First Principles of Shared Governance, Part III: The Nitty Gritty

Last post I explored "the vision thing" when it comes to shared governance and consultation, with particular attention to the role bylaws can play in instantiating that vision or theory.  In this post, I plan on getting into the nitty gritty of what bylaws revision has actually entailed at SUNY Fredonia over the last 6 years or so.

Defining Consultation, Shared Governance, Faculty, and Voting Faculty

I encourage you to review the current list of definitions in our bylaws and the way in which we operationalize them in Article II, Section 3.  They are the product of multiple revisions over the last several years.

When I was Chair of the University Senate and he was Vice Chair, Philosophy Professor Dale Tuggy was instrumental in revising and building support for an improved definition of consultation.  (Bonus points if you go into our Senate ANGEL site and compare the May 2007 version of the Bylaws you can find in our "About the University Senate" FAQ folder with the April 2010 version you can find in our "Campus Initiatives" folder for 2009-2010.)  Our aim was to ensure that the Senate would be a forum in which important issues facing the campus would be addressed.

Years later, when I was Vice Chairperson, I worked with fellow Executive Committee members and Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs Kevin Kearns in particular to bring this definition in line with The Policies of the Board of Trustees of the State University of New York and to use the BOT Policies, along with other sources, including those from AAUP and Middle States, to develop a definition of "shared governance" and hone our definitions of "faculty" and "voting faculty."  Our overarching goal was to reach agreement on procedural matters that were a persistent source of conflicting interpretations and conflicts over applications as we transitioned from the Hefner to the Horvath administrations.  We attempted to clearly identify different levels of shared governance, from decisions that were administrative prerogatives (where their only responsibility was to seek feedback and input from appropriate individuals and groups) to decisions that required the highest level of shared governance at Fredonia (formal consultation with the Senate, some other official governance body with Faculty-delegated consultative authority, or with the Faculty itself in an official faculty meeting).  We also wanted to establish that the Bylaws apply to everyone on the Faculty and hence that every member of the Faculty (which we define as inclusively as possible within BOT Policies) has the right to cast an equal vote to ratify (or not) Senate-approved substantive amendments to them.  That includes non-voting ex officio members: those with management/confidential appointments are not permitted to serve or vote on the Senate or on Senate Standing Committees at SUNY Fredonia, but they are permitted to vote on Bylaws ratification decisions.

Administrative Review

This was another major initiative during both the Hefner and Horvath administrations.  The heavy lifting was done while I was Chair, when the Senate had to decide what direction to take.  I presented the case for compromising with President Hefner on the purposes of administrative review (which, because a joint effort would involve personnel matters, would require keeping reports on specific Vice Presidents and their divisions confidential), while Vice Chair Tuggy made the case for Senate going it alone and thereby maximizing transparency and the accessibility of reports.  As you can see, we ended up going with the joint effort during the Hefner administration and refining it at the start of the Horvath administration.

Officers

We did a lot of work over the past 6 years clarifying the responsibilities and terms of officers.  Perhaps the most significant shift came during Dale Tuggy's tenure as Chairperson, when we moved from having a rotation of Vice Chair to Chair with 1-year terms for both positions to removing the rotation and allowing the Chairperson to run for up to 4 consecutive 1-year terms before having to sit out for at least one academic year.  The idea here was to strengthen the position of the Chairperson relative to the administrators he or she would be working with by allowing for multi-year planning and pacing by the Chairperson and Executive Committee.

Executive, Standing, and Affiliate Committees

We also did a lot of work clarifying the roles and responsibilities of the Executive Committee and differentiating Standing from Affiliate Committees of the Senate.  During the Hefner administration, many administrative task forces, working groups, and committees were formed that reported directly to the President.  These groups sometimes seemed to be where the real advisory or recommendation-making power on campus flowed from, so when President Horvath took office it was a top priority of Chairperson Rob Deemer and I to find some way of connecting them to Senate.  Long story short, we came up with the distinction between committees primarily aimed at facilitating consultation (Standing) and those primarily aimed at facilitating other shared governance functions (Affiliate).

Task Forces

Similarly, we aimed to clarify the purpose and roles of task forces, whether created by the President or her designee(s), by the Senate Executive Committee, or by both jointly.  Just as we wanted to avoid the appearance or reality of administrative bypassing of official shared governance bodies on campus, we also wanted to avoid confusions that arose in the past when task forces would bring their reports and recommendations directly to the Senate, but Senators would be unclear on what motion was actually coming before them and what precisely they were voting on.  By making sure that task forces would be charged with reporting to the people or bodies that formed them, and putting the responsibility for initiating consultation based on those reports with those people or bodies, we sought to provide an orderly path for recommendations to become motions before the Senate.  This shift has recently been the subject of a small controversy, which I'll address in another post.

Academic Departments

Another major transformation that the 2013 Bylaws revisions enshrined in our official practices and procedures was to identify departments as Faculty-delegated official governance bodies at SUNY Fredonia, with specific consultative responsibilities as defined by the BOT's Policies.  We sought input from a variety of sources, both on and off campus, before we made this judgment call.  This is a shift we are still wrestling with on campus and within departments themselves (including my own); the Fredonia UUP Chapter Executive Board and the Senate Executive Committee have tried to address the issues in different ways, which I'll get into in another post.

Electronic Quorum and Voting

Given that one of the knocks on shared governance is that the faculty and administrative calendars don't mesh well together, so that going to a body like the University Senate means you have to get things done between September and December or between January and May, we decided to develop a system for electronic deliberation and voting.  Too many times in recent years, time-limited proposals have been sprung on Executive Committee during the winter or the summer, and we have had to invoke our emergency powers in order to respond.  Once the Senate approves in our May meeting the use of google groups for deliberation and the current electronic voting system that we use for elections and ratification votes for between-meeting voting, the new Bylaws requirement for both a super-quorum and a super-majority for a motion to pass mean that we both have a way of responding to emergency requests as a body and of giving incentives for most serious business to take place in face-to-face meetings.

