During the May 29, 2012 “Open Faculty Forum about Budget Cut” called by the central administration, President Machen and Provost Glover were asked, among others,  several questions from this list,    based on an independent report on UF’s  reserves,  including those held by the University “proper” and  those held by the University’s various “discrete component units” including Shands;  including approximately half a billion dollars  categorized as “restricted expendable;” and over 100 million dollars held by the University “proper,” and characterized as “unrestricted net assets.”   Candid answers were not forthcoming.

One question  specifically concerned the “Strategic Fund Pot”  into which all of the recent and ongoing yearly tuition hikes go.

This Strategic Funding pot of money is a recurring portion of the unrestricted net assets category  of UF reserves that could well be used to compensate for permanent, recurring budget cuts.

Based on a recent document (RCM “three scenarios”)  prepared by  Provost Glover or by  CFO Fajack, $41.5 million of this recurring Strategic Fund Pot was available from the FY2012 tuition hike.

We were told during the forum that at least 75% of this Strategic Fund Pot has already been distributed to the Deans according to their College’s current RCM proportions. (Read about RCM or Responsibility Center Management, and its stress on decentralization and transparency). I.e, we were told that the control of the remaining reserves rests with the colleges.

We were also told that, specifically, Dean Abernathy of the College of Engineering has made public, on her website and elsewhere, all the necessary information, to the extent that further information would be impossible for the administration to produce.  This statement is inconsistent with the philosophy of RCM as substantiated below.

According to the philosophy of RCM, administrators at  all levels should ensure sufficient transparency about allocation of funds to Academic, Research Units, Support Units and Initiatives, so that faculty and other members of the university community are not required to become “lawyers and accountants” in order to understand the allocation or its rationale.  The allocation of state, tution and indirect revenue from grants and contracts (unrestricted use for academic/research and related purposes) is to be primarily based on a pre-published  RCM formula(*) that encourages units and initiatives with high costs to also generate high revenues.

Currently, the Central Administration’s  Costs and Revenue Allocation  to the Colleges is detailed in the University of Florida Budget Book(*)  and the Office of Instructional Resources website(*)  (look under analytical tools, SCH cube and Enrollment Revenue Cube).

Note: Faculty in the college of engineering have located errors in the  document underlying the SCH cube (not publicly visible, that was obtained as part of a request for information from the college of engineering – see below).  The central administration was notified, but the error has not been acknowledged. Specifically students majoring in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) were wrongly attributed to the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) instead of CISE.  The group of faculty that scrutinized the document do not have comprehensive data to determine whether there are other such errors. While this particular error does not change the RCM distribution among colleges, it would change the RCM distribution among departments within the College of Engineering. Errors such as these are unavoidable, but easily corrected if the document is made available for public scrutiny, and if errors  are promptly acknowledged and corrected.

Understanding Colleges’ Allocation of Costs and Revenues to Academic, Research  Units, Support Units and Initiatives.

Provost Glover made a  statement at the April 12 senate meeting  RCM analysis  should be encouraged down to the department, institute and center level.   This is consistent with RCM philosophy. After all, if weighted SCH’s represent a primary source of the College’s revenue, it makes sense that one should at least know the weighted SCH distribution for the various deparments within the college; and rationalize subventions that deviate from this distribution. And one would expect that such subvention decisions are motivated by academic and research missions of the college, which in turn are arrived at via formal consultations with the faculty.

Motivated by these principles,  several faculty members, especially the College of Engineering, have recently invested a great deal of effort in trying to understand the following points.

(a) The amounts in recurrent revenue streams – state, tuition, direct and indirect revenue from grants and contracts -  as well as non-recurrent, one time, revenues generated by each of the Academic, Research and their Support Units and Initiatives in the College. By “Units and Initiatives” we refer not only departments and standard support units, but also centers, institutes, and non-standard administrative offices.

(b) The complete description of  each revenue stream (recurring or non-recurring, stipulation on type of use, time limits etc)

(c) The recurring and non-recurring costs – in various categories – incurred by each of the Units and Initiatives.

(d) Allocation of revenue streams to cost categories for each Unit or Initiative so that the stipulations of (b) are met

(e) Rationale for allocation of  revenues governed by RCM to each of the Units and Initiatives in the College -  especially if the allocation is a subvention that deviates significantly from the RCM formula

(f) The current balances in each revenue stream

(g) The future commitments in each cost category, with a clear description of the nature and time-limit of the commitment

(h)  Other additional sources of revenue such as Foundation (donations or entrepreneurial income): stipulations on type of use,  allocation to various Units and Initiatives in the College, and the rationale for the allocation.

