Timothy Ross, president of the Faculty Senate, sat down with the Daily Lobo to discuss his concerns regarding the upcoming year’s budget and how it will affect faculty.
Daily Lobo: The Board of Regents preliminarily approved $3.79 million in one-time funding to be used for faculty and staff salary increases, but during the Budget Summit you said that this raise needs to be recurring and go to base salaries. Why do you believe that needs to happen?
Timothy Ross: Over the last three years, we have not gotten a raise at all. The economic picture improved just a little bit this (year), but apparently not enough to give us an increase to base. What they are planning to do is give us a one-time increase. Some people would call this a bonus, but it isn’t really one. It is a one-time cash disbursement.
If we get a one-time cash disbursement this year, that means we will not have had an increase in our base pay for four years. Four years is a long time to have inflation erode your buying power.
DL: During the Budget Summit, you raised the issue that new faculty members are making more than existing faculty. How is this issue being addressed?
TR: That is the next part of having a stagnant salary base. An assistant professor who has been here four years makes the same pay they made four years ago. When we bring in a new assistant professor, we have to get them at market conditions, which means we have to compete with surrounding universities to get them.
They come in at a salary higher than the people who have already been here for four or five years. That is called salary compaction. That is really bad for morale—to see someone young come in the door, with no experience, making more than you.
The provost has $450,000 in his current year’s budget to address salary compaction issues, but that is the good news. The bad news is it’s a $5 million problem.
The little pots of money are about 1/10 the size of what (the provost) needs to address the issue campus-wide. He has $450,000 in his plan for each of the next five years. But that only makes up about $2.5 million.
In the meantime, compaction issues get worse when you don’t get an increase to your base, and this will soon be a $6 million problem.
DL: The University has taken several hits from budget cuts. How have these cuts affected faculty?
TR: We need money for faculty to operate as true faculty members. You know, most departments over the last three years have had their budgets cut so severely, that we have no money to travel to conferences.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
If a faculty member wants to go to a professional conference—which they generally need to do to pursue their career−they use their own money. New Mexico should have shame for the fact that their professors have to use their own money to travel. That is shameful. We should never have to admit that.
The people in the history building, for example, they don’t have phones. Their landlines have been disconnected. You have to call them on their cell phones. That is another thing that is shameful. Their phones have been disconnected because it costs money.
DL: How have students been affected by these budget cuts?
TR: A lot of our freshman and sophomores are suffering because they have low-quality instructors in the classroom. We don’t intentionally hire low-quality faculty, but when you only pay somebody $3,000 to teach a class for a semester, you are not going to get high quality.
DL: In what ways is money being spent that is unnecessary?
TR: I am a very big athletic supporter, I like the sport programs, but I really think (they should) become self-funded. … I do not begrudge them for getting some revenue for their scholarships; of course we want all the students who are athletes to graduate.
But we—being the campus, and especially the students—should not be paying for coaching salaries, and should not be paying for coaching buyouts. Those monies should be over here, doing some of the things I just mentioned.
