Vol. 38, No. 18

2-15-2007
By: Richard Gillette

Faculty leader says initiatives key to future

Allan Silverman, Faculty Council chair, told the Board of Trustees on Feb. 2 that collaboration is needed to achieve what he called “initiatives crucial to the future of the university.”

Silverman, speaking during the annual invitation for Faculty Council leadership to address the board, said the university must focus on adding faculty and faculty resources, graduate program reforms and economic access for students if it wants to be known for its world-class research.

“While we think OSU has made steady, if incremental, progress toward the goal of becoming world class, we believe that right now OSU is at a crucial inflection point where we will either plateau or we will break through to become an ever more self-sustaining world-class research university,” Silverman said.

Faculty numbers, Silverman said, must be increased to achieve a lower student-to-faculty ratio, especially in colleges such as engineering, which has approximately 267 instructors compared to Illinois with more than 400 and Michigan with more than 300.

But just as important is improved faculty salaries, Silverman suggested. He said the administration should aim for 1 percent raises over the average of benchmark universities for at least the next five years.

“We are not asking for across-the-board raises, nor are we even recommending that each college achieve the same raise pool. We believe that it is up to the deans and chairs to award raises according to merit in research, teaching and service, and up to the provost to ensure that the overall raises meet the goal of 1 percent over benchmark average,” he said.

The Freeman and Beck committees have recommended a funding model that will give increased support to the university’s best graduate programs. Silverman said faculty endorse the recommendations.

The faculty also agree, Silverman said, with the university’s goal that no academically qualified student should be prevented from enrolling due to lack of resources.

Silverman said faculty understand that hard budgetary decisions will be needed universitywide to generate cost savings or redirect funds to obtain these priorities. Specifically, he suggested:

--- Diminishing or reallocating spending by the Office of Academic Affairs on student merit aid. He suggested OAA implement the recommendation of the External Review Committee to shrink the Honors Program to no more than 10 percent of the student body. Silverman said the 20 to 25 percent of the incoming class who are considered honors students is too high.

--- Faculty, staff and administration work collaboratively to shrink bureaucracy and make spending more transparent.

Silverman said that between 1990 and 2005 spending on faculty salaries from general and non-general funds, excluding the Medical Center, grew from $191 million to $302 million, a 57 percent increase. Staff salary expenses grew from $232 million to $462 million, or almost 100 percent.

“We have no idea what to make of this number or even if it is a valuable number to have. But it gives us something to start from: Why the disparity? How does OSU compare to other peer institutions? How much of staff growth is attributable to new mandates from the state or federal authorities?” he said.

Two university leaders said they agree there is a continued need to prioritize use of resources but added there is more than one way to look at the complicated issues.

On the subject of honors enrollment, Martha Garland, vice provost of enrollment services and undergraduate services, while noting that a process is in place to raise standards for admittance, said, “The problem is really that we’re victims of our own success — as more and more bright students select Ohio State, we obviously can and should increase the standards for admission to Honors.”

In 2008, the minimum ACT score for entrance to the program will be 30 for the incoming freshman class and actions have been taken to reinforce standards for students already in the program, she said.

Garland said the recent success in admissions has helped the university move incrementally away from merit aid toward more aid awarded on the basis of student need, but added the issue is complex.

“Merit aid supports our diversity mission, and many of our students who have received aid on the basis of merit also would qualify on the basis of need,” she said.

Addressing the difference between staff and faculty salary expenditures, Larry Lewellen, associate vice president for Human Resources, said the $230 million increase in staff salaries is broken up into $140 million from non-general funds and $90 million in general funds.

He said it is not likely that the non-general funds could be targeted to hiring faculty. They include, for example, student housing fees that pay for employees required to staff the growth in student residence halls.

Non-general funds also include external research funds for research projects that require staff, according to Lewellen.

“The non-general fund staffing growth is the largest area of growth and is of unquestionable benefit to the university and its faculty,” he said.

Additionally, Lewellen said the nature of staff skills required by colleges and departments has changed dramatically over this period, with substantially fewer lower-skilled staff and substantially more higher-skilled staff now than in 1990. The relative proportion of service/maintenance positions has been almost reduced to half, and the proportion of bachelor-degreed positions has increased by 25 percent, according to Lewellen.

Lewellen agreed with Silverman about analyzing resources, however, saying, “The university is making significant progress on the information management issues that Allan points ou. If we had unlimited funds, those would all be in place on a much faster basis, but the evolution of our enterprise system has to be balanced with other budget needs.”

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