Senate/Standing Committee Membership

Our current Bylaws amendment ratification vote has just opened.  In it, we try to set up a system of membership on the Senate and on Standing Committees that allows for the first time since I have been at Fredonia the chance to take a semester off (for a leave, for a family emergency, etc.) during your term and that clarifies how term limits are supposed to work.  In addition, we try to make it easier to respond to sudden or late requests for governance leaders to appoint members of various non-governance groups (both existing and future).

***

So that's the run-down--really, just an overview, and a dry one at that--of the major Bylaws revision projects we've taken on since 2008 or so at SUNY Fredonia.  There are something like a dozen great stories behind each of them, but neither time nor common sense permits me to share any of them here and now!  I will get into some of the unresolved questions and issues our revisions have raised in another post, so you'll get some sense of the give-and-take as we consider what policies will best serve the Faculty, the university, and our students.

First Principles of Shared Governance, Part II: The Vision Thing

Every set of bylaws, no matter how seemingly dry, arcane, or limited to procedural matters, articulates a vision and enacts a theory of shared governance and consultation.  At SUNY Fredonia, we've spent a good portion of the last 5 years trying to work out just what that "vision thing" is and should be.  Our current Bylaws are the product of multiple revisions (in advance of approval by University Senate, ratification by the Voting Faculty for each set of substantive revisions, and sign-off by the President for each set that affects consultation).  By no means are they perfect, but at least we are trying to make them consistent, both internally and with respect to a theory of shared governance that I haven't seen clearly articulated elsewhere.  So let me try to identify what it is, what it's not, and what its implications for shared governance seem to be.

What It Is

The Preamble to our Bylaws makes reference to an underlying theory of shared governance by recourse to a pair of similes:

The Policies of the Board of Trustees of the State University of New York establish a framework for shared governance and consultation at SUNY Fredonia (and throughout the SUNY system) and our Bylaws function as a constitution and operating system for institutional communication and decision-making that involves the Faculty and its official representatives.

What does it mean to think of bylaws as something akin to a constitution?  One way that's been quite pertinent to my own thinking about the question is that a constitution's primary function is to provide a framework within which disagreements can be aired, vetted, debated, and eventually resolved.  The only consensus it presumes is a shared commitment to resolving disagreements within the framework established by the constitution, including the means for amending it.  In the same way that all branches of the U.S. federal government are subject to the U.S. Constitution, and that state laws must be consistent with it, so, too, are the President and her designees (~the executive branch), the University Senate or other predominant official governance body for a college or university (~the legislature), and any other official governance bodies, like Standing Committees, Affiliate Committees, and academic departments are at SUNY Fredonia (~the states), all subject to their college's or university's bylaws.  The analogy isn't perfect, of course--for instance, with no equivalent to the U.S. Supreme Court, power is more concentrated in the hands of the President of a campus than it is with the President of the United States--but it gets across the high stakes of the procedures our Bylaws lays out for how institutional communication and decision-making will be handled on our campus.  With those stakes in mind, our Bylaws err on the side of overspecificity; our goal is to provide everyone involved with as clear a picture as possible of how the overall (political) system is supposed to work.

Why do we do this?  I won't take you through a line-by-line reading of our definitions (although see in particular how we define "Faculty," "Shared Governance," and "Consultation" in Article I) or our run-down of the Faculty's powers and functions (Article II, which I think is our most important innovation), but I will point out some peculiarities inherent in being a campus in a state university system that includes a statewide union which represents all faculty and professionals in the system (United University Professions, or UUP).

For one thing, the Policies of the Board of Trustees of the State University of New York might be better compared to the U.S. Constitution, while the SUNY Fredonia Faculty and University Senate Bylaws might be better compared to a state constitution.  Everything we do has to be consistent with the BOT's Policies, as well as with the system-wide policies and procedures approved by the statewide University Faculty Senate and signed by the Chancellor.

For another, it means the current Agreement between United University Professions and the state of New York, which focuses on terms and conditions of employment and establishes what is subject to negotiation rather than consultation, also sets bounds on what the system- or campus-level shared governance process can achieve.  When UUP asserts its exclusive right to bargain on behalf of the faculty and professionals it represents, the most any governance body can seek to do is advise both labor and management on that matter.  By the same token, unless management agrees to negotiate with UUP on any matter other than terms and conditions of employment, UUP can only advise the official governance bodies on the SUNY Fredonia campus.

This is where we probably reach the limits of the "constitution" analogy's usefulness, and where it might be more useful to turn to the "operating system" simile.  For another way of thinking about bylaws is that they function in a similar way as an operating system in a computer does:  they allow the parts of the computer (~the university) to work together, act as an intermediary between hardware (~the people and resources of the university) and programs (~the functions of those people and resources), provide a platform for application software (~the range of things universities do), and need to be working for users (~administration, academic faculty, professional staff, students) to make the computer (~university) do anything.  Without a clearly-identified process for, say, approving a new degree program or a revision to graduation requirements in an existing program, well...you get the picture, right?  Bylaws help allow the orchestration of a variety of concurrent decision-making processes essential to the operation of the university.

Consider, as well, one of the major projects it's taken leaders from the administration, the Senate Executive Committee, and the Fredonia UUP Chapter almost a year to plan:  updating and improving our University Handbook.  This entailed developing a process for deciding who reviews, revises or creates, and approves which policies.  While in theory some policies are purely administrative, others require consultation, and still others require negotiation, in practice that meant multiple meetings to determine which were which and build trust, so as to reduce the odds of turf battles arising down the road.  We're just about ready to start divvying up the actual work of policy review, revision/creation, and approval.  By clearly defining shared governance and consultation (Article I) and clearly identifying different levels and processes for shared governance (Article II, Section 3), the Fredonia Bylaws helped make it easier for the leaders of different groups figure out how to work together.

Perhaps an overly simplistic way to treat the "operating system" analogy is to think of the system of shared governance instantiated by the bylaws as a car that needs to be tuned up or overhauled periodically so that the driver can use it to get somewhere safely and quickly.  Our process of revising the Fredonia Bylaws between 2008 and 2013, and particularly during the 2012-2013 academic year, has enabled faculty and administrators to better trust the vehicle and trust each other to play our appropriate roles as we take it for a spin.

