WSU Headed For Rough Financial Waters With Faculty Pay Lagging, Departments May Face Further Cuts

While the state’s economy is flush and overall income is up, Washington State University is facing more cuts.

WSU has recently weathered internal cutbacks and this summer returned $1.4 million to state coffers because enrollment didn’t meet projections.

Meanwhile, faculty salary increases have continued to lag behind the national average, and many WSU teachers and researchers are bailing out for jobs with better pay.

Now the school is looking at the possibility of no additional support from the state and is considering stripping another 3 percent out of department budgets for reallocation in 2001.

“I kind of feel like Magellan,” said WSU’s new president, V. Lane Rawlins, at a Board of Regents meeting recently in Spokane. “We’re out there now. We have set sail … and we’re going to hit some rough waters.”

He said the school will have a new navigation plan for surviving this period as early as spring.

Rawlins explained that WSU shouldn’t expect much help from the state.

Thanks to new legislation that limits state spending, elected officials will probably have less money for higher education, he said.

“We basically have a budget crisis (statewide) at the peak of prosperity,” said Larry Ganders, director of WSU State-wide Affairs in Olympia. “Money will be hard to come by.”

As far as faculty salaries, “the gap continues to widen because other states are giving still more money,” Ganders said.

That’s not news to Frances McSweeney, head of the Faculty Senate. She has watched friends and colleagues flee WSU for higher-paying jobs.

“And we’re not losing these people to Harvard and Yale,” she said, explaining that many have made lateral moves to other public universities.

“We’re losing four to six faculty (members) a year,” she said of her own department, psychology. The question she now hears most is not, “How will we handle the next budget cut?” but “Will you write me a recommendation?”

Of all the departures, those of Linda Randall and Jerry Hazelbauer this fall rattled the campus the most. The married biochemistry professors were offered better-paying positions at the University of Missouri. Both are experts in their field. Randall is a member of the National Science Foundation. They took with them their research groups and about $750,000 in federal funding.

In addition to the departures, many departments are hurting from the latest budget bites. This summer each department culled 2-3 percent from its annual budget.

And this fall, the departments are required to plan to trim their 2001 budgets by another 3 percent, money that would then be reallocated.

For many departments, the task appears impossible.

“The Psychology Department doesn’t pass out syllabuses anymore because we can’t afford the paper,” McSweeney said.

In light of all this, Rawlins’ vow this fall to secure 10 percent raises for the faculty over the next two years now seems a distant dream.

“We haven’t given up,” said Ganders, who lobbies for WSU. “The one place where we really aren’t going to let them (legislators) off the hook - where we’re going to try to find creative solutions - is faculty salaries.

“But I don’t know that a 6 percent and then a 4 percent increase is achievable in the coming year,” he said.

That’s bad news for a school where faculty salaries are lagging close to 15 percent, or $10,000 a year, behind those of its peers. In 1999, the average salary at WSU was $58,500. The school is behind in part because other states have placed a higher priority on education spending, say experts.

John Pierce, former dean of liberal arts, isn’t surprised by the state of WSU.

“I would think it’s very vulnerable,” said Pierce, who left three years ago to become vice chancellor of academic affairs at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

During his WSU tenure, Pierce saw budget decisions weaken departments. “They were decisions that weren’t rational in an economic sense,” he said.

“Still WSU did some innovative things that I think were really important and were the right things to do,” he said. For example, with its branch campuses in places like Spokane, the Tri-Cities and Vancouver, WSU started educating underserved populations, he said. Though the external campuses met a real need and were politically helpful to the school, that effort was costly to the university, he said.

As far as Pullman campus budgets went, Pierce didn’t see much growth in his 11 years as dean.

“There were some huge budget cuts and rarely any significant increases,” he said.

As a result, many departments have had to take their time filling vacated positions and in some cases offer fewer classes than they did five years ago.

“It has been a very difficult period because the economy of the state has been booming, but money for higher education has not kept up,” said Karl Boehmke, WSU’s budget director. “At the same time, the university has been expected to do more.”

With the help of strategic planning teams, Rawlins hopes to chart WSU’s way out of its dilemmas. He will explain his efforts to the faculty at a meeting today.

“Very often people will put together these five-year plans, put them on the shelf and not use them,” said William Fasset, dean of the Pharmacy School and head of the Strategic Planning Oversight Committee. That’s not the case here, he said. This plan is tied to the budget and will have an impact as early as this spring. The plan is scheduled to go into full effect next year.

In his closing remarks at the regents meeting in November, Rawlins asked the regents to give him their support and have patience as he steers the school to a better place.

“The first time we hit rough water or it looks like it’s boomeranging, don’t lose faith,” he said.

This sidebar appeared with the story:

WHAT’S NEXT

WSU President V. Lane Rawlins will talk today with faculty members at a general meeting at 3:30 p.m. in the Food Science Health and Nutrition Building. He plans to answer faculty questions and discuss the school’s new strategic and marketing plans. He’ll meet with the Faculty Senate later this week.