SELF-REFLECTION

                                         REFLECTION

Over the past few weeks, I have accomplished much in the world of blogging.  I began studying what exactly a “blog” entailed and the criteria that deemed a blog successful.  In fact, I spent more time researching about creative titles, hyperlinks, and calls-to-action than I spent on any given blog post all semester.  I found it fascinating what blogging was and ready to dive into the blog-pool face-first.  However, the content in which I would be blogging happened to be eclipsed by my understanding of how to create a banner and use html.  It was time to start from scratch.  I went back to reading our Goldstein text in search of materials to blog about, but that wasn’t enough, I had to do a little research on topics that I would eventually write about.  I learned that one source was never enough research to accomplish a decent blog; to the information super highway I went.  This required that I not only read the text for all of the details, but also found sources online that agreed or disagreed with what Goldstein was saying.  I managed to keep the subject my blog posts within orbit of our course text and from chapter to chapter I worked at staying the course.  In retrospect, I learned a better way to learn.  Of course I learned how to use hyperlinks as a tool to effectively deliver information, but more importantly I learned about the budgeting process and how it ACTUALLY pertains to higher education.  It surprised me, upon rereading my blog posts, how much thought was put into making the budgeting process more catchy and exciting.  I’m not saying that retrenchment isn’t often the topic of most water-cooler-conversations already, but adding an Emeril Agassi, “BAM” to a dreadful topic can prove to be fun too.  I think I value most, the researching process mixed with the writing in order to make it less dreadful no matter the topic.  I have even considered, drumroll please, starting my own blog.  Try not to get too excited, as I doubt that I will focus my writing around community college budgeting.  Thank you all for a wonderful semester and happy holidays.

Reflection

As this class comes to an end, I would like to take a look back at some of the posts that I have made throughout the semester. As always it is hard to look back on previous written posts or documents. However, it is alwas good for reflection, it usually the only way to improve and get better in the future. As I look back most of the posts that I have made throughout the semester started with a little review of what readings or assignments we had since the last post. This allowed me a chance to stay connected with the class and what was going on in the budget world around us! The mix between my posts dealt with athletics, budgets, and the want for many employees to have a balanced life between personal and professional life. A consistent theme between all my posts deal with topics that will or hope to occur in the future or have happened in the past. I could tell through the posts that I am not very strong in blog posting. This was a total different realm of technology and writing that I am not used to. However, it was a great place to voice my opinion and express what I have seen throughout the internet dealing with budgets. This also gave me a way to display videos that tie in with the topics discussed throughout the class and my classmates posts.

EDU 612 Reflection

To reflect upon my blog posts for EDU 612, I feel like my posts were diverse within the field of higher education. I work in enrollment management and I plan on making a career out of working in higher education and I hope to move to the Student Affairs industry after completing my graduate degree. I believe that a professional in any industry/field should have diverse knowledge on their field,  my blog posts from semester reflect that.

One theme I do see in my posts and most of the posts in this class, is the future. I see a lot of posts, including mine, that engage popular political conversations that will have a large impact on higher education in 2016 and after. I also wrote about the future of college athletic budgets and the impact they can have on a higher education budget and the future of Greek Life and the impact that could have on the advancement funds coming into an institution. I also examined the future of enrollment numbers and the importance of generating new income through graduate programs and certificates.

This project has been a great way for everyone to voice their own perspectives on higher education and finances, because these blog posts allow us to voice our rationale. I believe this was an important assignment because it allows the students to voice passions in this field beyond our assignment material, but resources that we have found and have an opinion on. I also believe that the required response posts allowed for healthy dialogue about common interests that each of us had. The only complaint I have is that I felt Blogger has some clunky editing tools and I felt like I was restricted on some formatting.

Reflection

 

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As a mid level community college administrator and faculty member my experience and knowledge of higher education budgeting strongly influenced my blog posts.  My reflection  revealed an overarching theme of how the economic and political environment impacts the economies of higher education. Rising federal deficits, unsettled financial markets, and increased funding for defense and security has altered the perception of higher education when considering funding.  Therefore funding assistance has not been viewed as a top priority in recent years.  While public higher education institutions depend on government funding, the dependence can become problematic when the federal and state governments cannot reach budget agreements or fiscal support decreases. 

 

These challenges were reflected in my blog posts where I addressed faculty salaries and budget, financial burdens on higher education, the budgetary grip of enrollment, balancing enrollment numbers, performance base standards, and funding, and future presidential leaders' impact on higher education.  All of these topics represent the challenges colleges and community colleges face in securing necessary funding to fulfill their college's mission. Additionally, I shared very specific incidences in which I dealt with such challenges in my work. 

