Editor,
To commemorate the second-year anniversary of UNM’s General Faculty meeting (on April 30), in whichthe faculty came together to discuss Scholes Hall’s spending priorities:
Budgets are about priorities and anyone looking at UNM’s budget realizes how much ground the educational mission of the main campus has lost in the last few years. The amount of monies allocated for instruction has stagnated as other budget items from Instructional and General monies have increased, such as administrative costs and Athletics.
An increase in the number of vice presidents aside, what is even more troubling is the proliferation of “special assistants” and associate VPs and provosts and their staffs. Two years ago, faculty asked for an accounting of all administrative positions above dean, in order to determine to what extent they were draining instructional funds. We have yet to receive a full accounting but other evidence exists to judge the impact of these spending decisions over time.
Evidence of instructional decline is found in increased student-adviser ratios (depending on the college is as high as three times the optimal level recommended by the National Academic Advising Association); increased student-faculty ratios (now at 21 to 1, up from 14 to 1 in 1999); the percentage of classes (45 percent) taught by poorly compensated part-time faculty (whose labor subsidizes administrative salaries and growth); and faculty losses in the departments of history, math and statistics, and chemistry that are one-quarter to one-third of their tenured/tenure-track lines.
Instructional decline has been so precipitous that the recent accreditation report (2009) noted that this decline needs “organizational attention” and that “the acquisition, discovery, and application of knowledge are potentially at risk.” It also states that the high number of nontenured faculty teaching (45 percent) is “questionable” for a Carnegie I Very High Research Institution.
Neither the regents nor administrators addressed the accreditation committee’s conclusions as they were discussing spending priorities. They did, however, approve new monies ($10 more per student) for the Athletics Department’s shortfalls and ignored addressing the decadelong decrease (3.2 percent) in tenured/tenure-track lines and how to cut significantly the decadelong 120 percent increase in administrative costs and five-year 50 percent increase (2005 to 2009) to the Athletics budget. Thus from this summit we do know what UNM’s administrators’ and regents’ priorities are for 2010-2011: the maintenance of the dual behemoths of administration and Athletics.
Are these the priorities of the citizens of New Mexico? No, said the faculty at the General Meeting in 2008 and then again in February 2009 with its no-confidence votes. As New Mexico unemployment approaches 10 percent, New Mexico citizens enroll in our colleges and universities in far greater numbers than ever before. A university-educated work force is the key to New Mexico’s future prospects and viability; thus faculty must continue to pressure Scholes Hall and the regents to make UNM’s spending priorities reflect its core missions of research, teaching and service and give New Mexican families the education they deserve.
Melissa Bokovoy
UNM faculty
