On Nov. 18, President Christopher Dahl announced the deactivation of the communicative disorders and sciences, computer science and studio art programs at Geneseo.
Each program will be phased out over a three-year period during which students already enrolled in the programs will be able to complete their graduation requirements. No further enrollment of existing or incoming students to these programs will be permitted at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Non-majors and non-minors will be permitted to take courses in the deactivated departments during the three-year period, but majors and minors will be given priority.
The speech pathology clinic, which serves as an instructional tool for the graduate program, will remain in operation as long as it is needed for its teaching function, Dahl said.
The criteria to decide which programs were ultimately curtailed were: mission relatedness, quality, cost, enrollment trends, interrelatedness with other programs, sustainability and potential fundraising implications. Dahl said that because the criteria are complex and multidimensional, he could not specify a singular reason as to why each respective program was deactivated. He did note that all three are high cost programs.
The context
The program deactivation comes as a “last resort” after several years of state budget cuts that have affected the SUNY system. Over the last three years, the state government has cut a total of $680 million from SUNY; Geneseo has absorbed $11 million of this total. The cuts have left Geneseo with an operational budget deficit of $7.2 million.
The deactivation of the three programs will fill $2 million of this gap. Between $2 and $2.5 million will be filled by the permanent elimination of 54 positions from departments across campus that had already been vacated through retirements and departures. The remaining $3 million will be filled through three other measures the college had taken before program deactivation was announced.
First, the college will continue to enroll more students than usual – 5,320 as opposed to the budgeted 5,100; this will bring in $1 million of overflow revenue. Second, $1 million from Income Fund Reimbursement accounts – excess revenues the college retains from student fees for purposes such as athletics and health services – will be expensed immediately rather than saved. Third, every department is mandated to save 3 percent on salary expense, a savings expected to total another $1 million.
Other savings options that the college has already employed include the consumption of $3 million of reserve funds, the reduction of supplies and travel allowances for all departments and the imposition of limits on departments’ photocopying expense, which has brought about savings of $1 million.
The college has also taken steps toward developing some of the proposals of Dahl’s Six Big Ideas, including the combination of some Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts programs in the Ella Cline Shear School of Education and offering online summer courses that present opportunities to increase revenue.
“We didn’t want to make this decision, but we had to,” Dahl said. “Every fiber of my being rebels against this decision.”
Many campuses in the SUNY system stood to gain greater financial security through the passage of the Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act. The bill, proposed by Gov. David Paterson in January 2010, would have given SUNY schools the power to set their own tuition independently of the state legislature and of other SUNY campuses – at present, tuition is uniform across the SUNY system. The bill would also have allowed tuition dollars to flow directly to each institution; currently, that money is sent to the state’s general fund and then appropriated to various agencies including SUNY.
“If we hadn’t had to endure $680 million worth of cuts in three years, if the Empowerment Act passed, we would not need to do this,” Dahl said. “This is an example of how, whether the people in Albany believe it or not, budget actions by the state have real consequences.”
“We can’t assume that the state is going to bail us out,” said Vice President for Administration and Finance Kenneth Levison. “The best we can hope for is that soon we’ll be able to set our own tuition.”
If the budget is so bad, how can we afford a stadium?
Because New York state appropriates funding for specific uses, the administration did not have the flexibility to shift funds away from capital projects such as the planned construction of an athletic stadium or the renovation of Doty Hall. The administration is also unable to draw from funds collected for use by Campus Auxiliary Services, Student Association or the athletics department.
“This is the third major budget crisis I’ve seen at Geneseo,” Dahl said. “Every time, people ask, ‘How are you building this project and telling us how the state isn’t giving us any money?’ Well, the answer is that the capital budget is just never cut. It is separate from the operational budget because the money comes from different places.”
While the operational budget is sustained through taxpayer dollars, the capital budget, which funds long-term construction projects, is sustained by bonds. “It would be illegal for President Dahl to use capital budget money to fill the holes in the operational budget,” Levison said. “It would abrogate covenants with the people who bought the bonds.”
Dahl also said that it would not have been possible to close the budgetary gap with funding from grants. “Grant money is no different from other one-time money,” Dahl said. “There was no way for grant money to help us here.”
The decision
“Up until a day or two before the announcement, we didn’t have a final decision,” Dahl said.
Both Dahl and Levison said that the decision was delayed for two reasons, the first being the sheer difficulty of reaching an unpleasant conclusion. “It was a tough decision,” Dahl said. “We wanted to do everything we could to avoid program deactivation.”
The second factor the administration’s reliance on information that remained tentative until recently. The state budget was finally passed five months after its March 31 deadline, and the administration waited to see how many employees would take advantage of state and institutional retirement incentives.
“You see why we had to wait,” Dahl said. “Even between the Oct. 15 [presidential budget] update and the Nov. 18 announcement the budget changed. SUNY was cut another $23 million.”
Faculty members in the three deactivated departments were notified of the decision shortly before the official announcement was made. Dahl said the method of disseminating the message was chosen so as to avoid the spreading of rumors and to be as clear as possible.
Faculty had no sway over the final decision to deactivate programs per collective bargaining rules set up by professors’ unions like the Union of University Professionals, Dahl said.
The two advisory groups that administration consulted for advice concerning the budget – the Budget Priority Committee and the Strategic Planning Group – were each made up of faculty and staff who advised administration on general budget strategy and the eventual criteria for program curtailment decisions.
These were advisory groups, though, and did not directly make the deactivation decision, Dahl said. According to Dahl, members of the groups said that they did not want to decide which programs to cut if such a strategy was to be employed. Dahl also noted that unions are not supposed to make decisions that may eliminate members’ jobs.
“Members of the UUP couldn’t be directly involved in the decision any more than in an advisory role,” Dahl said. “It is a fact that I involved them as much as I could within the context of our collective bargaining agreement.”
What comes next?
“When you’re talking about deactivation versus discontinuation, each has its advantages and disadvantages,” Dahl said. “While discontinuation would have been a quick, definitive decision, deactivation gives us three years to figure out how best to deal with the numerous consequences [of programs leaving campus], even if it means there are less definite answers immediately.”
The college plans on using the three years’ time to consider how best to deal with issues such as assisting instructors in each of the affected programs. “We haven’t set up anything yet,” Dahl said, “but there may be opportunities for professors here or in SUNY.”
Issues regarding the use of facilities will also have to be worked out over the next three years. Dahl said that there will be meetings in the coming months about how to reconsider plans to renovate Doty Hall, which was originally going to serve partially as a home for the communicative disorders and sciences department and clinic. The college will also eventually address questions about how to employ the studio art facilities in Brodie Hall.
While there are no definitive plans in place concerning the potential exodus of instructors before the three years are finished, Dahl said that the administration will do everything it can to ensure that students can complete their degrees.
“Our commitment to our students’ studies is more than an unwritten contract; it’s a kind of sacred covenant,” Dahl said. He said that potential solutions might include the use of adjunct or retired professors, the offering of directed studies and the use of a cross-registration program that would allow Geneseo students to take classes at other colleges in the Rochester area.
“No other departments should be looking over their shoulders,” Dahl said, noting that the deactivation decision was made with the goal that no other programs will be cut in the foreseeable future.