To move from similes to theory, then, one underlying principle that animates the Fredonia Bylaws is that the most unproductive conflicts--and those most important to avoid--come about because of a lack of agreement over what kind of shared governance activity is necessary in order for a given decision to be legitimately made (and by whom).  Our Bylaws draw on BOT Policies, a landmark statement by the SUNY Chancellor, and principles articulated by Middle States and AAUP (all of which we quote extensively from in Article II, Section 2) to enjoin the President and the representatives of the Faculty (which is typically the Executive Committee of the University Senate) to reach procedural agreement on every kind of decision where consultation or input from the Faculty (whether through a faculty meeting, the Senate, standing or affiliate committees, academic departments, or other bodies delegated by the Faculty to consult or give input) is warranted.  By limiting the possibility and scope of procedural conflicts, the Fredonia Bylaws enable all of us to focus on substantive matters.

What It's Not

It should be clear by now that we are trying to strike a middle ground at Fredonia between two extreme views of shared governance.

One puts the administration firmly in the driver's seat.  Since everything that bubbles through shared governance processes is ultimately advisory to the campus President--is at heart a recommendation to the President--some argue that this makes the activities of official shared governance bodies nothing but a rubber stamp or road block for decisions the administration has already made.  You see this conception of shared governance in arguments for or expressions of both administrative and faculty cynicism.  "Shared governance is a medieval relic inappropriate for the modern world of higher education."  "Why should we take shared governance seriously?  The administration will do what they want anyway."  "The key to managing faculty is getting them to believe they came up with the policy themselves."  "Faculty are too indecisive, complacent, and self-interested to govern themselves."  "Administrators are too manipulative, dishonest, and careerist to be trusted."  It's this conception of shared governance that leads too many faculty to become disengaged or disillusioned.  It's this conception of shared governance that leads too many administrators to scheme how to bypass or bamboozle official governance bodies.

The other extreme either puts the faculty firmly in the driver's seat or casts the administration as the faculty's chauffeur.  One problem with this mode of shared governance--which as a faculty member I admit I find more attractive than the other extreme--is that it tends to presume that "the faculty" will always speak with a united voice, that given time clear majorities will emerge on any and all issues, that the faculty will in fact have an infinite amount of time to arrive at consensus.  Absent the bogeyman of the administration to rally support for or against a particular position or solution, however, how consistently will the faculty be able to arrive at decisions in an efficient, fair, and collaborative manner?  Another problem with this conception of shared governance is that it runs the risk of turning official governance bodies into shadow administrations, with all the duplication of effort, turf battles, second-guessing, and mutual recriminations that seem to go with that territory.  Furthermore, the more powerful leaders of official governance bodies become, the more distant they are in danger of becoming from everyday faculty, the more everyday faculty are prone to start treating them as quasi-administrators.  And given that administrators have to manage faculty and make personnel decisions, to the extent that faculty take on these roles, whether or not they have those titles (or salaries!), they, too, will have to make judgment calls where there are valid arguments on many sides of a question or issue and competing goods and interests at stake.  It's truly difficult to imagine how a large and complex enough college or university would function with just the President and the Faculty doing it all, no matter how nostalgic some of us may be for those good ol' days.  And believe me, I've tried!

Implications for Shared Governance

So the moral to this version of Goldilocks is what exactly?  Let's identify a few morals:

• Your bylaws are a useful tool for engaging in serious discussions across roles, positions, and lines of responsibility about the meaning of shared governance and consultation on your campus and the principles and values underlying the policies, procedures, practices, and systems that enable institutional communication and decision-making.
• Revising your bylaws can provide opportunities to revisit, review, and rejuvenate agreements and ground rules for interactions between the President and the Faculty.
• Going through the bylaws review, revision, approval, and ratification process can therefore increase awareness, build trust, and limit the odds and scope of conflicts over proper procedures, allowing everyone involved to focus on what's best for the institution and what best helps it achieve its mission.
• It may be a pain and painstaking process to figure out how to come to agreement on what kind of shared governance activity is warranted for which kind of institutional decision, but it saves time and headaches down the road.
• Always look to adapt rather than adopt models from other institutions or principles articulated by national organizations.  It's more important that faculty and administrators at your institution go through the process and come to agreement on a framework for approaching procedural matters than it is to hold out for every last detail of your ideal external model.  Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good--or at least the better.
• If your President is ever resistant to good-faith efforts to improve the bylaws on your campus, look for windows of opportunity, such as when planning for a major university-wide accreditation agency site visit is in the works, when a President is close to retiring and interested in leaving a legacy, or when a President is new on the job and looking to establish good working relations with multiple campus constituencies.

All that said, bylaws are always a work in process.  They depend for their validity on the confidence campus constituencies have in them.  When legitimate objections are raised, and thoughtful revisions are proposed, they need to be carefully vetted, debated, approved, and ratified.  This fall and spring, the Executive Committee proposed and the Senate approved two more sets of Bylaws revisions, the latter of which are going up for a ratification vote shortly.  And just in the last week a procedural debate has bubbled over onto our faculty listserv.  More on these topics in later posts!

First Principles of Shared Governance, Part I: Buckle Your Seat Belts, Kids!

I'm heading out to Albany in the middle of next week to be on a panel with SUNY Fredonia University Senate Chairperson Rob Deemer and Governance Officer John McCune at the SUNY Voices 1st Annual Conference on Shared Governance.  Its theme is "Shared Governance for Institutions of Higher Education in the 21st Century:  Beyond Stereotypes"; my focus will be "Improved Shared Governance through Strong Bylaws."  I've been playing a lead role in upgrading the SUNY Fredonia Faculty and University Senate Bylaws off and on ever since I was 1st elected Vice Chairperson in 2008, but we developed, approved, and ratified the most comprehensive set of revisions to the Bylaws last year.  Since I have only about 10 minutes to summarize our emerging vision/theory of shared governance, survey the most significant changes to the Bylaws in the past 5 years or so, and identify as-yet-unresolved questions, I thought I'd better use Citizen of Somewhere Else to work through my ideas and provide some perspective on the debates we're currently having in departments and on the Senate at Fredonia.  My girls are just about done with Japanese school this morning, though, and we have a birthday party in Fredonia to get them to by 2, so this post will have to serve as a heads-up to come back here the next week or so, check in on my progress, and weigh in in comments!

