As the University of Memphis implements a new budgeting model this summer called Strategic Resource Initiative, some professors in the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music are concerned the changes could lead to future cuts into the program.
Under the new model, schools and departments on campus will be allocated money based on many factors including, the number of students in classes, the number of majors, number of graduates and the amount of money the department generates.
John Chiego, director of the school of music, said it’s too early to tell if the new SRI model would have a negative effect on the school of music.
Chiego said that U of M has a plan to make adjustments to the model if need be.
“At this point we don’t really know what the effect will be,” Chiego said.
"In the SRI presentations that I have attended, Dr. Rudd, President of the University of Memphis, has acknowledged that areas such as Music do indeed have different criteria on which to calculate their success, and that by running both budget models simultaneously next year we will be able to see just where any discrepancies may lie," Chiego said in a email to The Daily Helmsman.
“We offer a complete program of music that nobody else in the state can compete with ... If you drew a circle around Memphis of about 300 miles in any direction, you wouldn’t be able to find a school that’s able to offer both of those doctoral degrees in music, and we’re one of only about 150 schools in the entire country that can do that. That’s a pretty select group of schools.” John Chiego, director of Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music
Yet some professors, like Saxophone instructor Allen Rippe, are concerned that the SRI model will penalize the arts where it is difficult to put a dollar value on its contributions to the university.
“It’s short sighted because it’s not measuring profits in anything except dollars,” Rippe said. “Universities deal in knowledge, growth of society and improvement of life experiences.”
Rippe, an instructor at the school of music for 40 years, said that the existing budget model already accounts for when instructors are paid to teach small numbers of students. Students taking one-on-one lessons pay an extra tuition fee called the “applied music fee.”
“This is not private study like someone studying nursing wants to stay in shape on their French horn,” Rippe said. “This is someone seeking a degree in the clarinet and they have to take eight semesters of lessons. They pay their tuition for that course, but then they add another tuition amount on top of it for each semester. In eight semesters it’s $2,400 more to take private lessons than it would be for them to take eight semesters of anything else. We thought that’s how it was being covered, and that would tend to cover it for any and all time.”
The U of M employs the highest number of full-time music-related educators in the Tennessee Board of Regents system.
Memphis has a total of 46 full-time educators, according to data from TBR’s website. Middle Tennessee State University has 36 music educators and Tennessee Technological University has 22. The U of M has the third highest average salary for music faculty.
Music professors at MTSU and Tennessee Technological earn an average salary of about $65,000, while the U of M’s music professor earn a little more than $60,500.
Chiego said the U of M has such a large music program because it is the only school of music in the state of Tennessee that “is authorized to offer the doctor of musical arts degree and a Ph.D in music. University of Tennessee at Knoxville has more music faculty members than Memphis, but they are not allowed to offer those degrees, even though they have applied for it several times, Chiego said.
“We offer a complete program of music that nobody else in the state can compete with,” Chiego said. “If you drew a circle around Memphis of about 300 miles in any direction, you wouldn’t be able to find a school that’s able to offer both of those doctoral degrees in music, and we’re one of only about 150 schools in the entire country that can do that. That’s a pretty select group of schools. We are at the top of the heap as far as schools of music go.”
Rippe said that the new budgeting model would give a “black eye” to chamber music classes- those where between three to eight people sign up for a faculty member to coach them on how to play scores written for only three to eight people.
“To get at the fine points of how to play music it’s nice to have a discipline where they learn to be in a small ensemble where they’re the only person playing their part,” Rippe said. “Our string teachers pretty much define themselves as private teachers of their instrument and coaches of chamber music. I think that would be funny to say ‘how many more people than four should we have in a string quartet? You can’t put 24 people in the string quartet.”
Amidst anonymous instructors’ allegations that the U of M’s new budget model would treat the university like a corporation, Rippe said that he hopes that wouldn’t be the case.
“An educational institution is just that,” Rippe said. “They never were corporations and I don’t think they should become them. Some things don’t really generate dollars, but knowledge tends to come together in future ways that are not entirely predictable that do weave together to earn more dollars. There are currencies that are not money. At the end of the day they’re just as important as money.”
Correction: A earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the number of music educators at the the University of Memphis, Austin Peay, East Tennessee State University, Middle Tennessee State University, Tennessee Technological University. It also said Memphis had one of the lowest average music faculty salaries, however, the U of M has the third highest -- about $5,000 less than the top two.
