Dear Western Community,

The United Faculty of Western Washington represents faculty who have collectively given thousands of years of service to our students and the university. While our primary job is to protect faculty wages, benefits, and working conditions, we feel strongly that it is also our responsibility to attend to the general welfare of students, faculty, staff, and the communities we serve.

With Phase 1 of registration fully underway and the deadline for issuing Non-Tenure Track Faculty contracts around the corner, deans have begun trying to trim the schedules that departments created in January with the best interests of our students in mind. Western’s administration continues to conduct the most inclusive and transparent planning process in the state, but we now have serious concerns about the way the academic heart of the university is being cut. We offer this analysis to the entire university in the spirit of cooperation and for the benefit of our community as a whole.

Western’s operating budget is half state appropriations and half tuition. The pandemic has put pressure on both. The state is facing serious declines in revenue, which may lead to cuts to state appropriations to Western. But it is important to keep in mind that nothing has been cut yet. It now looks like the earliest the state legislature might be called into special session is November. If and when that session happens, the deliberations will involve not only potential cuts, but also the possibility of additions to the state budget from federal relief and potential new revenue. UFWW and the entire Washington Higher-Ed community are working hard to convince the legislature that cuts to higher education should be as small as possible. We are aware that cuts, even deep cuts, are a reality. At the same time, we do not wat to passively assume that the worst is inevitable.

The impact to the tuition half of Western’s budget will be driven by enrollment. The economic effect of the pandemic on students and the need to move most of our curriculum online for the foreseeable future has created tremendous uncertainty about enrollments across the country. Right now, Western’s enrollment for the fall is down about 10%, which is much better than many other universities and is a tribute to Western’s strength. With the possibility of new freshman and transfer commitments and registration for continuing students happening through September, enrollments could significantly improve. But it is also possible that students who have committed and registered could ultimately decide not to come, given all of the uncertainties. Thus, it is imperative that we do everything we can to attract and retain students.

This is why we have serious concerns about the way that Academic Affairs planning has been going over the last week or so. Deans have been instructing chairs to make as many cuts as they can to departmental schedules. Those cuts include cancelling small classes, combining classes that are not fully enrolled, and trying to project what classes can be cut for winter and spring. And these instructions have not been consistent across colleges. Some deans have told department chairs to cut 50% of their NTT sections. Some have told chairs that they must reduce their instructional budgets by 10%, regardless of the impact on students. Other deans have taken a more generous and flexible approach. At the same time that some classes are under-enrolled, many others are full with long waiting lists. There has been no discussion of opening new sections to accommodate the students on those waiting lists.

We think that this is almost exactly the opposite of the approach we should be taking. At a time when we are trying to attract, retain, and serve students, we should be doing everything we can to make sure they have the access they need and that their time to degree is maintained, even if it means continuing to offer classes that are not completely full. We should aim to offer our students the most robust and flexible schedule we can, especially at a time when their academic experience has already been compromised. This is especially true for classes with waiting lists. It is not difficult to imagine frustrated parents saying, “First, you tell me it’s all online, then you tell me I still have to pay the full tuition, and now you’re telling me my kid can’t get the classes they need?”

Keeping our schedule intact is not only good for our students, it benefits the long term-financial health of the university. In this environment we can no longer assume that students are going to put up with access problems the way they have in the past. If we cut a section that has 8 students in it, we save anywhere from $3000 to $10,000. If two of those students decide that this is the last straw and choose to leave Western for a community college that is cheaper and closer to where they live, we lose $17,000. If one of those students is an out-of-state student, we lose $33,000. Opening five new sections to accommodate students on waiting lists would cost around $40,000. Losing 12 students from those waiting lists costs us $102,000. Western is very fortunate to have enrollments that are much better than most other universities across the state and the country. We should not take that for granted and risk the long-term health of the university by trying to save a few dollars with cuts to classes that create hardships for our students right now. Cutting 50 sections of classes from our schedule would save around 300 to 400 thousand dollars.

Cutting instruction should be our last resort. Instead we have made it our first move. We are now actively cutting classes before anything else at the university has been cut and before one dime has been taken from our budget by the legislature. In all of his communications with the university, President Randhawa has emphasized serving students and protecting employment. We couldn’t agree more, but our current process does neither of those things. We all know these are difficult times, but as we engage in these discussions, we, as university, must remind ourselves that budgets are not just Excel spreadsheets but also, as Rashad Robinson has said, moral documents: they put into practice what we, as a community, care about

Sincerely,

A.Ricardo López-Pedreros, President, United Faculty of Western Washington

Executive Board, United Faculty of Western Washington

Bill Lyne, President United Faculty of Washington State

Jeff Young, Senate President, Western Washington University

Matt Roelofs, Chair, Bargaining Team, United Faculty of Western Washington

--

Unsubscribe »