These minutes reflect
discussion and debate at a meeting of a committee of the
Minutes
Senate Committee on Finance and Planning
238A Morrill Hall
Present:
Charles Campbell (chair), Calvin Alexander, Rose
Blixt, David Chapman, Daniel Feeney, Steve Fitzgerald, Thomas Klein, Joseph
Konstan, Cleon Melsa, Kathleen O'Brien, Diane Parker, Terry Roe, Alfred
Sullivan, Susan Van Voorhis, Warren Warwick, Susan Carlson Weinberg
Absent:
Brittny McCarthy Barnes,
Guests:
none
[In these minutes: (1) report from the Subcommittee on Twin
Cities Facilities and Support Services and the ability to obtain information;
(2) tuition waivers and dissertation credits; (3) budget principles]
1. Report from the Subcommittee on Twin
Cities Facilities and Support Services
Professor
Campbell convened the meeting at
Professor
Alexander began by thanking the subcommittee members for their hard work; he
said it has been a pleasure to work with them.
He extended thanks to Renee Dempsey in the Senate office for all her
help, and thanked this Committee for providing a charge to look into various
matters. They work principally with Vice
President O'Brien and the leadership of Facilities Management, and he expressed
the subcommittee's appreciation for the cooperation from those offices.
The
charge to the subcommittee is to review the operations of the support services
on the Twin Cities campus, Professor Alexander noted, and make recommendations
as appropriate to this Committee. This
year they focused on the design, construction, commissioning, and long-term use
of the buildings on the campus and less on the other support services. They asked people in to talk about the
buildings, took information trips to problem areas, and concluded that there
are a number of buildings--new and old--that have major problems with design,
construction, and long-term use. An
incomplete list, reflecting the experience of subcommittee members, includes
the East River Road garage, Williamson bookstore, Civil and Mineral
Engineering, the Basic Sciences building, the Ecology building, and Anderson
Library.
It is easy to gripe, Professor
Alexander observed, and the subcommittee wanted to do more than just gripe. They tried to identify patterns of problems
and ways to turn them around. They
identified "challenges" they see in how buildings are conceived,
designed, constructed, and used over the years.
They identified several challenges.
-- There
is a problem with institutional memory and records
-- No one seems to be responsible for
tracking the environmental data about the buildings that everyone works in
-- It is difficult to obtain data streams
from University authorities about buildings
-- No one is responsible for inspections
during the subcontractor phase of construction
-- No one is looking at the cumulative
effect of campus construction on the infrastructure of the campus; there is
need for long-term thinking.
Professor
Alexander said he had some frustrations to share with the Committee. They find it difficult to get information; staff are reluctant to provide information to subcommittee
members; they have been told that staff members have been told not to talk to
the subcommittee.
Their
major recommendation is that Facilities Management people, in constructing
buildings, make even more use of the knowledge and experience of the students,
staff, and faculty who work in the buildings.
The success stories are when there are dynamic partnerships with the
occupants of a building; buildings work best when users are involved all the
way along. That is easy to say and difficult
to do, but it is the best way to go.
Professor
Alexander said he had a request to make:
The subcommittee needs a clear statement from this Committee that it is
appropriate and encouraged for people on the subcommittee to discuss in open,
objective discourse the issues in the purview of the subcommittee--with no fear
of retaliation or retribution. The
subcommittee also needs a clear statement that any University employee has the
freedom, responsibility, and protection from retribution to discuss with the
subcommittee issues about which they have first-hand information. Some of the non-faculty members of the
subcommittee are worried, he said. There
are places where staff live in a culture of fear and
talking about problems will get them in trouble. He said he hoped the Committee could do
something to help the situation.
The
subcommittee's four primary recommendations are these:
-- consult
with the building users
-- inspect
the construction activities
-- look
at the cumulative impact of the growing infrastructure
-- consider
future conditions and anticipate problems.
Professor
Roe inquired if there is any process that provides scheduled information from
building occupants about the status of the building. Professor Alexander said that as tenure
faculty members, they can report without fear that a report will affect their
future. He said he was not aware of any
program to obtain information from building occupants.