For example, for the most complicated revenue stream  namely  Direct Revenues  from Contracts and Grants,  all of the relevant items above are directly available to any principal investigator from the Myufl/PeopleSoft system, broken down by Unit or Principal Investigator or Project  within any College. If the College were to follow similar, standard accounting practices, all the above items (a)-(h),  except (e) should be immediately available directly for all revenue streams and cost categories, for each Unit and Initiative within the College. The Item (e) can then be computed rather accurately from the RCM resources (*) mentioned above.

The Search for Transparency and Rationale within the College of Engineering

Dean Abernathy provided 2 documents, soon after the unveiling of the Abernathy Plan on April 11, 2012. one of which was the RCM “three scenarios” document mentioned above that was prepared by the central administration detailing allocations among colleges, but which does not detail allocations within any given college. The other was a Power Point, showing “performance” of various departments in the college with respect to a selected and somewhat skewed set of performance metrics. Indirect revenues from grants and contracts was listed, but cost sharing on grants  by the college was not;  specifically, Space, Facility and Equipment costs were unlisted; number of students in each major were listed, but weighted SCH’s were not (RCM revenues are based on tuition generated by different categories of students). Teaching Assistantship costs were listed, but Technical, administrative and other support staff and auxiliaries were not.

In response, faculty members pieced together summary documents that the college of engineering provided to various comittees since 2009, to give a well-rounded set of metrics and performance ranking of the various Engineering departments according to those metrics.

The above  documents provided by the College were however inadequate for Items (a)-(h) above, especially concerning  research support centers; college of engineering administration and related offices such as  fiscal and development;  strategic and other discretionary institutes; the fiscal relationships between all of these and each department; and foundation accounts controlled directly by the Engineering administration.

Further questions posed by the faculty (since April 16th, in an effort to understand Item (a)-(h)) have been treated by the Administration (by their choice) as a FOIA Public Records Request. The University’s PR officer Janine Sikes has been the go-between for all communication between the Faculty and the Administration, specifically, Bill Heitman, the boss of Engineering’s centralized fiscal office.

We repeat: If the College were to follow standard accounting practices, all the above items (a)-(h),  except (e), should be immediately available directly for all revenues and costs, for each Unit and Initiative within the College. The Item (e) can then be computed rather accurately from the RCM resources (*) mentioned above.

Instead, Bill Heitman provided  33 documents,  in response to at least  4 rounds of requests. While these documents contain many numbers, no doubt of independent interest, they do not contain sufficient information for the group of 6 faculty members asking the questions  to even approximately piece together  Items (a)-(h) above. Further questioning has yielded no response for the past month.

Best Effort Conclusions for Engineering

Of the various conclusions we were able to draw for the College of Engineering (to the best of our knowledge, given that we are not “lawyers or accountants”):

(1) The Dean Abernathy has said explicitly that she “does not run the college according to RCM.”  That statement could be construed as refering to a small percentage of subventions that adjust the RCM.   However, this  new performance document, however, makes it clear that the College of Engineering does not allocate revenues and costs even remotely according to RCM. The allocation model is better termed as: “Dean’s discretion.”  To the best of our knowledge, no formal faculty consultation, meetings with minutes or votes have informed the Dean’s discretion.

(2) Atleast $3.9 million (recurring), probably from the strategic funding pot, has been spent during this year, probably even this Spring.According to the College,  five  strategic plan faculty were hired this past year (including one returning faculty member who had left around the time that the nuclear and radiological engineering department was dismantled). In addition, at least a couple of  highly paid PR and other staff were hired to advise the Dean on all public communications (some might call this process spin doctoring). Two more strategic plan faculty offers are pending. 7 new discretionary institutes, with recurring costs have been set up under the college of engineering administration, including institutes for leadership and innovation. Most of these institutes currently do not generate their own revenues.  To the best of our knowledge, no formal faculty consultation, meetings with minutes or votes have informed these decisions (until the point where the faculty hire has to choose and be accepted to a tenure home), Again, there were ample opportunities to  seek formal consultation. “Consultation” instead takes the form of townhall meetings and parallel SWOT exercises, run  by ad hoc dean-appointed committees, with no minutes taken..

(3) Atleast 6 strategic plan positions have been advertised in March or April 2012 (each call indicated several positions), that amount to a (recurring) salary amount of $660,000; and atleast the same amount in annual faculty start up costs that will recur for several years.

(4) Several apparently one-time commitments are listed without adequate detail, so it is not clear that they really are commitments, including $1million for a reactor upgrade that probably could be deferred, and $700K for “budget cut transition costs,”  presumably for recovering from the original the Abernathy Plan  — we hope this will not be needed.

