MU group decries pay hike from cuts

By JACOB LUECKE of the Tribune’s staff

Published Sunday, July 22, 2007

Members of a fledgling faculty and staff union at the University of Missouri-Columbia have come out against a plan to fund pay increases through cutbacks.

Earlier this month, MU officials announced a plan to free up about $7 million to bump professors’ salaries. Comparisons show faculty pay is no longer competitive. The university has not finalized how it will get the money, but it has several ideas, including adopting a faculty hiring freeze on 30 to 35 positions, combining administrative functions and consolidating services.

Robert Smale, an MU assistant professor of history, agrees professors need a pay increase. But he said the university’s plan would end up "cannibalizing" the school.

"They have correctly diagnosed the problem, but they are incapable of coming up with a viable solution," said Smale, who is the organizing committee chairman for the National Education Association branch at MU.

Smale and other campus NEA members are particularly critical of a possible hiring freeze. They say it would likely ratchet up class size and burden professors with more work - hurting the quality of instruction.

"The hiring freeze, I don’t think, is the way to go," said Michael Ugarte, a Spanish professor at MU.

Phebe Lauffer, an administrative associate at the university, had a similar concern. "We’re burdened with picking up slack from people who leave and they don’t replace," she said.

Lauffer and Ugarte also are members of the campus NEA.

Vice Provost Brian Foster, who helped formulate the pay increase plan, said university leaders are looking for ways to minimize extra work. For example, the university might opt to have small classes taught less often. Another idea is to combine classes if two departments happen to be teaching similar classes.

"There will probably be some of that in the mix," Foster said of larger class sizes. "But if a class increases from 20 to 23, is that going to affect the quality of instruction or the faculty workload in any significant way? My guess is no."

Smale said the plan had upset many people who work at the university. However, he said most won’t speak up for fear of "drastic fiscal retaliation."

"There are many professors, there are many staff on this campus that are afraid that if they speak up against this plan that is immediately going to put their program under the gun sights of the administration," Smale said.

The MU union is about two years old and has 18 members, Smale said. Statewide the Missouri National Education Association touts 33,000 members.

Smale and others said rather than make cuts, the school should work at increasing state funding through the General Assembly.

"What we need to do as an institution of higher learning is, first of all, try to elect people who are going to be more favorable to the university," said Ugarte. "But also to have a better relationship with the legislature."

Ugarte said it would benefit MU if the administration would get more faculty involved in lobbying legislators.

Foster stressed that the process of making cutbacks to balance the budget is something the university goes through each year. This time, the university is simply looking for extra money to shift toward faculty salaries.

He said he didn’t disagree with the position that the school should get more money from the legislature.

"But the fact is the level of state funding has just not been enough to keep us competitive," Foster said. "That, together with the tuition cap, has left us with little choice but to find some other ways to make ourselves competitive."