 

Higher education institutions exist to provide educational pathways to students and advance the economic workforce within the community they serve. So what have I learned?

It is very clear to me that I have developed a good understanding of the budgetary process in higher education and the challenges that go along with it.  Having this understanding will allow me to work within the constraints while considering additional fiscal support methods.  For example, building community partnerships can lead to potential individual donors for scholarships, equipment, and professional development.  Furthermore, understanding the budgetary process and constraints promotes alternative thinking and emphasizes the importance of tactical and strategic planning.  As a mid level manager, I have learned that I can contribute to the budget process in a positive way by collaborating with community partners and the foundation to help secure funds.  I find my budgetary understanding to be empowering rather than constraining.  This is because I recognize what the challenges are and realize it is more productive to derive funding methods to advance the higher education institution rather than complain about them.

 



How Can I Avoid Your Definition of a Crisis?

How Can I Avoid Your Definition of a Crisis?

  

This week I stumbled upon Chapter 5: Responding to Extraordinary Financial Difficulties and the necessary actions needed to avoid the r-word, retrenchment.  Retrenchment is the result of a financial crisis that, when serious enough, can threaten the survival of the institution (Goldstein, 2005).  Although retrenchment can be avoided, there are unique circumstances that can impact a university on a catastrophic scale, which include: extreme physical disaster, major population shifts, and large decreases in state and federal funding.  Retrenchment typically includes a systematic, or haphazard elimination of major portions of an institution’s programs and activities (Goldstein, 2005).  As extreme as these circumstances sound, retrenchment isn’t as rare as one would hope.  A simple google search proved an article indicating that Southern Illinois University (SIU) is currently in a stage of retrenchment, according to the university president Randy Dunn.  Since 2010, state funding for Illinois public higher-education institutions has declined 17 percent.  While this drop is significant, Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner has proposed slashing that funding by another 31.5 percent this year alone (Graham, 2015).  Legislators have managed to cut that number down to 8 percent.  This state of retrenchment proves to be turbulent waters to navigate for Dunn, who is in his first year as president of the SIU system and acting chancellor to the Carbondale campus.  How can retrenchment be avoided?  Here is a list, provided by our text, of some short-term and long-term strategies to avoid retrenchment:

Short Term Strategies: ·      Reducing Expenses ·      Increasing Revenues ·      Managing Faculty/Staff ·      Fewer Classes/Larger Sections

Long-Term Strategies: ·    Actively Monitor Academic Programs ·    Changes in Staffing Patterns ·    Early Retirement and Buyouts ·    Redefine Guidelines for Retirement

Early retirement and buyouts was listed as a means of avoiding retrenchment in the long term, but Goldstein explains in Chapter 5 that some financial crises, college and university officials consider the prospect of terminating faculty and staff as a way to relieve financial distress (2005).  In an ideal situation, officials can respond through means other than termination, however, sometimes the magnitude of the reductions that must be accomplished within a very short period makes it unavoidable (Goldstein, 2005).  This period is only in absence of Financial Exigency is defined as “an imminent financial crisis which threatens the survival of the institution as a whole and which cannot be alleviated by less drastic means” (Brown, 1976).  The definition is helpful but can be difficult to apply due to differing interpretations of what constitutes an imminent financial crisis (Goldstein, 2005). 

Although these moments of financial crises are rare, they are more often prevalent in the world of higher education than one would think.   The importance of detailed planning to avoid retrenchment is made clear in our text and should be a necessary component of the budgeting process.

REFERENCES:

Brown Jr., Ralph S., "Financial Exigency," Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors 62 (1976), 5-19.

Goldstein, L., & Meisinger, R. (2005). Chapter 5: Responding to Extraordinary Financial Difficulties. In College & university budgeting: An introduction for faculty and academic administrators (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: NACUBO/National Association of College & University Business Officers.

Graham, S. (2015, September 24). Dunn: Era of Retrenchment Has Begun. Retrieved December 5, 2015, from http://thesouthern. com/news/local/siu/dunn-era-of-retrenchment-has-begun/article_55bd6fa0-cfb9-51d1-993b-ea9e93572bff.html

Reflection

As most of my classmates know by now that I am a town manager for a municipality. So, I reviewed my posts to see any commonalities or recurring themes in blog posts. After reviewing the posts I noticed that my posts and many other posts are related to political actions taken or proposed by politicians. Many posts included President Obama, Governor Scott Walker and presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio. In the posts, I also discuss graduate options for people looking to go back to school for a career change or promotion. These discussions generally focus on effect on revenue or expense shifts in higher education. These challenges are of great importance to everyone, thus, it is a topic that requires the attention of leaders at all levels.

