Last spring, I brought a motion to the Faculty Senate to create a Faculty Budget Committee. This idea came to me after reading blog posts from my colleague, Beth Niehaus, a higher education scholar: Participatory Budgeting, A Blueprint for Faculty Engagement, Shared Governance in Action. Those posts about how other universities engage in shared governance around the budget really resonated with me as I reflected on one of the most pivotal moments in my Ph.D., crashing a meeting of the committee examining graduate student stipends at the University of Albany following the Blue Ribbon Panel Study. The Graduate Dean scheduled the meeting in the middle of the afternoon, preventing the Grad Student Association rep, a full-time working student, from attending. I guess he didn’t count on our communication and solidarity. I showed up in her place and I kept showing up week after week representing the GSA, the Wages and Benefits Committee, and the Grad Student Union. Because I was in the room, I was able to point to the highest number on the table and make the case that if we wanted to be competitive with our peer institutions, we needed to go with that number. Grad students got back-to-back $2,000 raises after I graduated that semester.
That semester I learned a lesson that Lin-Manuel Miranda would later teach millions: being in the room where it happens matters. Increasingly at UNL, it feels like faculty are not in the room where anything meaningful happens. We might be in rooms where “service” happens but it rarely feels like shared governance and it rarely seems to be related to decisions of consequence. For example, last year the Chancellor went through the formal budget reduction process with the Academic Planning Committee and then proceeded to ignore their recommendations.
As we face yet another round of double-digit budget cuts this year, $14 million or more according to Chancellor Bennett, need to have avenues to have our voices heard. Shirley Chisholm also had some things to say about this, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” The purpose of the Faculty Budget Committee would be to advise the administration on budget-related matters, helping to shape important decisions about the priorities of the institution and providing the administration with important insight into how budgetary decisions affect our core academic mission. The Committee would also serve as a liaison between the administration and the faculty, helping to ensure transparency in budgetary decisions and increasing faculty understanding of the university budget. Rather than only reacting to proposed budget cuts, which is the charge of the Academic Planning Committee, the Faculty Budget Committee would work proactively with the administration on an ongoing basis.
Unfortunately, despite the full Senate approving the creation of the Faculty Budget Committee, thus far the Executive Committee has not taken action on implementation. There are also now clear signs that the Executive Committee may be trying to reverse the Senate’s previous decision. Instead of pushing for access to the room where it happens, they are actively stepping away from the door.
The September 17th Faculty Senate Executive Committee meeting minutes start, “Eklund (current senate president) noted that the Faculty Senate narrowly approved a resolution to create a Faculty Budget Committee, but after carefully reviewing the charge to the Committee, the Senate Executive Committee had some second thoughts and wondered if it would be wiser to put our clout into existing committees.”
As faculty, we have seen the negative effects of top-down decision-making on the budget without substantive faculty input: understaffed student support offices; the disaster that is centralized IT services; elimination of tenure-line positions, and increased reliance on underpaid adjuncts and lecturers; the elimination of ODI without a real plan for filling in the gaps; and the fact that many departments no longer have phones, printers, or trash removal from their offices. In big and small ways, budgetary decisions affect our ability to function as a faculty, to do the teaching, research, creative activity, service, and extension work that make this institution what it is. Faculty members are uniquely positioned to advise the administration on these matters.
Interestingly enough, most of our BIG10 colleagues recognize this:
- University of Maryland created a Special Committee on University Finance in 2019, “this new body gives the campus community a unique opportunity to engage directly with the administration and have an impact on the direction of the University”
- Rutgers University has a Senate Budget and Finance Committee that has charges related to cost cuttings and deficits, as well as issue of institutional values related to investments
- University of Illinois has a Campus Budget Oversight Committee that reports directly to the provost and provides opportunities for faculty to “take part in discussions about budget, resource allocation, and strategic planning for the academic units of the campus.”
- University of Wisconsin Madison has a Faculty Budget Committee listed among their standing shared governance committees
- University of Minnesota Twin Cities has a Faculty Senate Committee on Finance and Budget that consults with senior administration on all issues related to the budget, resource allocation, and operations
- Purdue University has a Budget Interpretation, Evaluation, and Review Committee and a University Resource Policy Committee with faculty representation
- Northwestern University has a Senate Budget and Planning Committee that “collaborates with administrative offices to ensure that University planning processes align with academic values and faculty interests.”
- University of Washington has a Senate Committee on Planning and Budgeting that “shall advise the administration and shall inform the Faculty Senate on long-range planning and on preparation of budgets and distribution of funds with particular reference to faculty concerns. The committee shall be guided by the advice of the Executive Committee and/or the Senate on matters of policy.”
- University of Iowa has a Faculty Senate & Staff Council joint Budget Committee, which serves in an advisory capacity to the President in areas including the general education fund, salary policy, state appropriations requests, internal processes and procedures, and promotes programmatic and resource allocation decisions guided by the strategic plan
- University of Michigan has a Faculty Budget Engagement Committee that supports communication between the faculty and office of the Provost and a separate Staff Budget Engagement Committee that supports budget transparency for staff.
- University of Indiana appears to have a systems-level budget committee with representation from multiple campuses (what an excellent idea, thank you University of Indiana) AND a campus-level Faculty Council Budgetary Affairs Committee that reviews the campus budget through meetings with unit leadership and in consultations with the Provost and Vice Provost for Finance and Administration.
- University of Oregon has a Senate Budget Committee that serves to communicate between the Senate and the University president, including reviewing budget reports submitted to the Board of Trustees AND their website states, “The University Administration shall provide all financial information requested by the Senate Budget Committee (SBC) in a timely fashion.”
I shared much of this information with the Faculty Senate during the open mic period of the October 1 meeting. I ended my open mic repeating the offer I made at the end of the last academic year, this time as the AAUP chapter vice president, to continue to work to create a Faculty Senate Budget Committee, even though I am no longer on the Senate. This issue is just too important and we can no longer sit outside the room where it happens – instead, we need to break down the door with our folding chair and insist that we have our seat at the table, in the room where it happens.
