Budget revisions and implementation strategies

¶ … Finance and Budgeting in Education II

To reign in university expenditures, it was tentatively proposed that the school eliminate its humanities and social science-related departments in their entirety. However, there are a number of problems with this radical proposal. First of all, even for non-majors, the common core university requirements in subjects such as philosophy, sociology, literature require a skeleton faculty to service student needs. Also, students might be less likely to apply to a university that only has a technical reputation, given that if they wanted to switch their major at any time to a humanities discipline, they would have to transfer from the school. There are also legal issues regarding tenure of humanities and social science faculty that the university must take into consideration.

However, creating more interdepartmental programs and consolidating majors could reduce costs without necessitating the closure of these departments. For example, a hiring freeze of tenured faculty across all disciplines could be instituted, which would reduce the overall faculty costs of teachers who had to be retained, regardless of the chosen direction of the university in the future. Secondly, different humanities and social science disciplines could be subsumed together, reducing the need for new faculty. Religion and philosophy could become one department. Psychology and sociology could likewise be combined. If it is possible to engage in cross-registration with other universities, all majors could fulfill their requirements or simply their appetites for diverse course offerings by using the facilities of other schools and accumulate automatically transferable credits, without directly taxing the university's physical resources. This would also reduce the need for students to take more than four years to complete their degrees.

Finding other ways to provide educational opportunities for students in a more cost-efficient manner is essential, to reduce long-term drains upon university resources, should the current budget shortfall become endemic to the university's financial condition. After all, it is unlikely that availability of student loans and the ability of students and parents to pay high rates of tuition will increase dramatically in the near future. Facilities costs could be reduced as well through consolidation and innovative course options.

Providing online course options for requirements would likewise reduce overall operating costs for the university, in terms of classroom space. Online teachers tend to be paid less than teachers of 'real world' classes, and these classes can more easily be staffed by adjuncts. Shifting the focus of teaching to adjuncts and teaching assistants would also limit the high cost of faculty salaries, especially for common core classes and departments with lower enrollments, where students may welcome the flexibility of an online venue. . Offering faculty members in non-priority departments the ability to retire is another way to reduce costs.

Prioritizing which tenured faculty members are necessary to retain, which departments cannot be shifted online or transformed into joint majors or joint programs with other, nearby institutions, and enacting a more stringent review process for tenure, to create a leaner institution is all essential. So can giving students more credits for internship and work experience that will enable students to make more money while still attending school, gain credit and knowledge for their degree, yet not directly use university resources. This will also reduce the need for tenured faculty and other educational expenditures.