The many topics covered in most of my posts are different options or proposals by the different representatives at the state and federal level. Governor Scott Walker wanted to cut the Wisconsin University System by $300M. Bernie Sanders wants to provide free public education at 4-year institutions by placing new taxes on Wall Street. Hillary Clinton wants to provide states the ability to opt-in to a tuition-free system that requires them to submit themselves to federal rules, laws and oversight. However, this option allows states to opt out too. Marco Rubio chooses to address the problems in higher education by attacking it in individual pieces of legislation. All of them have different solutions to the problem, but I can see a common theme in my posts looking to solve the many problems facing colleges in the US.

The other issue I addressed concerned graduate certificate programs now offered by universities to meet the different educational needs by people looking to change careers or advance in their career. This post investigated and explained what graduate certificates are because many are unfamiliar with them and their purpose. I also discovered the ability for universities to use existing infrastructure and faculty to make additional revenue by offering these programs. Both Lenoir-Rhyne and Appalachian State University offer certificates in different areas for people in this region to change or advance in careers. All in all, my posts followed a pattern and had connectable dots linking them throughout the semester.

Twice the Tuition for Half-Priced Professors?

Twice the Tuition for Half-Priced Professors?

By Jonathan Dally

You wouldn’t buy a brand new Mercedes if it came with a Hyundai engine, would you?  As a student it is in your best interest to look under the proverbial hood when investing in an institution for higher education.  Adrianna Kezar and Sean Gehrke explain in their article how non-tenure-track faculty account for nearly 70 percent of all faculty members and three out of four hires nationally are off the tenure track (2014).  While researching budgeting at the university level it is clear that faculty salaries are account for a significant chunk of the university’s total operating budget. In Chapter 4 of Larry Goldstein’s text, the most important resource for any academic institution is its faculty (2005).  Then why are Universities hiring more and more non-tenure-track faculty?   The obvious reasons include: budget shortfalls, last-minute increases in enrollments, and the inability to win approval for new tenure-track faculty positions (Kezar et. al 2014).  If universities are trending toward a larger population of non-tenure-track faculty, which are less costly, what then is the cause of tuition constantly increasing from year to year?  The American Association of University Professors (A.A.U.P.) Annual Report indicates that faculty salaries have outpaced inflation rates for the first time since the great recession.  An Inside Hire Ed article further explains that the cost for tuition inflations can be the result of decreases in state funding for public colleges and struggling endowment for private colleges (Flaherty, 2015).  Universities have to balance their faculty budget, which hovered around 31% nationally, in order to combat the loss in state funds (or suffering endowments).  This could be jeopardizing the integrity of the institution, a 2004 study indicated that have more non-tenure-tack faculty also have lower retention and graduation rates (2004).  This negligent budget cut could prove to threaten the mission and goals of the university.  There may not be an easy button for hiring the right professors at an institution, but there are benefits to increased accountability in the hiring process.  Not every non-tenured-track professor is to blame; in fact, a 2012 article claims that “the (tenured professors) are a bunch of overprotected people, who have got jobs for life, who are arrogant as hell, who try to push off the dirty teaching…to grad students or adjunct faculty who are paid low amounts.” (2012). 

REFERENCES:

Bach, J. (2012, October 16). Salaries Constitute 60 Percent of U Budget. Retrieved December 3, 2015.

Flaherty, C. (2015, April 13). Modest Gains in Faculty Pay. Retrieved December 2, 2015.

Goldstein, L., & Meisinger, R. (2005). Chapter 2: The Economic and Political Environment. In College & university budgeting: An introduction for faculty and academic administrators (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: NACUBO/National Association of College & University Business Officers.

Kezar, A., & Gehrke, S. (2014). Why Are We Hiring So Many Non-Tenure-Track Faculty? Liberal Education, 100(1). Retrieved December 3, 2015, from https://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/2014/winter/kezar

Schibik, T., & Harrington, C. (2004). Is There a Relationship between Part-Time Faculty Utilization and Student Learning Outcomes and Retention? Association for Institutional Research, 91, 2-6. Retrieved December 2, 2015, from http://airweb3.org/airpubs/91.pdf