Professor
Chapman said he found interesting the discussion about faculty and staff and
open discussion. If there are people
afraid to provide information, that is not a good way for the institution to
operate. At the same time, this
Committee may not be the place to say something; it should be the highest
levels of the University that says "stop this!" Mr. Klein said he has heard the same thing in
his department but cannot find anyone who feels threatened by providing
information; people talk about the problem but no one has experienced it.
Professor
Alexander said he could tell the Committee categorically that this worry has
made getting information difficult. It
could be a convenient excuse, to be sure, but while he did not want to talk
about individual instances, he is aware of cases where people believe their
jobs would be affected. It does not
matter if the perception is accurate or not, if it affects the ability of the
subcommittee to do its job.
There
are two questions, Professor Chapman said.
Is it true? And if so, how can it
be combatted? Ms. VanVoorhis said she
has never heard staff afraid to discuss things, especially building
matters. She said she was surprised to
hear that staff would be worried about losing their jobs because they talk
about a building. Was this the occupants
or Facilities Management staff, Ms. Blixt asked? Professor Alexander said he did not want to
get into specifics, but those who are reluctant to speak with the subcommittee
are people who keep the place running and know why systems do not work; he said
he did not know the chain of command well enough to know to whom they
reported. Ms. Van Voorhis clarified that
she had been referring to the staff IN the buildings. Professor Alexander said that he, too, had never
heard of people in a building at risk because they complained about the building.
Vice
President O'Brien said she was surprised to hear Professor Alexander say that
it is difficult to obtain information. Several
staff members attend and participate in STCFSS meetings and prepare information
for the subcommittee. The administration
desires that participation in governance be useful, productive, and helpful in
an open institution. She noted that
there are people responsible for the condition of buildings and that they do conduct surveys to keep track of the campus's
28 million gross square feet. If there
is something not receiving attention, she and Associate Vice President Spehn
would like to be informed so that they can correct it.
Vice
President O'Brien and Professor Alexander discussed the relationship between
the administration and the subcommittee and the extent to which there needs to
be a change in the culture. Vice
President O'Brien said she did not want an adversarial relationship; she also
suggested that the subcommittee might think about how it can be most useful in
terms of the time subcommittee members spend on its work. She said she believes there are three
principles that should guide University Services: excellence in service to faculty, staff, and
students, accountability in what it does, and stewardship of the University's
resources for the long term. In order to
adhere to those principles the people in University Services need to be in
communication with faculty, staff, and students, and the governance system is one
mechanism by which to accomplish that communication.
Professor
Alexander asked why there are no inspections of subcontractor work; is it just
money? Vice President O'Brien recalled
that in the early 1990s there were significant budget cuts that reduced the
number of building inspectors, so there are far fewer people to do the
work. She said she was aware that
inspection of subcontractor work became a problem in the 1990s. Professor Alexander said that while it is
perhaps just his own experience, nonetheless he and the subcommittee believe
there is serious under-funding of the maintenance structure. He said he was not pointing fingers at
anyone; the University has simply not had the money.
Professor
Konstan said that it was not necessarily true that individuals and the
institution share the same goals; once an organization goes beyond about 25
people, he surmised, the two sets of goals diverge. Most people at large institutions have
personal goals rather than institutional goals (including the faculty). Faculty are glad to talk about building
problems but not about curriculum and advising problems, which is why there is
a need for management. Individual
self-interest is exacerbated by a period of budget problems in which many are
worried about their jobs. One should not
say that individuals and the institution are on the same side, because, for
example, the goal of efficiency almost invariably means that people will be
laid off. Professor Alexander responded
that the subcommittee talks about buildings because they are in its charge, but
said that he did not agree with Professor Konstan that people cannot share
common institutional goals. He said he
has been at the University for 30 years and seen staff do things far beyond
what their job required and he has been proud to be associated with those
individuals. He said he has seen
students who should not have been at the University--but he has also seen a lot
of students who make his job easy. He
said that he sees faculty put in far more than 40 hours per week. He said he believes there are University
goals and that most people work toward them.
People do have personal goals, but they also support institutional
goals.
Professor
Chapman, responding to the request for a statement from the Committee, said he
believed the Committee could adopt a statement but that it would carry more
clout if it came from the administration--something to the effect that the
administration would not tolerate secrecy that gets in the way of efficient
management of the institution. The
Committee could make such a recommendation to the President. It is certainly within the charge of this
Committee, and the governance system generally, to bring up points such as
this, Professor Campbell observed. The
Committee could craft a statement encouraging communication and cooperation;
they are implied by a governance structure--this one--with as many different
participants as it has.
