverage (Aug-Dec) for that same year. By examining the total number of months of health plan coverage for each employee group on campus, we begin to see revealing trends regarding personnel on campus. As expected given the shrinking enrollment and correspondingly shrinking budgets, most employee units on campus are shrinking. However, such is not the case for everyone. The following table contains the total number of months of health care coverage for the various employee units for calendar years 2014 and 2015, along with the respective percent change for each group. For reference, the classification of Non-Reps is defined by HR as including Executives, Senior Management, Deans, Department Heads, Senior Administrators, and Coaches.

Beautiful weather, Border Grille and bluegrass music welcomed NMU-AAUP members and their families at the second annual, Picnic at Presque Isle.

Thanks again to Lynne Johnson and Andrea Jordan for organizing this wonderful family event. Also, thanks to the “Union Suits” for once again providing great music to help us get the year started on the right “note.”

Click here to see a short music video of faculty, families and fun!