As many of you know, the University of California is facing another round of brutal budget cuts. As a result, the UC has implemented a system of furloughs, whereby faculty and staff will see their salaries cut temporarily (currently the administration says a year, but we’ll see). The cuts are now a foregone conclusion. What remains is the question of how furloughs will be implemented by faculty. Our campus’s academic senate recently conducted an online poll. Respondents had two choices:
A) Recommend scheduling six to nine furlough days on currently calendared days of instruction.
B) Recommend scheduling of all furlough days on currently calendared intersession days when no formal instruction is scheduled.
This prompted quite a bit of discussion, both online and around the water cooler, as you might imagine. My sense was and is that if the state legislature chooses to impose what amounts to a a highly regressive tax (in the form of huge cuts in funding that necessitate furloughs) on a tiny subset of California’s population (most state employees), because it can not or will not tax all of the state’s citizens, then we (those people being furloughed) need to make sure that the rest of the state understands that cuts in funding will result in cuts in services. I also think that if we don’t cut services, we’re in effect saying that we were overpaid before, allowing that the Republican fantasy of the lazy public sector employee is accurate.
Which isn’t to say that I don’t understand the counterarguments. Which, if I’m not mistaken, go something like this: Cutting time spent with students is a pedagogically indefensible choice. Moreover, if we cut services in the form of contact hours with students, much as the furloughed employees of the Department of Motor Vehicles have cut the hours their agency remains open during the week, the people of California will be angry with us. Especially so, because the UC is also going to raise fees — again. So Californians will be getting less for more.
On the issue of teaching, I sympathize. Given that we teach here on the quarter system, losing more of the already scarce time we spend in the classroom with our students is going to be very difficult. In most cases, students will learn less. But these are very difficult times, and something has to give. As for the second argument, about the potential for a backlash against the UC, my initial inclination was to think that position represented good politics but lousy policy, that it was safe short-term thinking but would be self-destructive over the long haul. Now I’m not even sure it’s good politics. I say that because I think we have some responsibility to — along with a great deal of self-interest in — teach our students that taxes often equal services. Otherwise, we’re withholding an important lesson about the spuriousness of Libertarian arguments and allowing the myth of a tax-free Ponyland to romp free through the fields of our charges’ unbridled imaginations.
Seriously, I’ve been concerned lately that the state’s budget crisis, and crises like it around the nation, are being used as pretexts not only for slashing more services but also for redefining what constitutes a public good. On the one hand, it’s probably a decent enough idea to have this kind of discussion periodically. But on the other, we’re now talking with a loaded gun pointed at our heads, and that’s never smart.
Anyway, I was fairly sure the vote here would be quite close. It turns out, though, that my colleagues throughout the university are either more strategically inclined, more self-interested, or maybe both, than I would have thought. The finally tally? Nearly 82% of respondents believe that we should schedule our furlough days on days that we teach. Just over 18% disagreed. And 426 people voted, which is actually a pretty decent turnout, I think, for the middle of a long, hot summer.
Now we’ll see what the administration makes of this mess. It should be an interesting test for our incoming Chancellor, whose arrival is much anticipated.
47 comments
August 4, 2009 at 12:06 pm
rick
So I guess this means that I have no chance getting funding for a Ph.d at Berkeley, UCLA, or UCSB.
August 4, 2009 at 12:06 pm
ben
Pencils down, motherfucker.
August 4, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Inside the Philosophy Factory
I think it’s the right decision — the cuts MUST have impact, visible… because we all know academics won’t actually take time “off” — (look what we do when we have the summer “off”).
So, there will be little declin in research etc — BUT, saying that tuition is going up while instructional time is going down will get folks attention…. and, without that attention, the UC system won’t have the political pull to get the budget back — ‘cuz, you know that closing the DMV for 9 extra days will get attention.
