Given the widespread tendency to direct budget cuts in higher education toward areas perceived as less essential to economic productivity, there is not a single college or university humanities program in the United States that would not benefit from philanthropy. However, because some moneyed interests use the current crisis as a pretext to…

As the recession, budget cuts, endowment losses, and Republican governors gut university funding, campuses across the country have become host to occupations, union actions, and demonstrations. One can take steps to intimidate, alienate, and agitate a flock of graduate students. The author discusses steps that offer simple ways to rile up and…

The events in Wisconsin during February and March 2011 will long be considered remarkable in many ways. That includes the documenting of the protests. Perhaps at no previous time have so many journalists--paid and unpaid--gathered so much information about a protest movement and dispersed it in so many formats so quickly. Ubiquitous, touching, and…

An academic plan is a business plan disguised in the regalia donned for significant public ceremonies--black cap and gown, colorful hood, and, of course, gold tassel. Several years ago, the University of Connecticut started to plan for the economic disaster that was at the time so obviously in the future of higher education institutions. A formal…

In fall 2009, this author participated in mass protests in California against tuition increases, furloughs, state budget cuts, and mass layoffs of schoolteachers, faculty members, and other public-sector workers. He states that what was so inspiring about these demonstrations was their formation of a new model of coalition politics. Taking the…

In a little rural town of ten thousand in the high desert of Utah, three big institutions run the local economy: the school district, the hospital, and the College of Eastern Utah, a two-year institution with a central campus and several small, even more rural satellite campuses throughout the state. It is the smallest college in Utah. When the…

Public universities are not for-profit businesses with an easy-to-understand bottom line: their financial reports are not designed to convey information to the public fully or to reflect all the costs of teaching and research. Financial reports do track every dollar in accordance with the accounting rules required by auditors, but they do not…

The academic year began with a bang last fall at the University of California (UC). A series of bangs, actually, featuring a united front of students, staff, and faculty in a coordinated series of walkouts and strikes across the system's ten campuses. The target of their outrage was a series of draconian layoffs, wage cuts, and drastic tuition…

It is proposed that the primary method for college budget reduction should be horizontal, across-the-board cuts by percentage applied to all programs and departments. It is argued further that vertical budget cuts embody imperfect procedural justice and should be considered only in extreme situations. (MSE)

In trying to formulate rules governing financial exigency, professors and administrators alike should adhere to the basic ideas of the AAUP guidelines, thus affirming the values of the tenure system yet retaining the flexibility to respond intelligently to deteriorating financial circumstances. (MSE)

Growth in college administration has increased costs and bureaucracy. Rather than wait for fiscal crisis or consumer revolt, academic leaders, including faculty and administrators, should initiate change by simplifying activities and procedures and rewarding consolidation. The challenge is to use resources more effectively and efficiently in a…

Alternatives proposed include early and phased retirement, career change incentives, retraining programs and/or leave, outplacement, and an earnings supplement at severance. (MSE)

The art of retrenchment is in selecting among the available budgeting options that fit a given institution at a given time. One option that deserves increasing consideration is across-the-board cuts. In coping with student demands, institutions should also be concerned for curricular integrity and liberal learning. (MSE)

Argues that, although the high salaries of faculty "superstars" may disadvantage other faculty and staff, particularly in a period of downsizing, the more serious problem is the tradition of large discipline-based differences in faculty salaries which undermine the principles of merit-based compensation. Resentment of "superstar" salaries may have…

As several articles in the July-August 2004 issue of Academe discuss, recent patterns in state funding have hurt higher education. Although there are some signs that state budgets are beginning to recover from "the worst fiscal crisis in the last sixty years," officials still expect "an uphill battle," according to the Fiscal Survey of the States…