Is
there something the Committee could do that would be more constructive and
productive to address the problem, Professor Chapman inquired? The governance system sees itself as a
partner with the administration in addressing problems, Vice President O'Brien
said. She said she would be surprised if
there are individuals who have been told they could not say something--that is
a problem of perception and culture.
There is a role for the Senate to be constructive, and if governance
participants hear of a problem, they should ask if it has been brought to her
or to Mr. Spehn.
Ms.
Parker pointed out that there are different cultures in the University, within
units. Some are more open, some operate
with more fear. Changing a culture is
something that happens in individual units, and is a big undertaking. She said, however, that she believed a lot of
people are dedicated to the University's goals.
Ms. Blixt said that in her experience, culture change does not happen as
a result of direction from the top but from the bottom up. People in her building, for example, wanted a
cleaner and safer building so they worked on it as a group. The model of ownership of a building works,
rather than relying on Facilities Management.
Mr.
Klein, responding to Professor Alexander's request for help, wondered if the
subcommittee might follow up with Facilities Management leadership for six
months and try to address the problem so that individuals did not feel pressure
and the chain of command understood what is needed. They plan to keep working with Facilities
Management, Professor Alexander said, because that is what they are supposed to
do. Vice President O'Brien and her staff
have done perhaps even more than should be required of anyone working with a
governance committee. The issue is not
with the leadership, it is in the middle of the chain of command. Have they invited Ms. O'Brien and Mr. Spehn
to meetings, Ms. Van Voorhis asked? Mr.
Spehn attends almost all the meetings, Professor Alexander said, and Vice
President O'Brien comes to about half of them.
Has this issue been discussed? It
seems odd, Ms. Van Voorhis said. They
have raised questions about how buildings are built and how to learn from
problems, Professor Alexander replied.
Vice President O'Brien noted that she and Professors Alexander and
Campbell have a meeting scheduled later to discuss these issues.
Most
of the questions Professor Alexander has raised arise as a result of past
decisions, Vice President O'Brien commented.
As an historian, she believes that people can learn from experience; the
team now in place is working to develop an approach that does not replicate these
problems.
Professor
Konstan said he was pessimistic that people would say that something was
"screwed up" because ultimately that means people will be
blamed. The question is not who but how
to avoid the problem in the future.
There are people--auditors--who gather information anonymously and
report problems. A Senate committee is
not the best mechanism to gather such information; there are offices in the
University that do so. Moreover, a
Senate committee does not have the power to immunize people from the
consequences of their testimony.
Sometimes there is a systemic problem; sometimes someone is to blame,
but that person may have power. Unless
the questions come from a position of power, and people can be assured about
their status, the effort is not likely to be successful. Professor Alexander said he has never had any
illusion that the subcommittee had the ability to protect people.
Vice
President O'Brien thanked Professor Konstan for making the point about
audits. There have been several audits
on many of these issues, all of which she has read and many of which are
public. There has been change in
management at the University because of the findings, and there is an effort not
to replicate the problems that have been identified.
This
is the start of the discussion, Professor Campbell said. It has been excellent, and candid, and will
continue. He said he appreciated the
energy and hard work of the subcommittee and the insights it has brought to
this Committee. He said the Committee
would return to the issues. He thanked
Professor Alexander for his report.
2. Tuition Waivers and Dissertation
Credits
Professor
Campbell turned now to Professor Roe to lead a discussion about tuition waivers
and dissertation credits.
Professor
Roe distributed a handout of talking points he had prepared for the meeting and
pointed out that he was addressing the issue of graduate programs and revenue
flows. The general issue is tuition
revenues in graduate programs (both thesis and coursework), which go into the
tuition revenue pool and is disbursed in the same fashion as undergraduate
tuition.
Background:
·
Current policy is
to remunerate 25 % of graduate tuition revenue to the college of registration,
and 75% is allocated to the college of instruction.
·
Prior to ICR,
graduate tuition payments were remunerated to the department of the Major
Professor.
·
It should be
recognized that graduate tuition payments made by RA and TA appointments do not
represent an increase in university revenues; these payments are merely a
transfer from a research account to a teaching account.
