Public universities are not for-profit businesses with an easy-to-understand bottom line: their financial reports are not designed to convey information to the public fully or to reflect all the costs of teaching and research. Financial reports do track every dollar in accordance with the accounting rules required by auditors, but they do not…

In a little rural town of ten thousand in the high desert of Utah, three big institutions run the local economy: the school district, the hospital, and the College of Eastern Utah, a two-year institution with a central campus and several small, even more rural satellite campuses throughout the state. It is the smallest college in Utah. When the…

When "crisis" and "extramural funding" are mentioned, most academics think about problems such as the low percentage of proposals funded by federal agencies (now approaching single digits in many fields) or inadequate indirect-cost recovery rates that fail to reimburse universities for all costs of research. These are great problems draining…

Florida has been one of the states hit hardest by the recent financial crisis. Since 2007, Florida State University (FSU) administration says, the university's budget has been cut by over $38 million. The state budget approved by the legislature on May 8, 2009, requires FSU to make another cut of more than $43 million from the institution's…

Discusses how sweeping new cuts in higher education funding promise to transform the professional lives of academics, particularly pressuring the liberal arts. (EV)

Every college and university experiences some form of financial hardship at one time or another. The financial problems plaguing local and state governments in recent years have been sufficient by themselves to create serious problems for institutions across the country. At the very least, an institution's financial difficulties can lead to the…

In trying to formulate rules governing financial exigency, professors and administrators alike should adhere to the basic ideas of the AAUP guidelines, thus affirming the values of the tenure system yet retaining the flexibility to respond intelligently to deteriorating financial circumstances. (MSE)

In Democracy in America, nineteenth-century political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville argued that understanding how individual U.S. states approached an issue offered "the key to all the rest." If Tocqueville was correct, and he was right about many things, higher education advocates are in for a rocky time. Over the past two or three…

Statistics suggest that, despite ongoing financial difficulties, the rate of graduation from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) is improving, and students of these colleges have higher average wages than similar individuals who did not attend college or who attended non-HBCUs. (MSE)

A summary of the 1982 Sonoma State University case of dismissal of 24 tenured faculty members for financial reasons provides background regarding financial exigency, faculty participation in decisions leading to the layoff, provision for individual hearings, notice, efforts to reinstate and relocate, and teaching service areas. (MSE)

A strong economic recovery offers higher education only some relief. Educators must respond in new ways to economic problems. Higher education offers the best chance for finding regional and national solutions, but, ironically, it must reshape itself to do so. (MSE)

Demographic and financial problems at Fairleigh Dickinson University were perceived in traditional business terms and a plan was formulated to cut expenses quickly by unloading personnel. A struggle over the role of faculty in governance has been waged since. (MLW)

The actions of Clark College in terminating, for reasons of financial exigency, two faculty members previously granted indefinite tenure are reviewed according to the AAUP statement of principles and recommended institutional regulations on academic freedom and tenure, and procedural standards, and found to be in violation. (MSE)

The focus on the debate over college teaching vs. faculty research productivity, although important, ignores the central issue of the need to restore proper funding for higher education. Underfunding higher education ultimately destroys both quality and access and affects the public sector the most. (MSE)

By last spring, most faculty members at public institutions of higher education were justifiably pessimistic about their likely salary increases for the 2003-04 academic year. Many states were running large budget deficits for the second or third year in a row and no longer had reserves to draw upon to balance their budgets. These shortfalls…