August 4, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Not Prince Hamlet
Good luck with that (seriously). Around here the level of vitriol directed at public employees is pretty mind-boggling, especially for a union-friendly state. Making service cuts and expecting actual time off in exchange for pay cuts would just lead to another round of “look at those overpaid, underworked prima donnas!” commentary int he newspapers. Yuck.
August 4, 2009 at 1:06 pm
kathy a.
i think it’s the right decision, too. the alternative really is for faculty to “absorb” the cuts by working more unpaid time than they already are.
my perspective is not academic, but in legal services for poor people. the funding structures are quite different, and most of us do not have the option of saying “sorry, this is a mandated furlough day, i can’t work.” we are expected to do what needs doing, paid or not. the tradition of people in my practice is to keep going no matter what; indeed, we can be disciplined for not meeting the standards of the profession if we do not. the rock and hard place have been rubbing for a long time in this work, and it is worse now.
August 4, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Hank
clarification: are current graduate students seeing stipend cuts, being asked to pick up extra teaching, or (most likely?) both?
August 4, 2009 at 1:50 pm
ari
Neither, Hank. At least not yet. I’m in charge of our department’s graduate program committee, and I’ve been told, over and over, that funding for graduate students is as close to sacrosanct as anything gets in these tough times.
August 4, 2009 at 1:56 pm
ari
I think, NPH, we need to find better spokespeople to represent our side of the argument, particularly elected officials who are sympathetic to the important functions of higher education in a state’s economy and culture. And then I think we’ll have to deal with being called mean names by conservative and faux populist columnists. But I’m not sure that will represent much of a change from the status quo.
August 4, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Chad
I would absolutely support furloughs on teaching days. The tendency during periods of cuts is for people to figure out how to absorb cuts with as little impact as possible– often being asked to add seats to classes, do more departmental service during hiring freezes, accept an extra student or two writing honors theses, etc. It is not my experience that expectations necessarily regress.
Students, families, legislators, and everyone else must be made to see the effects of cuts, to feel those cuts. In Tennessee, cuts in higher ed are made to the exclusion of implementing more reliable and less regressive forms of taxation. We have no income tax– only sales taxes, with high rates that are very regressive. University education is highly subsidized by a lottery (it’s own form of regressive, if voluntary, taxation). The residents of TN don’t want to pay for a university education, they just want the credential.
We get asked to do more with less all the time, and the appropriate response is to say no. If we were required to take furloughs, I would demand they be teaching days.
August 4, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Not Prince Hamlet
Ari, I would very much like to believe that you’re right, and I really need to stop looking at the comments on any newspaper site anywhere, but I’m somewhat despairing about the prospects of successfully reasoning with the public.
August 4, 2009 at 2:50 pm
ari
Comments at newspaper sites, or at Yeglesias’s place, really are a short trip to despair. As with cable news, just don’t go there.
August 4, 2009 at 2:59 pm
rosmar
I’m in NC (though I went to UC Berkeley for my PhD, and my ex-husband teaches at a CSU, so I have strong emotional attachments to the state of California). Here public school teachers had to take a paycut, and probably will have to take another one next year. The comments in the newspaper definitely tend toward the “at least you have jobs, motherfuckers” point of view.
But I still think you are making the right decision, and I hope the Chancellor sees that. People organized unions during the Depression for a good reason.
August 4, 2009 at 3:06 pm
TF Smith
Here’s a thought: furlough the Bruins and the Golden Bears, and all their lesser ursine brethren.
Seriously, shut down all the UC and CSU athletic programs (not physical education, kinesology, etc.) but all the NCAA efforts.
There is no reason for the taxpayers to be funding what amount to farm teams for the NFL, NBA, etc., to any degree.
August 4, 2009 at 3:43 pm
serofriend
Seriously, shut down all the UC and CSU athletic programs (not physical education, kinesology, etc.) but all the NCAA efforts.
There is no reason for the taxpayers to be funding what amount to farm teams for the NFL, NBA, etc., to any degree.
