Budget cuts and administrative obstacles have led several professors to leave UNM for higher-paying, more prestigious, and better-funded research programs at other universities.
Kim Hill, a researcher who left UNM for Arizona State University in 2007, said she left because she got a better offer that UNM could not match. She said Athletics is more important to the University than retaining valuable research faculty.
“I guess we could say I was not their priority because they easily provide a much nicer package for the football coach than for any star academics,” she said.
State appropriations support about 20 percent of UNM’s research, and they were slashed $8.3 million this year, $5.6 million was cut in 2010 and $11.7 million in 2009, according to the New Mexico Legislature.
Money set aside to fund research grants and scholarships dropped from $123 million in 2004-2005 to $110 million in 2008-2009, even though it brought in $110 million in revenues, according to the Office of Institutional Research.
It’s unclear whether the decline in research funding compelled faculty to leave the University, but in 2010, 32 professors vacated their posts and another 23 retired, according to the Office of Institutional Research.
Mark Chisholm, director of the Office of Institutional Research, said that of UNM’s 834 tenure-track faculty, many left because they were offered retirement benefits last year.
“This is a small amount of faculty that leave or retire each year,” he said.
Virginia McDermott, who left in 2010 to teach at High Point University in North Carolina, said that her decision to leave had nothing to do with the University’s inattention to research.
“I did leave UNM this last year, but it was not because of research freedom,” she said. “No one at UNM ever interfered in my research, even when I was researching sensitive topics. … UNM even provided some of the funding for my research. I left UNM because of an opportunity to develop a master’s program.”
Faculty pay is the largest section of UNM expenditures, according to the Office of Institutional Research.
Richard Holder, deputy provost for Academic Affairs, said the University tries to persuade faculty members to stay by offering comparable salaries, research support, promotions and better lab equipment, but budget cuts limit UNM’s ability to negotiate.
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“If they are offered $30,000 more somewhere else it is hard to match that,” he said. “The budget cuts affect us heavily because I&G money comes from the state.”
Holder said UNM faculty members make 7 percent less than their peers at other institutions.
“We are always, and always have been well behind our peers, and year after year we have tried to redress that by dedicating all of the money the state gives us to raises,” he said. “We haven’t had a raise in three years, but that is because of budget cuts….the only advantage UNM really has against other universities is the fact that everyone is experiencing budget cuts.”
