Description
Throughout the units, you will look at how states like California are cutting the money they provide to public colleges and universities. For the Final Project, you will bring your examination of higher education finance full circle and investigate how these state funding cuts can alter decision making at individual institutions.
For the purposes of this project, imagine that you work at a medium-sized state university as the program chair for Developmental Education, a department which offers the remedial reading, writing, and math classes taken by students who do not place into college-level English and math classes based on their placement test scores. At your institution, students do not pay tuition for these courses. Each year, you must offer course sections serving approximately 2,000 students. The sections generally break down as follows:
Enrollments | Sections | |
Reading 001 | 200 | 10 |
Writing 001 | 400 | 20 |
Math 001 | 600 | 30 |
Math 002 | 800 | 40 |
Total | 2,000 | 100 |
You have four full-time faculty members who each teach 10 courses per year, with adjuncts teaching the rest. Each full-time faculty member makes $40,000 per year including benefits. Adjunct pay for one course in reading or writing is $1,500, while it is $1,800 for math, because it is harder to hire people who can teach math. Currently, your courses use normal classrooms, not computer labs, so you do not have any additional costs for labs or equipment.
Recently, your dean let you know that, due to state budget cuts, you are going to have to cut 10% from your budget next year. She has asked you to come up with five possible strategies for dealing with this cut, and an analysis of how each strategy will affect your department, your faculty, your students, and the institution. Strategies could include ways to cut costs or to increase revenue. You can assume that this is a one-time cut, and that funding levels the following year may return to normal; however, at least two of your strategies should assume that the cuts will be permanent.
Recommended Reading
Meisinger, R. J. (1994). College and university budgeting: An introduction for faculty and academic administrators. Washington, DC: National Association of College and University Business Officers. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED378911.pdf
Chapter 4: “Allocating Resources and Increasing Flexibility”
Chapter 5: “Retrenchment and Reallocation”
These two chapters in this publication from the leading organization for higher education business officers will provide some useful ideas for your course project, including ways to meet cuts with creativity and make the most of the resources at hand.
Completing Your Final Project
While it is not necessary to use Microsoft Excel to complete this project, you can certainly do so. If you are not familiar with Excel, you can locate tutorials from Microsoft and other sources. A spreadsheet template is provided for your use that includes the information previously described. If you decide to work with the spreadsheet to model your budget-cutting strategies, this should not require more than very basic Excel skills.
To complete your Final Project, use the following outline:
- Introduction: State the problem, provide the reader with some context, and give an overview of your direction.
- Discuss each of your five strategies in a separate section using an APA formatted heading.
- In each section for each strategy: -Discuss how it will achieve the required cost savings -Discuss how it will likely impact key stakeholders (e.g., the department, the students, and the institution) -Summarize the benefits and limitations of each strategy
- Recommendation: Describe which strategy you believe presents the best solution and why.
- Conclusion: Summarize your key points and conclude your paper.
Your completed paper should be 10–15 pages of content. Before you submit it, make sure it has proper title and reference pages and follows APA (6th ed.) style.
Explanation & Answer
Attached.
Running Head: Reducing Remedial Budget in University
Reducing Remedial Budget in University
Student Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course Name
Lecturer Name
Due Date
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Reducing Remedial Budget in University
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Introduction
In a medium-sized University where the students do not pay for the remedial writing,
reading and mathematics classes; the department for program developmental education needs to
be very keen on the budget that sustains these classes. The University accommodates an average
of 2,000 students per year for these remedial courses. With the math course being more
expensive than writing and reading courses because it’s relatively harder and expensive to get
adjuncts for math courses, In addition, of the 2,000 students who attend these courses, 1,400 take
math courses which are more expensive than the other two courses. The university has 4 faculty
members, in a year, each faculty member teaches 10 courses meaning that the total number of
courses taught by the four faculty members is 40 in a year and the remaining courses are taught
by adjuncts. Each faculty member is paid $40,000 per year for teaching ten courses meaning that
the University spends $160,000 for the four faculty members in a year. The adjuncts are paid
$1500 per each course of reading or writing taught and $1800 per each math course taught. From
the above, it is clear that it’s very expensive for the university to teach these remedial courses
through the use of its own faculty and its way much cheaper to use the adjuncts.
As the program chair for the Developmental Education, the dean has informed me to
come up with five possible solutions on how to cut down the budget for the remedial courses.
This is as a result of the cutting down of the state budget by 10% and since these students do not
pay for the said courses. Although the dean has specified that the strategies should only be
applicable in the coming year, some of the budget reduction strategies have to provide a
permanent solution just in case the state does not provide the 10% for the other financial years.
This paper will discuss in detail these strategies that are proposed for the reduction of the budget
by 10% in order to accommodate the courses with the reduced budget.
Reducing Remedial Budget in University
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Strategies for cutting the budget
1. Reduce the number of faculty members
This strategy was well analyzed by Meisinger, R. J. (1994) and if the University would
reduce the number of the faculty members who teach these courses in accordance to the book,
then these would mean that the adjuncts will increase but they are much cheaper than the faculty
members. Since it costs $1500 for a course taught by an adjunct while its costs $4000 for a
course taught by a member of faculty, then it means that by reducing the number of faculty
members and increasing the adjuncts, the University will be saving on the costs involved in
providing the remedial courses to the 2,000 students. For each extra adjunct, the University will
be saving $2500 per course.
Although the adjuncts who teach math are more expensive than those who teach reading
and writing courses, it is still cheaper to use adjuncts in math than using the members of the
faculty who will cost the University $4,000 per course including math courses.
This can be seen as a permanent solution to the budget reduction. Since the same strategy
could be used in the consecutive years and be very effective in the running of the Developmental
Education department. Although each strategy has its limitations, the related limitations to this
solution can be easily absorbed by the department and have a smooth running over the coming
years as a permanent solution to the reduction of the costs of this department.
Impact of this strategy to the stakeholders
If the University reduces the number of faculty members who teach these remedial
courses, it would mean that the department will have less permanent members who may be
Reducing Remedial Budget in University
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useful in other tasks within the department. The few faculty members will be straining i...
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