I’d like to see how that proposal goes down in a UC Board of Regents meeting. Alongside Chancellor paycuts. The joint proposals should be framed as coincidental and emphasize that the Regents barely know the Chancellors. Perhaps cut out the farm team argument as well.
August 4, 2009 at 3:57 pm
drip
Jezez ari, the whole thing is just horrible. You’re right about needing competent spokespersons. Where is Mario Savio when you need him? Ha Ha. You also need to make the point that universities are what gave California it’s wealth during the past 50 years — it really was the state university system (with a little help from Stanford maybe) and contracts with the federal government directly (JPL, e.g.) and indirectly (the early silicon valley, aerospace and many others, I’m sure.) Good luck.
August 4, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Michael H Schneider
Maybe it’s time to bring back an idea from nearly a half-century ago: the theach-in. Take the furloughs during currently calendared days of instruction, but also put together series’ of public lectures and discussion on the current mess. Get people from the relevant academic disciplines to talk about the history of the mess, the economics of the mess, and politics of the mess, the social impact of the mess, etc. This would both make the point about teaching (like therapy) being worthy of its hire, and just maybe possibly give people an oppertunity to learn and talk about the mess.
August 4, 2009 at 4:08 pm
andrew
Seriously, shut down all the UC and CSU athletic programs (not physical education, kinesology, etc.) but all the NCAA efforts.
Are they making any changes to athletic scholarships? That probably wouldn’t go over well, but if
tuitionfees go up, so does the value of a full scholarship.August 4, 2009 at 4:42 pm
kevin
I think you all should refuse to tell the students how World War II ended. That’ll learn ’em.
August 4, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Sandie
I totally agree with the cut teaching argument. My husband and I have talked about this some, in case we both have to go on furlough in OK. We thought a nice compromise would be to take the days off in proportion to our teaching/research/service ratio. So, if 10 days are required, cut 4.5 days of teaching, 4.5 days of research, and 1 day of service. But I do think it’s really important for citizens to realize that they must pay taxes for services. One of the problems with the last 30 yrs. or so is that people have fallen for the lie that they can get more services and pay fewer taxes. Or to paraphrase David Simon in The Wire, you can’t do more with less; you do less with less.
August 4, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Bruce Ross
Out in the real world, people quite frequently work just as hard — or harder — in difficult times while seeing their pay fall anyway. And I’m one of ’em, thanks to the recession, so I know whereof I speak.
August 4, 2009 at 6:32 pm
ari
How do you distinguish between the realness of your world, Bruce, and the fakeness of mine? Serious question, by the way, as I always wonder about that formulation.
August 4, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Rob_in_Hawaii
Thanks Ari. My adjunct position was cut some time ago but the full time folks at my former institution (one of 3 at which I teach) will soon be facing the same questions about furloughs you are. Nice to see the choices put so clearly.
I went to community college in California and later to Berkeley, so I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for the system there.
It’s all so shortsighted. An educated population ends up earning more, thus paying more in taxes over their lifetimes. Penny-wise; pound foolish.
August 4, 2009 at 6:56 pm
ari
I’m sorry, Rob. That’s really awful. And I think the temporary instructional budget will be slashed further here too. It’s bad news all around. Part of me wonders if someone can quantify the impact of this massive anti-stimulus package. I know we’re being far more careful with money than would have been otherwise.
August 4, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Bruce Ross
ari,
Pardon my being a cranky jerk. Pay and benefit cuts will have that effect on anyone, and I’m not immune.
However, let’s put this in historical perspective. As we learned today, tax revenues on the federal level have fallen at the sharpest rate since the Great Depression. We already knew that had happened in California. The epic, once-in-a-generation (we can all hope) economic meltdown doesn’t have anything to do with ideology, starve-the-beat conservatism, anti-intellectual pandering, or a misguided preference for Stanford over Cal. The state is, quite simply, broke. The state has been paying its bills with funny-money; it can’t hold its prisoners while complying with the Constitution. It can’t keep its parks open. You know all this.
