The unkindest cuts
State budget crises are forcing public colleges to make hard choices about what to cut. A close-up look at how one university system wielded its ax.
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That's a new feeling for Professor Sime, who, as a stress management specialist, is usually the one helping others cope with difficult situations. A decade ago, he earned a second Ph.D. in counseling. But now, the 26-year UNL veteran can either accept early retirement or appeal the decision and risk losing his family's health benefits, which he relies on to help pay for care for an ill family member.
He spent much of the summer pleading with other departments to find a space for him.
Unlike several other members of the department, he has yet to be offered a position elsewhere at the university.
Still, like many faculty members, Sime doesn't necessarily disagree with the chancellor's budget strategy. He just doesn't understand why UNL cut his position. "It's devastating," he says. "I'm not dead wood here. I'm not ready to be hung out to dry."
Morse fared better, quickly landing a job teaching at Kansas State University at Salina. She says she also learned an important lesson: Tenure doesn't mean a guaranteed job.
"I'm younger, I have no family to move, I'm very flexible, and I have 30 years left," Morse points out. "My colleagues don't."
Faculty leaders say UNL could have spared all the heartache by following the lead of its sister campus in Omaha, which saved money by leaving already-vacant faculty positions unfilled for the coming year. They worry that cutting tenured professors will make it harder to attract top faculty to the university.
"It's not something [where] the faculty will forget and move on," says economics professor Ann Marie May. "We have a very black mark from this."
Already there are signs that the cuts have tarnished the university's academic reputation. Andrew Smith, an entomology researcher affiliated with the natural-history museum, had a grant rejected by the National Science Foundation.
Reviewers noted, "The stability of the home institution and the quality of its facilities must have some bearing on the overall competitiveness of proposals," according to an excerpt Dr. Smith provided.
But Michael Baer, senior vice president at the American Council on Education in Washington, says UNL made the right choice. "It reduces the breadth of the institution but not the quality," he says. "In the long run, the institution will be as able or better able to continue to attract good students and good faculty."
As Morse prepares to start her new job in Kansas, she predicts that the campus will ultimately weather this crisis. "Folks from Nebraska take things where they are and they work with them."
Nebraska is not the only state in which public universities must cope with deep budget cuts in the next fiscal year. A survey by the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) found:
• 25 states anticipate decreases in funding for public higher education.
• The deepest of cuts are in Colorado (13.7%) with California, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin all experiencing cuts between 9.1 and 10.5%. (That compares with a 4.2% cut in funding in Nebraska.)
• 20 states anticipate increases in funding for higher education, including Nevada (22%) and New Mexico (7%).
Source: SHEEO