·
In this regard,
it is the research account that generates the "new" revenue to the
institution.
Problem – Issues:
·
By not
remunerating, at least thesis tuition payments, back to the research component
of our enterprise we are effectively placing an unnecessary tax on a revenue
stream that generates, according to the University’s Annual Report (page 17),
25 % of total FY2003 revenues.
This is not
to say that we should do away with thesis credits. Thesis credits encourage completion of
programs, and serve to better monitor progress and resource allocation. I conjecture that the nature of tasks
associated with thesis credits are closely associated with either on-going
research programs, or help to increase the likelihood of competing for future
grants and contracts. By not
remunerating tuition revenues associated with thesis credits back to the
research enterprise, we are lowering our research capacity, i.e., our capacity
to discover new knowledge. In the case
of revenues generated from graduate course credits, an argument can be made
that these payments should be at least partially reallocated back to remunerate
the salary costs of faculty engaged in the graduate program.
·
Remunerating graduate
tuition revenues back to colleges alone could discriminate against those
graduate programs (e.g., Conservation Biology, the new proposed Ph.D. program
in Applied Economics and Policy) that do not reside in a specific college.
Consequently,
a better policy might be to allocate thesis credit payments to the department
of the major professor. It seems
reasonable that circumstances may justify a college level tax on this revenue
stream to cover the costs of public goods and other services a college provides
to support the research enterprise. But
this channel of remuneration should help establish transparency in resource
allocation at the college level..
·
In many cases,
the lack of transparency at the college – department levels regarding the
graduate component of the tuition stream can create a disincentive for faculty
to “in load” grants and contracts as well as miss-directing research resources.
The lack of
transparency can make it appear that a college is unwilling to appropriately
reward a research program thus causing an individual researcher to either
locate a research program/project in another institution or to carryout a
project as a consultancy and hire graduate students to assist with the
project. The lack of transparency can
even confuse college administrators as to the true opportunity costs of
research resources.
·
Some evidence
suggests that the tuition component of our graduate student fringe rate is
affecting our competitiveness with peer institutions in competing for grants
and contracts.
We recently
responded to an RFP with the Department of Resource Economics at
·
The tuition
component of our fringe rates is strengthening incentives to substitute
post-doctoral positions for Research Associate positions.
A post doctoral
position in the filed of Applied Economics can be funded for about $65,000 -
$70,000. This is only about 1.1 to 1.2
times the cost of an equivalent two RA appointments at the Ph.D. level. And, the post doctoral appointment typical
embodies a higher level of human capital with fewer distractions than are
common with an RA appointment.
The key point, Professor Roe
summarized, is to keep track of thesis credit revenue and think about
reimbursing the units that generate it.
Is he thinking about changes on the margin, neutral at
the beginning, or about providing more money to programs today, Professor
Konstan asked? There needs to be
discussion about that, Professor Roe said.
The problem varies by college and there is a lack of transparency in the
process; with the budget principles the Committee has recommended, there would
be more transparency. If there were to
be a major budget shock to units because of a change, it should be implemented
over time.
Professor Konstan said he has argued that some graduate
student tuition should go to the
Professor Roe said that his salary will be paid by a
grant and dissertation credit revenue is usually related to a research project. One could trace these funds so their
disposition is transparent, and perhaps they should not be directed to the same
program or department, but the flow of funds should be transparent.
Professor
Alexander said he agreed with Professor Roe's observation that departments will
bring in more postdocs and fewer graduate students, which is a real problem if
one University goal is to support graduate student research. The Dean of the
Professor
Konstan asked if the issue of hiring postdocs instead of graduate students
arises more in fields where there is historically an over-production of Ph.D.s. Has that happened because people in the field
know there will be jobs as postdocs but not as faculty? Is the issue concentrated in some
fields? Professor Campbell recalled that
one FCC member commented that the money could be shifted to technicians, not to
postdocs.
What
is non-controversial, Professor Konstan suggested, is that the current high
graduate tuition rates are hurting the graduate education and research missions
of the University. There are causes for
the rates, but one suspects they have been dragged along with undergraduate
tuition rate increases without a lot of special thought about graduate
education. One can question whether the
fee for service model is the right one.
Tuition could be kept high, with departments provided a rebate, or the rates could be lowered.