Government services — even the most worthwhile ones — will suffer during such a recession. That’s just mathematical. Raising taxes enough to cover the deficits would be politically inconceivable in this recession, leaving aside the economic effects. (Sorry, but tell a laid-off construction worker or a real estate agent who hasn’t made a commission in six months that he has to have his taxes raised so UC professors don’t suffer a furlough — tell them, but I recommend doing it with a bullhorn from a safe distance.)
I might have thought that college professors, of all people, would have a certain sense of noblesse oblige, that they’d grumble about losing some pay — like anyone — but are devoted to their vocation, to the life of the mind, and would not be plotting like the United Auto Workers to screw the man. I’d have thought wrong.
August 4, 2009 at 7:29 pm
dana
Serious question, by the way, as I always wonder about that formulation.
Me too! It’s like people expect academics are paid in noblesse oblige and ponies, and don’t earn money or have car payments or a ridiculous hiring process. How the hell am I not in the real world? Because I don’t completely hate my job? (People view that as a plus? ) Because they think that teaching at college is like going to college? Or because they think it’s like kindergarten, where Teacher only exists when Teacher is immediately in front of the, so Teacher must only work 5 hours a week and Teacher never goes to the bathroom or eats and must not be real?
August 4, 2009 at 7:30 pm
rja
I might have thought that college professors, of all people, would have a certain sense of noblesse oblige, that they’d grumble about losing some pay — like anyone — but are devoted to their vocation, to the life of the mind, and would not be plotting like the United Auto Workers to screw the man.
I’m getting really tired of this argument or assumption being trotted out so often. As a grad student married to an academic, I don’t recall either of us taking a vow of poverty. True, we both love what we do and are willing to accept lower wages in order to pursue satisfying work. That doesn’t mean we love it so much that we’ll do it for free–our mortgage and two kids sort of take that option off the table. I really don’t see why being an academic should be seen as a calling rather than a profession. But, I would hazard a guess that envisioning it that way has some connection with the heartfelt hatred for ‘elitists’ I often hear expressed.
August 4, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Sandie
Don’t many physicians go into medicine because they see it as a calling? Why don’t we expect the same noblesse oblige from them?
My university is most likely heading into a third year without giving faculty or staff a raise, not even a cost-of-living raise. Oh, and the raises the years before were about 2-3% a year. Noblesse oblige, my ass.
August 4, 2009 at 7:50 pm
rja
…and Teacher never goes to the bathroom or eats and must not be real?
You forgot “lives at school and therefore has no housing costs.”
August 4, 2009 at 7:51 pm
ari
I don’t blame you for being cranky, Bruce. First, because it’s the internet; that’s the nature of the thing. And second, because these are cranky times. Beyond that, though, I think we part ways. Because I think, as I noted above, that the people of California have to realize that if we don’t raise taxes, services will have to be cut. So yes, I have a sense of mission about my job. But I also think that pandering to an angry mob during a faux populist moment will only make it easier for Republicans in the legislature to hold the state hostage in the future.
August 4, 2009 at 8:01 pm
dana
You forgot “lives at school and therefore has no housing costs.”
Of course! I have my own hammock in the supply closet.
August 4, 2009 at 8:12 pm
ari
Also, Bruce, I’m sorry things are tough at the office. Here’s hoping for better times ahead — for all of us.
August 4, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Ben Alpers
Sandie,
Bob Stoops got a big raise! Does that make you feel any better?
I didn’t think so…..
August 4, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Sandie
Tons. Thanks.
August 4, 2009 at 8:35 pm
ari
Bob Stoops provides a vital public service, you ingrates.
August 4, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Davis X. Machina
So long as the average worker’s reflexive response to the fact that his job sucks, or God forbid, to the loss of his job is ‘My job sucks (or is gone) so your job has to suck (or go), too’, the first worker’s job won’t ever get any better.