What SUNY Fredonia Needs from New York State's Leaders

The SUNY Fredonia Administration, Student Association, University Senate, and United University Professions and Civil Service Employees Association chapter Executive Boards issue the following urgent appeal to western-region and state-wide leaders as the New York State budget process enters its end game.  We agree the following legislative priorities would benefit our campus, our students, our local community, our region, and our state.

Enhance and Invest in SUNY State-Operated Campuses

• increase state funding for SUNY’s operating costs
• fully fund all contractual increases
• fully commit to maintenance of effort
• provide relief to campuses for winter emergency utilities charges
• develop a short- and long-term solution to the hospitals crisis that avoids harm to the academic and teaching mission of SUNY and its medical schools and two-year and four-year universities
• increase capital funding to repair, maintain, and enhance SUNY’s infrastructure
• support full funding for Fredonia’s NY SUNY 2020 proposal
• engage and support SUNY Fredonia’s START-UP NY plan
• think of SUNY if one-time funds become available

Commit to Quality, Access, Affordability, and Student Success throughout SUNY

• invest in New York’s students, maintain SUNY’s affordability, and reduce student and family debt by taking concrete steps to reverse the chronic state underfunding of SUNY’s operating costs
• adequately fund SUNY’s opportunity programs
• extend the DREAM Act to undocumented SUNY students
• invest in current students and veterans as strongly as the Governor has committed to offering higher educational opportunities to prisoners
• if we’re going to do Open SUNY, ensure that it does not compromise educational quality and access, shared governance, or the mission of SUNY

Contacts
Ziya Arnavut, President, Fredonia United University Professions arnavut@fredonia.edu
John Baughman, President, Civil Service Association Local 607 baughman@fredonia.edu
Robert Deemer, Chairperson, SUNY Fredonia University Senate deemer@fredonia.edu
Virginia Horvath, President, SUNY Fredonia horvath@fredonia.edu
Antonio Regulier, President, Fredonia Student Association regu0674@fredonia.edu
Bruce Simon, Western Region Co-Coordinator, UUP Outreach Committee simon@fredonia.edu
Idalia Torres, Western Region Co-Coordinator, UUP Outreach Committee torres@fredonia.edu

For more, see our joint statement!

Here's the list of leaders our letter and statement went out to electronically.  Anyone who wants to help us out by making calls or sending emails, we'd welcome the support!

The 4 Men in the Room
Governor Cuomo, https://www.governor.ny.gov/contact/GovernorContactForm.php, 518-474-8390
Jeffrey Klein, jdklein@nysenate.gov, 518-455-3595
Sheldon Silver, speaker@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-3791
Dean Skelos, skelos@nysenate.gov, 518-455-3171

Higher Education Budget Conference Committee
Deborah Glick, glickd@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-4841
José Rivera, riveraj@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-5414
William Colton, coltonw@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-5828
Amy Paulin, paulina@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-5585
William Barclay, barclaw@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-5841
Michelle Schimel, schimelm@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-5192
Gary Finch, finchg@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-5878
Kenneth LaValle, lavalle@nysenate.gov, 518-455-3121
James Seward, seward@nysenate.gov, 518-455-3131
Joseph Robach, robach@nysenate.gov, 518-455-2909
Mark Grisanti, grisanti@nysenate.gov, 518-455-3240
Toby Ann Stavisky, stavisky@nysenate.gov, 518-455-3461

Other State-Wide Leaders
John DeFrancisco, jdefranc@nysenate.gov, 518-455-3511
Herman Farrell, Jr., farrellhassembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-5491
Liz Krueger, lkrueger@nysenate.gov, 518-455-2297
Robert Oaks, oaksr@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-5655
Andrea Stewart-Cousins, scousins@nysenate.gov, 518-455-2585

Other Western Region Legislators
John Ceretto, cerettoj@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-5284
Jane Corwin, corwinj@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-4601
David DiPietro, dipietrod@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-5314
Patrick Gallivan, gallivan@nysenate.gov, 518-455-3471
Joseph Giglio, giglioj@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-5241
Andrew Goodell, goodella@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-4511
Michael Kearns, kearnsm@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-4691
Timothy Kennedy, kennedy@nysenate.gov, 518-455-2426
Crystal Peoples-Stokes, peoplesstokesc@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-5005
Michael Ranzenhofer, ranz@nysenate.gov, 518-455-3161
Sean Ryan, ryans@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-4886
Robin Schimminger, schimmr@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-4767
Raymond Walter, walterr@assembly.state.ny.us, 518-455-4618
Catharine Young, cyoung@nysenate.gov, 518-455-3563

[Update 1 (9:33 am):  I'm reading on twitter that budget bills are being printed on education and higher education.  Trying to find out how often they get amended on the floor....  Follow me @citizense for breaking news.]

[Update 2 (12:34 pm):  Here are some links to articles and blog posts coming out with highlights of the budget:

• Capitol Confidential Overview
• Capitol Confidential:  No Raises for Management-Confidential

Waiting for specifics on SUNY.]

[Update 3 (12:42 pm):  The New York Times article doesn't add many details but is good on context on pre-k and charter schools.]

[Update 4 (1:35 pm):  TWC has what they tweeted was a full budget, but looks like highlights to me.]

[Update 5 (1:47 pm):  The Albany Daily Gazette has a few more details, but SUNY remains off the radar.  Hasn't come up in conference call yet, either.]

[Update 6 (1:55 pm):  Lots of details in this lohud.com post, but still nothing on SUNY mentioned.]

MLA's Open Access Online Journal Profession Addresses Campus Equity Week Themes!

Somehow I had missed the memo that the Modern Language Association's Profession has become an open-access online journal.  And that in October they published several essays that deal with the very issues of contingency and sustainability that we've been focusing on here at SUNY Fredonia.  I haven't yet had a chance to read what look like very interesting and important essays:

• Michael Berube, "Avenues of Access:  The 2013 Presidential Forum"
• Joshua Boldt, "Free-Market Faculty Members"
• Beth Landers, "Contingent Labor:  National Perspectives, Local Solutions"
• Maria Maisto, "Addressing the Scarlet A:  Adjuncts and the Academy"
• Robert Samuels, "Reinventing Access:  Free Public Higher Education, Quality Instruction, and Job Security for All Faculty Members"

.  But at the pace I'm going with grading and consulting on student final projects this semester, I may be able to respond to them over Thanksgiving Break.  If not, winter break, so stay tuned!