RA
and TA dollars are a transfer, Professor Roe said; what matters is what happens
to the money. In the extreme case, one
could allocate the money back to the research program, in which cases tuition
increases would have no effect on the research program. The increases would, however, affect those
students who pay their own way, a group that is increasing in number.
Part
of the issue is covered by the transparency clause of the budget principles,
Professor Campbell agreed, but he asked Professor Roe if he wished to transform
the general issue into a motion the Committee might consider. Professor Roe said he presented this as
points for discussion, because he does not have enough knowledge to offer a
solution. Transparency is in the
principles; he believes there should be even more, but to do it right there
must be a more systematic approach.
Professor
Feeney said there seems to be a combination of buffering the effect of tuition
rebates and providing incentives. There
is no incentive if all tuition dollars go elsewhere, but not all of them need
to flow back to the unit. Moreover, the
way the revenues are handled varies considerably across the deans; some give no
money back to the units. He is hearing
that in some units in the
Professor
Konstan said he was not opposed to transparency but said he did not believe
that changing the allocation of thesis credit revenue would work. The challenge in all of this is to build an
economic model that covers the risk of hiring a tenured/tenure-track faculty
member. At Harvard this is not a problem
because all faculty lines are endowed.
The University could say that if a department wants to hire a new
faculty member, it has to find the $2.5 - 3 million needed to endow a new
position. With the current budget model,
units add faculty in a speculative way, without knowing if the research and
tuition dollars will pay for the position for the next 40-45 years. There needs to be a model that puts brakes on
a unit so that it doesn't go into a downward spiral, but he said he would also
not favor a model whereby everyone in the college or all colleges needed to
approve appointment of a new faculty member.
Ms.
Blixt commented that with respect to exorbitant graduate tuition rates, she
hoped that the budget principles discussion would also reflect the fact that
these rates also hurt units that only have undergraduate students but that also
have research programs.
Professor
Campbell said he would communicate with Professor Balas, chair of the Senate
Research Committee. The question is
whether this Committee thinks the issue should go anywhere, Professor Roe
commented. It was noted that Provost
Maziar had intended to appoint a task force to look at funding graduate
education; it is not clear whether that effort will continue with the change in
leadership. Professor Roe noted that
there will be a search for a Dean of the
3. Budget
Principles
Professor Campbell noted that the budget principles had
been modestly modified by the Faculty Consultative Committee; he distributed
copies of the version approved by FCC.
He said he thought that Committee members had raised good points but
they had not been discussed because the Committee has not met. He asked if Committee members wished to talk
more about the principles or add depth to the operating recommendations.
Professor Feeney said he would be bringing a second
installment on the budget model from the AHC Finance and Planning Committee in
the near future. He said he thought the
process worked well last time and that the changes improved the document. It is imperative, he said, that this
Committee and FCC hold everyone's feet to the fire because there are important
principles in the document. The faculty
can promote things that no one in the administration would dare to support and
they can also push for a budget review process that they believe meets what the
faculty need.
Professor Konstan suggested it would be more fruitful to
hear from the top administration before spending any more time on the
principles. Is the President receptive
to the principles? Does he want changes
in them? The Committee cannot make
anything happen; the best it can do is keep raising the issues. The Committee should have an early discussion
with the President and the Provost, he suggested. Mr. Klein said that such a discussion would
also allow the Committee to "close the loop," as it did with parking
rates earlier in the year. There is a
risk that there will be a perception "that's all done now" and the
principles will not be brought back up.
If the principles are good, there is need for a culture change in what one
looks at as markers of change. Professor
Feeney said that discussion with the President is not solely within the purview
of FCC and this Committee should feel free to have a discussion with him. He noted that there are also presidential
working groups on the budget, on which he and Professor Campbell both serve, so
they can ask for feedback about the principles in those groups as well.
It was agreed that the Committee would invite the
President and the Provost to a meeting to discuss the budget principles. Professor Konstan said there is a companion
issue for discussion with the new Provost:
To what extent is he aware of the diversity of implementation in the
colleges of central administrative policies and procedures. He said it seems as though there is a process of translation in each college, so neither the
central administration nor the faculty in the departments know what has
happened.
Professor Campbell then adjourned the meeting at
--
Gary Engstrand