August 4, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Ahistoricality
I think the fundamental problem Bruce has almost put his finger on is that fuloughs are, fundamentally, the wrong way to think about and implement cuts in educational programs. The only value furloughs have is that they avoid (unless you’re in Hawaii, with its union-friendly courts) renegotiating the contract and are ostensibly temporary pay cuts.
If we just admit that it’s a pay cut, then there’s no need for instructional time to be affected — only morale. If we treat it as an institutional funding cut, instead, declare a fiscal emergency and start firing people; class sizes will be affected, and perhaps some entire programs — and morale — but the awkwardness of this discussion (except for Michael Schneider’s comment, which is the best furlough-related proposal in the thread) would be avoided.
Not that awkward discussions should be avoided, necessarily, but it’s one sign that perhaps the subject of the discussion isn’t really the proper topic of the discussion.
August 4, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Bitchphd
Well, plus look. Faculty are going to deal with more work for less money *anyway*–if you don’t think that budget cuts mean fewer adjuncts, larger classes, tighter research budgets, etc, you’re crazy.
Quite apart from the “the voters need to see the consequences” argument, the fact is that if furlough days aren’t teaching days, then no one is taking a furlough. Bc I seriously doubt that the UCs are going to cut tenure and promotion standards to reflect nine days’ less research time. So the choice is really between “cut class days” or “work for free.”
And yes, I know a lot of public servants work for free in hard times. But they shouldn’t have to, and if given a choice between doing so or not, which UC faculty have, it would be fucking stupid to work for free.
I’m glad that the faculty in our state university system aren’t fucking stupid.
August 4, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Bitchphd
Anyway, it isn’t the choice of the faculty, to be honest. It’s the choice of the state government and the voters.
August 4, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Bruce Ross
ari,
You are too gracious. I’m considering a vow against Internet crankiness.
I can’t speak to the state of the academic world. However, there is a sense among many Californians that in this state we pay far too much money (no, really, our taxes are high) without getting enough for it. Monomaniacally anti-tax Republicans have a constituency for a reason.
And as one example, I’d point to the fact that we have the nation’s (and thus the world’s?) highest paid prison guards yet also have a system that in a federal court ruling today was described as providing the most appalling conditions in the country. Some might look at that pair of facts and draw the conclusion that the problem is not insufficient spending but that the money is badly spent.
But in any case, we really are suffering an epic financial crisis. There really is not enough money to go around. It in no way lessens the importance of higher education to note that we don’t have the resources today to do what we did two years ago.
August 4, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Duncan Agnew
Bruce:
Actually, in terms of total tax burden, California is not that high: we rank high in income tax, low in most others, notably property tax (most of the reason the state tax income is so uneven, also). We end up in the middle rank of states. (All this from a report highlighted on Ezra Klein’s WaPo website–sorry, I’m not sure how to give a link.) And you’ll find few disagreements with your opinions on the prison system–though part of that is our insane attachment to 3 strikes sentencing in cases where it isn’t needed.
I’m not sure it is therefore fair to say “there isn’t enough money” without looking at how we raise it, and particularly the long series of popular-but-thoughtless decisions on taxes that go back to Prop 13.
Certainly there is a level at which it is fair to say “times are so bad that everyone needs to share”–as in the Depression, when UC salaries were cut for a time. But I’m not convinced that we are there yet–and another aspect is that this is just one of a long series of cuts in government that seem driven more by the desire to get something for nothing, than by economic crises.
Glad to know UCD asked the question–so far, no sign of this at UCSD. BTW, grad student funding is protected for those students supported on Federal grants (actually, everyone who is
solely supported that way). This also makes for some interesting choices in when to have furloughs.