Where to Begin?

Apologies for the radio silence the last several months here at CoSE.  Obviously there's been a lot going on, but between the end-of-last-semester rush, the lure of summer in a new town, and my new responsibilities on campus (I ran for and was elected Vice Chair of the SUNY Fredonia University Senate in the spring, effective July 1st), blogging here fell off my personal radar.  So here's a quick rundown of issues I haven't been commenting on but will try to be more diligent about doing so here in the coming months.

Et Tu, SUNY?

As my regular readers may know, I've been concerned about the possibility of retrenchment (layoffs of tenured faculty members by shutting down their department) at SUNY Fredonia for several years, and as Chair of our University Senate from 2009-2010, I took several steps to begin serious dialogues well in advance of any number of worse-, worser-, and worst-case budget scenarios that might face our campus.  Because my successor Dale Tuggy, the Executive Committee of the Senate, and the Planning and Budget Advisory Committee were doing such a good job last year continuing down that path, I basically decided to sit on the sidelines for the most part but also work behind the scenes on helping to improve the funding of public higher education in New York state.  Rather than simply update my older posts here, I wrote and spoke to state legislators and their staffers in both Chautauqua and Erie counties on many of the topics raised in them, sometimes by myself and sometimes with colleagues like Ziya Arnavut and Junaid Zubairi (to name just a couple).

To make a long story short, it's looking like all our collective efforts across the state have helped avert a worst-case scenario for SUNY Fredonia.  It appears that Governor Cuomo is not looking to cut SUNY any further (barring a future fiscal emergency that he and both houses of the legislature agree exists), that the fair, rational, and predictable tuition reform that was passed as part of NYSUNY 2020 legislation will help SUNY campuses begin to become healthy enough to get off life support, and hence that the worst of the crisis may well be behind us.  But--and didn't you know that word was coming?--that doesn't mean we're even close to getting out of the woods.  I'll talk about the Governor's war on public employee unions in a moment, but for now I want to focus on how SUNY turned this small victory into an even larger structural deficit for SUNY Fredonia this current academic year.  Here's what the Chancellor's Office came up with:

• Confiscate the reduction on the state's tax on tuition.  Yup,  we didn't see a penny of our students' tuition dollars that by every right should be helping to improve the quality of their education at our campus.  SUNY System Administration took them and redistributed them to other parts of the system.
• Divert state dollars we otherwise would have received to University Centers and Health Science Centers.  That's right--what we gained via our tuition increase for in-state undergraduates was more than wiped out by the nearly $1M we should have gotten but didn't because Chancellor Zimpher and CFO Monica Rimai believe other campuses needed to be cushioned from the 10% cut imposed by Governor Cuomo on all state agencies.
• In short, we were penalized for the very fiscal prudence, foresight, and planning that enabled us to ride out the worst of the crisis while minimizing pain to our students and faculty.  It seems almost like it was because we have well-run a Residence Halls program, a strong Faculty-Student Association, and have taken so many measures to cut spending and find cost savings wherever possible that we were singled out to bear this extra burden.

Fortunately, it looks like we'll be able to weather SUNY doing to us almost exactly what the state has been doing to SUNY--well, for this year.  But unless SUNY looks hard at how they treat the four-year campuses, we may yet face retrenchments at SUNY Fredonia.


Why Differential Tuition Isn't the End of the World

This leads me to my next point, a pragmatic argument for allowing the University Centers to charge more in tuition than other campuses in the system--provided that SUNY provides the legislature and Governor with a plan to gradually rebalance the distribution of state dollars away from the University Centers and toward those other campuses.  Because the doctoral programs and their research needs do cost more than the master's programs and their research needs at campuses like mine, SUNY has for a long time diverted more state dollars to the more expensive campuses and programs than to places like SUNY Fredonia.  But if by the next time NYSUNY 2020 comes up for revision and renewal more of the responsibility for funding research were to be covered by the federal government (which is better able to invest in basic research than cash-strapped states), I wouldn't be opposed to undergraduates at UB, Binghamton, Albany, and Stony Brook paying more for their educations than those at places like Fredonia, Brockport, Geneseo, Cortland, and New Paltz, provided they and other non-University Centers in the system were to get more of their fair share of state dollars.  The better able the University Centers are to support themselves via student and federal dollars, the more state dollars should be able to go to the rest of the system.  And if they happen to overshoot and price talented students out, then all the better for the rest of us who can provide them with a high-quality education at much lower prices.

What about UUP?

Now, let me be clear that probably nobody in my faculty and professionals' union, United University Professions, is very likely to agree with me on this.

There's a strong contingent in UUP who believe SUNY higher education should be tuition-free and 100% publicly-funded. There's an even larger number of my brothers and sisters who want to see tuition remain as low as possible, so as to ensure that SUNY continues to fulfill its mission of providing access to higher education for all NY's citizens. Most delegates look with great suspicion at the claims of high-tuition/high-aid advocates in SUNY's doctoral-granting institutions and across the country that the way to a great public university is to follow the lead of the University of Michigan and the University of California's state-wide administration.  In fact, virtually everyoneat every DA I've been to believes that differential tuition is a trojan horse for privatizing SUNY, helping richer campuses get richer, helping bigger ones get bigger, and putting the poorer ones in Darwinian competition against each other for their very survival. 

Certainly the two rivals for leadership of UUP, President Phil Smith and Vice President for Academics Fred Floss, have other plans and priorities.  While Smith has gone on record as saying that "UUP supports a rational, reliable, sustainable, and predictable tuition policy," he pledged at the spring Delegate Assembly that he won't put UUP's weight behind the current bills before the Senate and Assembly unless the legislature commits to raising the TAP limit to match tuition increases and SUNY leadership stops using language about the state taxing tuition.  At the fall DA I just left, he simply noted that UUP ended up supporting rational tuition.  Meanwhile, Floss, who narrowly lost in his bid to unseat Smith last spring, argued to me back then that UUP shouldn't even enter into the tuition debates, since they distract from the core problem of convincing legislators to commit state funding to SUNY and ensuring that the state continues to sustain labor protections.

