Responding to rumors and concerns about the directions the budget, University of Memphis President David Rudd appeared at a special session of the Faculty Senate Monday.
While there are only 44 senators, more than 90 faculty members filled the seats to hear Rudd answer questions about the strategic resource investment budget model, which will soon be imposed on the University.
The new model will make each college on the U of M responsible for managing its own funds, Rudd explained. This would allow the faculty to have a greater say on how their department spent money, Rudd said.
However, many at the meeting argued it will also force each college at the University to compete against each other for dwindling state funds. Some asked why the new model had to be put in place at all.
“In the last decade the state budget model has flipped.” Rudd said. “Back then, 62 cents out of every dollar came from the state—regardless of what the University did. Today, 62 cents of every dollar comes from students… The heart of the funding strain comes from graduation rates.”
Tennessee once gave funding to public universities based on their enrolment numbers, but that changed after the passing of the Complete College Tennessee Act of 2010. Now institutions of higher learning are rewarded based on student retention and graduation.
Rudd said that the new model is not meant to hurt the colleges on campus but to give them the tools to control their own funding.
“We want to empower you (the faculty) by letting you know where the money is spent. We want to provide you control over your individual budgets,” Rudd said.
Although the SRI will come into effect at the U of M, Rudd said, the major decisions on how it will be implemented have not been made yet.
“We are still in the process of building a budget model,” Rudd said. “We still have 18 months of discussion and dialog to help shape and build this model. I encourage all of you to join this discussion.”
Many in the audience said they were worried that SRI would push out low-grant earning departments. Joshua Phillips, the Department Chair of English, said the new system makes the colleges act like businesses.
“We are being asked to think about profit maximization first, and then about what we want to do as a department,” Phillips said. “There are (studies) in a university that are not revenue generating, but they are necessary to make better citizens. What are the safeguards for these things that we say we are committed to but do not produce revenue?”
Rudd said that now is the time to define those safeguards. He also said that “there are some things that will never generate money that we will always support. Those are at the heart of the University. We can never abandon those.”
However, since so much of the University’s funding comes from its students, Rudd said a great deal of thought must go into how future dollars are spent.
“I would love to tell you that we can do everything that is important regardless of cost,” Rudd said. “But, there are things that we do that are remarkably expensive. Is that where we want to spend our funding? Is that the best use of our students’ money? The answers to these questions will say a lot about the character of our University... We need to be thoughtful and responsible as a group and know how we spend those dollars.”
One professor said that some deans are already budgeting square footage in their departments. He asked if the new model would charge the colleges for the amount of space it used for each class.
Rudd responded by saying that all departments pay for space already.
“(The new model) will allow you to know how much you spend on those spaces,” Rudd said. “You will soon be able to have a discussion at the department level on whether or not you want to spend the money for that space.”
