On April 5 FAU Interim President John Pritchett and other top administrators held a special Budget Forum that was attended by well over one hundred faculty and staff members. The topic was by then a familiar one: FAU is facing a potential budget cut of $4 million (which even if it were to materialize, is less than one percent of FAU’s $542 million overall budget) and therefore everyone must pull in their belt a few notches–faculty and students, that is. It is also true that $12.1 million in “non-recurring” stimulus money will also be “going away” next year (and with it federal protocols preventing layoffs).
Never mind that the state legislature has yet to conclude its 2010 session, or that the Orlando Sentinel reports how the SUS’s 2010-11 budget will be roughly equivalent to 2009-10. Never mind that FAU has the lowest faculty salaries in the state among doctoral granting institutions, reaching such depths under Brogan/Pritchett leadership. Never mind that administrator positions have grown by over 30% while instructional faculty lines have increased far less vigorously after Frank Brogan took the helm at FAU in 2003. Never mind that FAU is far from “financial urgency” and has an excellent credit rating, which allowed it to float over $120 million to bonds months ago to build a new football stadium and cushy student apartments. Never mind that, in light of the above, faculty were again threatened with layoffs. Crunch the numbers right and such quibbles pass into thin air.
One “provocative” suggestion posed to President Pritchett involved offering up some of the money that goes to faculty retirement plans to shore up the alleged budget shortfall. Another colleague asked whether being furloughed for a few days might make things better. FAU professors might consider taking a page from the hundreds of parents, teachers, and students at Broward’s public schools, who recently informed school administrators how they’re fed up with budget cuts and the slashing of worthwhile arts and phys ed classes, particularly when administrators are paying themselves “six figure salaries.”
We may never know exactly how much money is stored in the rafters of the administration building–funds that are almost magically “found” for things such as additional “vice president” positions and “discretionary pay increases”–but it is substantial and growing. One just needs to locate the right shells to look under. As FAU’s 2009 Financial Audit reveals, the University’s unrestricted net assets actually increased by almost $20 million between 2008 and 2009, to over $93 million (p. 4). Consider also how the FAU Foundation and the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute Foundation had over $177 million in US and international stocks and fixed income securities as of June 2009 (p. 20), a time when stocks had yet to fully recover from their March 2009 lows. There is no way of knowing the extent of appreciation of these securities until next March, when the 2010 financial audit is released.
These are, we are told, “non-recurring funds.” Why should they be used for academic purposes? After all, this is a university. On the other hand, low faculty morale, imposed fiscal austerity, and an environment where workers fear retaliation serves a number of useful managerial purposes and is by no means a new management tactic, as Wal-Mart employees will readily attest. By keeping faculty expectations quashed there is no need to discuss the fact that faculty salaries are the lowest in the state. Further, an alleged budget crisis builds a sense of shared goals and consensus between management and employees, in this case to the extent that some faculty members are actually offering up their benefits and pay to salve management’s alleged concerns. And such an environment puts the union on the defensive: “How could the faculty’s union be so brash as to even think about asking for raises in these trying times?” The less effective the union is in obtaining raises, the fewer dues-paying members it will have and the more “flexible” our bargaining unit workforce will be.