In response, I would argue that once the legislature commits to maintenance of effort, stops reducing state funding every time they pass a tuition increase, and commits to supporting SUNY's mission, there'll be no need to criticize the way they have been systematically defunding SUNY over the past few decades, because they'll have stopped doing so.  If we can get a similar pledge from SUNY not to grow the University Centers at the expense of the rest of the system, I just don't see why differential tuition is such a dirty word.

In any case, right now every officer, negotiations team member, and delegate is united behind the common goal of fighting off efforts by the Governor's Office of Employee Relations to bully UUP into accepting massive cuts in our benefits during the current negotiations for a new contract.  And the DA just approved a vitally-important series of constitutional amendments that bring our union into the 21st century when it comes to ensuring representation of colleagues who are neither on the tenure track nor on the path to permanent appointment as professionals.  We created new subcategories of membership, "Contingent Academic" and "Contingent Professional," ensured that every chapter would have an elected Officer for Contingents, converted the statewide standing Part-Time Concerns Committee into the Contingent Employee Committee, and guaranteed at least one seat on the state-wide Executive Board to a contingent academic or professional.  It's all about making sure that the 40% of our members who are contingent employees have a seat at the table during the decision-making process of their and our union.

Speaking of which, I'm proud to report that our own Vice President for Professionals, Idalia Torres-Medina, will have seat at that very same table.  She won the seat on the Executive Board vacated by now no-longer-acting Vice President for Professionals J. Philippe Abraham, winning a 3-round election against three other worthy candidates.  More on this when I get back to Fredonia.  Time to get ready to hit the road again and leave Clinton!

Gearing Up for the UUP Delegate Assembly and the NYS Higher Education Summit

Hey all, CitizenSE is back in business! I've taken a long break from serious blogging on the funding of public higher education, especially in New York State, partly because I'm no longer Chair of the SUNY Fredonia University Senate, partly because I didn't have much to add to my previous writings on the subject, and partly because my family's move from Dunkirk to Hamburg and my adjustment to a new commuting schedule have forced me away. But we're hitting crunch time and it's about time I get back in the game, not least because I just got voted in as Vice-Chair of next year's Fredonia University Senate.

So expect a bunch of quick-hit but substantive posts from me in the coming weeks. In the meantime, check out my comment on SUNY flexibility and autonomy, consider the differences between SUNY's and UUP's advocacy organizations, and send me questions or suggestions for future posts.

The AAUP Gets It: Investigating SUNY Albany

Check it out: the AAUP is investigating the decision to close programs at SUNY Albany. More power to them!

I look forward to the investigating committee's report. There are a lot of thorny issues involved with the role of faculty and governance in decisions to shrink rather than grow a university that are very difficult to get a handle on. Here's hoping the AAUP can make their very useful Red Book even more relevant today by identifying some principles and practices governance leaders and bodies can use--as well as things administrators should endeavor to avoid or face censure.

The AAUP Gets It: Saving Public Higher Education

Check out the AAUP's defense of public employees, collective bargaining, and public higher education. And get involved!

Groundhog Day Symbolism

Yeesh, reading about the new Governor's proposals for the NYS budget and for SUNY and CUNY, along with the responses from the usual suspects, make me wonder if I'm in Groundhog Day the movie or if the huge winter storm western NY seems mostly to have weathered with minimal disruptions is a better indicator of where the state and its public higher education systems are headed.

The SUNY Fredonia Student Association Strikes Back!

They're taking the battle for the future of SUNY to youtube:



Here's a link to the statewide SUNY SA!

OMG, This Is Fracking Awesome

Although why they don't just have the prof say "fucking," I have no idea!

SUNY Under Siege

It's fitting that my last post as chair of the SUNY Fredonia University Senate would tie into my first this semester, in which I don't do much more than call your attention to the fine SUNY Under Siege site. I'll leave it to you to make the connection!

Why Middlesex Matters

John Protevi explains. If SUNY is forced by Sheldon Silver, David Paterson, and the rest of NY's political elite into layoffs and retrenchments, we're all going to need to become familiar with arguments like Protevi's and organize like the Middlesex students and faculty in Philosophy have done--preferably before the cuts have been decided on, rather than after. Looks like campus governance bodies and leaders will have to be particularly vigilant and active this summer.

[Update 1 (2:15 pm): Bob Samuels shows that at UCLA, coalitions between faculty and students, public protests and demonstrations, and alternative forums have made a big difference.]

[Update 2 (3:23 pm): Michael Meranze shines the spotlight on the Governator's budget proposal, demonstrating why those of us in public universities need to understand the big picture.]

[Update 3 (3:49 pm): I don't share Harry's confidence over at Crooked Timber that already-partially-privatized public universities in the U.S. are therefore insulated from what's going on in their more government-dependent counterparts in the UK.]

[Update 4 (3:53 pm): For more on Middlesex, check out Infinite Thought (thanks to one of Harry's commenters for the tip!).]

[Update 5 (3:58 pm): Interesting that elite universities in the UK are demanding the power to set their own fees--sounds like what SUNY's been up to lately. Here's my own basic take on the proper relationship between the state and the state university. Here's a sequel.]

[Update 6 (5/19/10, 2:23 pm): Must-read by Christopher Newfield in the new Academe.]

Question for SUNY Campuses: Since Albany Profits from the Current System, Why Retain Lobbyists?

Let's see: SUNY is looking for more autonomy from Albany, so System Administration spends $600K to lobby lawmakers while individual SUNY campuses spend at least another $1M on hired guns. Let's hope this is a temporary state of affairs. Look for these costs to go up if key measures from the Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act are not passed in this year's budget, however. Which may actually be what the state government wants. Maybe it's time to stop feeding the beast!

[Update 1 (10:17 am): If anyone can get me a full-text version of this May 2010 Harper's article on the ingrained corruption in Albany, I'd really appreciate it!]