August 5, 2009 at 12:48 am
Bruce Ross
Klein cited a Public Policy Institute of California paper, which ranked California 10th. Oddly enough, the PPIC cited the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, which ranks California 14th. The California Budget Project (also cited by Klein) ranks the state 13 in total state and local taxes. However, those rankings are somewhat distorted by a few mineral-rich but low-population states — Alaska, Wyoming, New Mexico.
Are the taxes off the charts, as some Republican office-holders would have it? No. Are they higher than average on top of a very high cost of living? Yes. Is this deep recession a good time to raise them? You’re kidding, right?
To my surprise, the federal court ruling ordering the prison releases said California imprisons felons at a rate no higher than the nation as a whole (whose incarceration rates puts us between Russia and Iran, but that’s another story). Individual sentences are slightly shorter than the national average. That’s what the judges said, anyway, and in the context I’d think they’d try hard to get their facts straight.
August 5, 2009 at 1:02 am
andrew
It in no way lessens the importance of higher education to note that we don’t have the resources today to do what we did two years ago.
The state budget has been a recurring problem for what, 10 years? 15 years? The late 90s prosperity helped obscure that for just long enough for people to think this is all something new, but there are real structural problems with both state finance and the state’s political institutions. There seems to be a consensus against raising taxes in a recession, so maybe that can wait for a bit, but if “don’t raise taxes during a recession” smoothly turns into “don’t raise taxes during a recovery or you’ll slow it down” or “don’t raise taxes when times are good because it’ll sap innovation” or one of the many other reasons that can always be found to show that current tax rates are the highest they can ever be and that it’s a miracle that society has functioned with them as they are because no nation in history has ever survived such a burden, nothing will be solved.
August 5, 2009 at 2:20 am
dia
The posts a while back about California’s problems were really interesting and, for someone who knew/knows very little about the state’s politics, were a real eye-opener. My sense on this issue is that you’re absolutely right, Ari, about the furlough days being taken from teaching time. There’s a widespread general perception, I think, that academics’ only ‘real’ work is when they’re teaching a lecture room full of students. With that (admittedly hugely generalised) premise, research is seen as some kind of vocational eccentricity to be tolerated by state employers.
Furlough days should be teaching days. because ‘real’ work means ‘real’ pay (as opposed to that pesky fictional pay), and it’s that pay that you’re missing out on.
August 5, 2009 at 5:54 am
Malaclypse
I agree that the lesson that cuts in pay mean cuts in service is a valuable lesson. However, I’d guess that the service most undergrads want is a degree, not an education. Unless losing class time impacts their ability to graduate, most of them will cheer the “days off.”
August 5, 2009 at 8:18 am
silbey
most of them will cheer the “days off.”
Hmm, not if they get tested on the material that would have been covered.
August 5, 2009 at 8:26 am
kevin
Hmm, not if they get tested on the material that would have been covered.
That was my reaction too.
“Alright, folks, be sure to read up on the origins of the Cold War, because it’ll be the main focus on your midterm exam. I have a really helpful lecture on that topic that I usually give — believe me, it’s phenomenal — but the legislature won’t pony up the cash for it. I’m sure you’ll be just fine on your own.”
August 8, 2009 at 5:36 am
jms
I’m shocked this is even a question. I’m not a professor, and it’s been a while since I set foot on a college campus, but as I understand it, the major components of a professor’s job are these: teaching (including office hours and general student assistance), lecture prep, research, and writing. If you furlough on the days when professors are supposed to do the latter three, there’s no way that professors are, as a whole, going to do any less of the latter three — what, you’re supposed to just do less publication and still expect to get tenure? Or, you’re supposed to walk in to lecture 10% less prepared? The choice is between taking a pay cut and taking a work-and-pay cut, neither of which are palatable options, but only one of which isn’t wholly insulting. What is wrong with the other 18% of your faculty?
And yeah, life of the mind and all that. But being a U.C. professor is not just a calling, it’s also a job, and a famously underpaid one to begin with.