BY SUE RAMLO

I am on the faculty “Hit List” at the University of Akron (UA), about which I have now authored three Academe blog posts (They said they were sorry; Being on the Hit List; Hit List Who are We).  Because, in the administration’s eyes, I am not currently employed by UA, I no longer receive communications from current UA President Gary Miller.  However, numerous colleagues shared with  me Miller’s Tuesday September 8 email sent to the campus.  Personally, I sensed desperation in Miller’s tone while he defended the firing of over 100 full-time faculty (about 45 have chosen forced retirement rather than wait for  the outcome of the arbitration on September 18th). Yet Miller’s communication about the need to eliminate faculty to preserve the university made me reflect on several data analyses I have done over the last few months that I will share here.

Shared Sacrifice

On June 12, 2020, President Miller announced that all senior administrators, including the Provost, Cabinet members, and those with the title of Vice President or Dean hired before April 1, 2020, voluntarily agreed to temporarily reduce their annual base wages by ten percent (10%), effective July 1, 2020, through June 30, 2021.  Over the last several months, most of these upper administrators pay cuts have been submitted and approved by the Board of Trustees. Salary reduction exemptions were given to the new Provost, John Wiencek, and his new Interim Chief of Staff, along with others who began their administrative appointments after April 1st.  An important question is how does this 10% reduction compare to other universities during the pandemic, none of which declared force majeure like UA?  Examining data from other institutions demonstrates that, despite UA declaring force majeure, the UA presidential pay cut is among the lowest salary reductions across other public as well as private universities, as shown below in Figure 1.

Figure 1 | Reduction in base-salary by presidents at various public and private institutions

On July 15, 2020, 178 Akron employees were part of a reduction in force (RIF).  These terminated RIF included 97 full-time faculty (96 of whom are Bargaining Unit Faculty, BUF). Miller and the trustees justified terminating faculty as the only way to address the financial shortfall caused by the pandemic.  Comparing salary reductions of some upper administrators and the RIF clearly displays a lack of shared sacrifice (see Figure 2).  If the financial situation is so desperate, why aren’t all top administrators taking a substantial cut in pay?  This corporate-style leadership does not align with the foundations of a public state university and does not play a role in the university’s mission. Why is Miller and his Administration retaining their corporate-style perks such as housing  and car allowances along with country club memberships?

Figure 2 | Comparing the financial sacrifice made by various upper administrators to those of the nearly 100 faculty fired from UA

Comparing salary reductions means it is imperative to understand how salaries compare across the university.  In Figure 3, NTT stands for non-tenure track but also includes visiting faculty who are on one-year appointments; the university does not differentiate between these types of contingent faculty within their publicly shared data sets.  It is important to stress that this graph contains base-salaries only and does not include various bonuses and stipends that contracts with upper management and head coaches typically contain.

Figure 3 | A comparison of salaries at UA

Certainly, Figures 1, 2, and 3 help us all understand what the priorities of the administration and trustees appear to be, and it isn’t the academic side of the house.

Where Do Tuition Dollars Go?

Yet what makes money and fits within the mission at UA, or any university? It is instruction, typically with the goal of degree attainment.  Faculty are the revenue generators.  Students pay tuition for instruction. So where do those tuition dollars go?  It ends up that this is a little more difficult to calculate because of how the university reports its financial information.  For instance, in Table 1, from UA’s 2019-20 financial document, it looks like the salaries for instruction account for faculty salaries.  However, from the state audited document, it becomes clear that this instruction salary information includes much more than faculty salaries – “Salaries and wages include expenses for amounts paid and owed to faculty, staff, and student employees including full-time and part-time employees.”

Table 1 | Screenshot from UA’s 2019-20 Financial Document

Luckily, I keep a lot of institutional data I have received over the years including the College and Auxiliary Income Statements from Fiscal Year 2015 which includes this breakdown of expenses and income shown in Table 2.

Table 2 | Section of table from the 2015 College and Auxiliary Income Statements

But this section of a table made me wonder what “cost center allocation” meant so here is the table that explains that every unit pays for the expense of the upper administration and other non-instructional expenses.  The chart below answered a lot of questions but also created more questions, like why does the board cost almost half-a-million dollars a year?

Table 3 | Detailed Cost Center Allocations taken from the 2015 College and Auxiliary Income Statements

But let’s focus on expenses (faculty) and income (tuition and fees). According to Table 3, created in MS Excel and based on the 2015 College and Auxiliary Income Statements data, about 47% of the revenue from students goes to paying for faculty. Yet from what I can gather, the expense of Faculty includes college administrators (e.g. chairs, assistant deans, associate deans, and deans). That means that the money students pay cover less than 47% of the expense of actual instruction.

Table 3 | Revenue from students and faculty expenses based on data from the UA 2015 College and Auxiliary Income Statements

But even if we assume that the return on investment (ROI) for faculty is only 2:1, this indicates that eliminating faculty makes even less sense.  For instance, President Gary Miller stated that eliminating the nearly 100 full-time faculty would save UA $8.1M.  But based on the above calculations, UA would lose 2.1 times that in revenue, or $17.2M, by eliminating these full-time faculty (or at least their courses, which does not seem to be the case).

Even if the trustees and administration choose to think of UA, a public state university, as a business, eliminating faculty makes no financial sense. Certainly, as a public university focused on the creation of knowledge and education, the choice to eliminate faculty makes even less sense.

Thus, it makes far more sense to eliminate, reduce, and/or furlough those who do not generate revenue or have a direct impact on instruction, recruitment, and retention at the university.  According to Table 3, the allocated expense from “cost centers” that includes the president, vice presidents, etc., is $110,643,822.  That is 94% of the expense for all faculty (probably including college administrators).  This seems like a far more reasonable place to cut expenses.

It is time for UA’s trustees and administrators to stop thinking about themselves as corporate CEOs and, instead, to embrace their roles as caretakers of a public institution of higher education.  At UA, it isn’t about shared sacrifice but about equitable sacrifice.