How Colorado Is Different from New York

Quick Citizen SE take on Doug Lederman's story at Inside Higher Ed on the decision by the Colorado legislature to grant state colleges and universities tuition and other flexibilities to help them survive a potential 50% cut in state support for public higher education.

Here's Lederman's summary:

Under the plan, which is designed to last for five years, each institution would by November submit a plan for how it would deal with a 50 percent reduction in its current allocation of state funds. (The Colorado Commission on Higher Education would take those plans into consideration in framing its budget request for the 2011-12 fiscal year.) In exchange, individual universities would, beginning in 2011-12, be allowed to increase their tuition by up to 9 percent a year with no restrictions, but would need approval from the Colorado Commission on Higher Education to exceed that level.

Colleges would continue to be required to have at least two-thirds of their students be Coloradans, with one major exception: International students would no longer count as out-of-state students from an enrollment perspective under such a calculation, and the foreign-born could make up as much as 12 percent of a campus's students, up from the current 4 percent. (Foreign students would, of course, continue to pay out-of-state tuition rates, so campuses that added significant numbers of international students could significantly increase their tuition revenue.)

Lastly, the state commission would no longer require institutions that stay under the 9 percent limit on tuition increases to ensure that they dedicate a portion of their revenues to need-based financial aid; instead, each campus would be responsible for ensuring that it provides sufficient financial aid to remain affordable.

Obviously this is similar in some ways to the decision facing New York's political elites with regard to funding SUNY and CUNY and the debates over the Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act (PHEE&IA), but from a quick read of Lederman's article, I'd suggest the differences may end up being more important. Namely:

(1) It appears that differential tuition is already in place in the University of Colorado system, with their flagship already charging higher tuition than other campuses and already relying less on state funds to cover its operating costs. Tuition is the same across SUNY, despite the vastly different locations (and costs of living) and missions (and costs of operation) across the system. This means that more state support on average goes to doctorals and downstate campuses in New York, whereas in Colorado, it's the less wealthy institutions that get more state support--and thus stand to lose more, since they can't raise tuition much without jeopardizing enrollment yields and will have to do more tuition discounting (via financial aid) than places like Boulder.

(2) There seems to be much less organized opposition to the Colorado legislation than the PHEE&IA has faced in New York. Lederman notes that "Even an organization that has generally opposed Colorado's drift away from public funding of higher education and toward a high-tuition, high financial aid model offered its backing for the legislation this month," quoting Frank Waterous, a senior policy analyst at the Bell Policy Center--"we reluctantly view limited tuition flexibility as the lesser of two policy evils" (the other being "the very real threat of program and service reductions or institutional closures"). Why this is remains an open question. Is Colorado's political culture less dysfunctional than NY? More willing to plan for worst-case scenarios? Are Colorado's higher education unions more fearful of losing their jobs or their campuses?

(3) With SUNY's Chancellor Nancy Zimpher in charge of the system for almost twice as long as Rico Munn, executive director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education, has been on board, the SUNY strategic plan is complete while the Colorado strategic planning process is just getting off the ground. So whereas both systems have seen plenty of turnover in recent years--Lederman points out that the state's key body on higher education, the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, "has had four executive directors in six years"--SUNY may actually have more stability than its counterparts in Colorado, and CUNY has much more.

(4) Even though critics of the Colorado plan are already worrying about its potential impacts on access, affordability, and college completion, the situation seems a lot less polarized there than here in NY. Whereas Munn is soft-pedaling the impact of the legislation--"Nobody sees this as a solution. It's a short-term fix trying to address the significant budget issues we're facing"--Zimpher continues to peddle PHEE&IA as the best thing since sliced bread and UUP President Phil Smith continues to put it down as the worst thing since the plague. Both sides seem hunkered down for a long fight that looks to continue well past this year's budget battle. While Zimpher emphasizes that SUNY and UUP share the same goals, but differ over the means, Chief Financial Officer Monica Rimai preaches the value of persistence and persuasion.

No big conclusion. Just wanted to throw a quick take out there and see what people think!

More Shots Fired from Wild Western NY

Although I disagree with my State Senator Cathy Young's closing remarks in her recent attack on New York's political leadership, I heartily endorse the following charges:

Common sense spending cuts can be made, waste can be rooted out, and structural changes can be made to the state budget, if there are open, transparent discussions and negotiations.

Shockingly, that dialogue is not taking place, because New York City-beholden politicians who currently control the agenda in Albany are violating the law by not holding open Conference Committees and passing the state budget.

The state budget now is several weeks late, yet no meaningful budget talks are underway because downstate Senators and Assembly Members who dictate the agenda refuse to meet in public, if at all.

In the meantime, taxes, spending and borrowing are spinning out of control, hitting struggling taxpayers hard, and driving more people and jobs out of the state.

Sorely-needed road construction projects that would jump start the economy are stalled. Schools are laying off teachers. State workers are [in danger of] being furloughed, throwing state government further into chaos.

Despite an unprecedented fiscal crisis and the threat of running out of cash by June if action isn't taken, those who currently control Albany continue to fail to lead.

Preach it, sister!

The reality is that Governor Paterson and New York City-controlled majorities in both the Senate and Assembly are fiddling while the state burns.

Instead of following the budget reform laws of 2007 that require bipartisan Conference Committees to be convened to hammer out the budget in public, these so-called leaders are stalling by sticking their heads in the sand, hoping against hope that they will wake up one morning and the $9.3 billion budget deficit will have magically disappeared.

It doesn't work that way.

Passing budget extenders to pay the bills week-to-week instead of tackling the tough decisions only is making the problem worse.

Conference Committees worked in 2007 and 2008 to pass on-time budgets. Our taxpayers need open discussions about solutions.

Every person in our state is affected by the state budget, whether they pay taxes, send their kids to school, drive on a road or bridge, or need hospital or nursing home care. The people have a right to know what their government is doing.

They also have a right to expect that their government will get the job done.

It's not just going to take a revolution at the voting booth to fix New York politics. We need more rank-and-file legislators to stand up for their constituents and what's right for New York by standing up to their leadership. I'll even accept Young's stumping for the Republican minority right now if it results in an unleashing of the Conference Committees. If 3 men in a room can't come to an agreement, it's time to put our trust in the dozens of men and women who have experience working together and hashing out their differences. At least let them do their work and bring a proposal to their leadership, rather than sitting on the sidelines, shut out of the process!

NY Public Employee Furloughs Blocked: What Next?

The New York Daily News and the AP are reporting that Governor Patterson's plan to furlough over 100,000 state workers is on hold until May 26th, following a temporary restraining order from U.S. District Judge Lawrence Kahn. The state and the public employee unions now have two weeks to prepare their cases for and against furloughs. For more, see the Capitol Confidential blog. Here's UUP's announcement of their lawsuit and other legal actions to stop the furloughs, along with President Phil Smith's reaction to the temporary restraining order.

As a public employee and proud UUP activist, I'm pleased that I'll be able to finish my grading uninterrupted. But I'm also wondering what's coming next. Lt. Gov. Ravitch has threatened that no furloughs = layoffs, but that would mean going back on a no-2010-layoffs pledge the Governor made in exchange for union acquiescence on a new, lower tier in the state employees' pension plan (for new employees, of course). Under the UUP contract, which expires next July, many of those new employees would be the first to be fired if SUNY is forced into retrenchments by the state of New York.

I'm wondering if UUP shouldn't consider re-opening negotiations, with an eye toward stretching our last scheduled pay increase over several years and strengthening the provisions affecting retrenchments--if not with this Governor, then with the next one, who could perhaps be enticed into a no-layoffs-in-2011 pledge. It's very unlikely that either side would want to move at all quickly when it comes to negotiating the next contract--the Governor's office because salaries would be frozen in the absence of a new agreement and the union leadership because they would want to avoid even the prospect of salary decreases or minimal increases, which would be very likely if the state's finances are even worse next year than this year. From my perspective, opening negotiations on the current contract could lead to a win-win, in that doing so would help out the state in a terrible budget year (and hopefully turn down the heat on the union-bashing from the Governor's office), while guaranteeing my colleagues and me some kind of pay increases after the 2010-2011 academic year. If some of the savings could be devoted to actually hiring new full-time faculty, instead of being thrown into the budget black hole, I'd be even happier. In fact, I'd give up pay raises for three years if all the savings were devoted to a huge hiring push from SUNY and NY.

Unfortunately, this Governor has nothing to lose and no trust (to say the least) with or from New York's union leaders. Where that leaves the state budget and SUNY is an open question.

Speaking of CICU....

That's the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities--and guess who's been their President since last July 16th? Why, New York State's own former Director of Budget, Laura Anglin, that's who!

Some key quotes from last year's CICU press release:

"In Laura Anglin, the search committee found a talented and skilled professional with two decades' experience in important positions in the state government, a deep knowledge of the state’s budget process, and an appreciation of how to advance policies through consensus building and broad outreach to many constituencies," said John Sexton, the chair of CICU's Board of Trustees and its presidential search committee, and president of New York University.

"Beyond all this, Laura displayed an eagerness to focus on the needs and goals of independent education in New York State, recognizing the importance of this sector to the future of our state. Abe Lackman positioned CICU as one of the most important voices in higher education policy, both in Albany and in Washington, DC. We are confident Laura will continue this important trajectory," President Sexton added.

Laura Anglin said, "New York's private colleges and universities have historically played an important role in the economic and social well being of New York--and they will be essential partners for helping to rebuild New York State's economy for the future. I am grateful for the opportunity to help further the mission of the Independent Sector during these challenging times."

Anglin was Director of Budget Services for the Assembly majority (under Sheldon Silver, who can speak passionately for TAP and HEOP but not for SUNY), just as her predecessor played a similar role in Joseph Bruno's Senate.

With the post-Anglin DOB firmly behind the Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act and the Anglin-era CICU lobbying against it, who do you think Sheldon Silver is going to listen to? When Columbia and NYU are both planning to expand in New York City, now would be a pretty bad time for SUNY to become better able to compete with NY's privates, wouldn't it?

When It Comes to Supporting SUNY, Who Does Sheldon Silver Really Listen To?

Check out the report from Tom Precious of the Buffalo News that a Democratic member of the Assembly, Mark J.F. Schroeder, is attacking Sheldon Silver for backing out on a deal and blocking a vote on the Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act:

Schroeder, a Buffalo Democrat, said Silver told members of the Western New York delegation last year that if they could win SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher's support for the effort [on behalf of UB2020], the Assembly would pass the bill.

Zimpher has since signed on.

"He said, 'Get the new chancellor's support, and we got a deal,' and it never happened," Schroeder said Wednesday in an interview.

"The current obstruction in the Assembly majority conference is a misguided power play," Schroeder said in a recent letter to Silver.

More than 40 Democrats have pledged to support the Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act, he said, and Republicans have told him they can provide 38 votes--enough to pass the legislation if brought to the floor.

Silver and other Democrats from New York City oppose the measure, which will largely help the upstate-based SUNY system, Schroeder said.

Buffalo News columnist Douglas Johnson explores why the post-Census reapportionment of New York's Congressional districts places so much power in Silver's hands. His parting shot at Silver's "embrace of public employee union dominance" seems gratuitous, however. The public opposition of UUP and other unions to PHEE&IA provides political cover to those already opposed to SUNY's growth. As the contributors to SUNY at 60 have shown, the NYS Board of Regents and State Education Department have long been colonized by New York's private colleges and universities. We've already seen the Regents take such a swipe at SUNY that the former president of Columbia Teacher's College thought it was unfair. Well, it should come as no surprise that the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities is lobbying against PHEE&IA. Joan Hinde Stewart the excellent president of Hamilton College, my alma mater, is an at-large member of the CICU Board of Trustees.

A professor at NC State for 26 years, Stewart needs no lecturing on the value of public higher education or the opportunities it provides to its students--and to the alumni of private colleges and universities. I'll be writing her an open letter soon, but I wonder how much Columbia and NYU have to do with Silver's opposition even to the parts of the PHEE&IA that UUP President Phil Smith specifically lent his support to?

[Update 1 (1:09 pm): Here's another Buffalo News broadside at Silver.]