(4) A few million dollars of spendable (not principal/capital) amounts are sitting in unnamed foundation accounts labeled “College of Engineering Administration,” and “Dean’s office,” including at least $800,000 for “Engineering Development.” For most of these unnamed accounts, it is not clear how much they accrue each year, making it difficult to cast them as recurring revenues. The stipulations for each amount to 2-3 words  – they certainly do not restrict spending to any special institutes or centers or specify any university matches. More specifically the stipulations do not prevent the amounts from being spent on core departmental functions.

Recommended Budget Plan for Engineering

Our recommendation based on the above conclusions is the following. (i) A hiring freeze for strategic plan positions; (ii) some austerity on the part of the bloated Engineering administration, fiscal and development offices;  (iii) holding back new spending on Dean-favored, untested, questionable, discretionary institutes; (iv) improving efficiency, downsizing or deferring spending on inefficient research support centers and facilities would comfortably cover the recurring cut  that the college of engineering has been asked to make. This would render the Dean’s latest plan  – of cutting core, extremely lean, high performing units – unnecessary.  We believe that following our suggestion instead, will minimize adverse impact on the health of the College.

In a message to you a couple of weeks ago I listed a number of questions to which I suggested members of the university community – faculty, staff, students – deserved an answer.

The chief ones, of course, were why the administration is not drawing on the university’s reserves to cover the temporary budget short-fall — as the legislature expects and as other SUS institutions are doing, — and why it is alone among these institutions to continue large-scale hiring while cutting existing programs.

Since I wrote, UFF-UF has been studying the university’s audited financial statement and other reports by the administration.  As a result, a number of additional questions have arisen.

First, while UF’s financial statement, certified by the state auditor general, gives the amount of unrestricted funds held by the university at the end of the fiscal year 2011 as $110 million, according to the Gainesville Sun “UF officials reported to the Board of Governors that it had $67.3 million remaining in reserves as of December.” Apparently, $42.7 million has been spent in the six months preceding the legislative session.  The administration should tell us what it deemed worthy to have nearly 40% of UF’s reserves spent on it at a time when budget problems were widely anticipated.

Second, while the administration is correct that $40.8 of the remaining funds must be held back to maintain a reserve equaling 5% of its education and general revenue operating budget, as required by law, we must ask abou the remaining $26.5 million. All we have heard is that it is “pledged for research lab upgrades, equipment purchases and other commitments”.  Again, we should be told what these commitments are and why they are so important that the reserves should go to them, rather than to cover the short-fall without resorting to the draconian cuts some programs are threatened with.

Third, under the new RCM accounting system, funds generated by tuition go in part to the President’s “strategic fund.” How much is in that fund and why can it not be used to cushion the temporary short-fall?

Fourth, the most recent RCM data from the administration shows that large amounts are held in the colleges under the headings “carry forward” and “strategic funding”. These amounts ($10.6m in CLAS, for example, $3.5m in Engineering… for a total of some $42 million across the colleges) comfortably exceed the cuts being threatened. What are these funds for and why can they not be drawn on?

Last, but perhaps most important because of the amount involved, we should be given information about the category of “restricted expendable” funds listed in the university’s financial statement.  The label suggests that these are not wholly unrestricted, as is the $110 million,  but also not wholly restricted. The amount for UF alone, excluding Shands and other “component units,”  is a whopping $540 million and is found under the informative label “other”. If even a small part of it is available to cover the short-fall, we should be told why it is not being so used.

As before, the administration’s claim that the cuts it is planning to impose are unavoidable rings hollow in the face of its refusal to provide candid answers to questions such as these.  We call on it to do so, if it wants its much-vaunted “shared governance” to retain a shred of credibility.

Sincerely,

John Biro UFF-UF president

The current Acting Chair, Gerhard Ritter, is due to step down on June 30. On Wednesday June 6, 2012,  Provost Joe Glover and Dean Cammy Abernathy announced that Dr. Paul Gader will be CISE’s new Interim Chair. A process for selecting a permanent chairman for CISE was also discussed. See previous posts on the topic below.

During the June 6 meeting,  the Dean was asked about the 2 positions that CISE will lose .    The Dean’s latest plan calls for an 8% cut for CISE:   since the Dean’s budget cut plan submitted to the university refers to the removal of an Engineering  faculty position as a cut for Engineering,  the removal of CISE positions must by the same token count as a cut for CISE.  This contradicts the Dean’s latest budget cut statement to the College that  2.9%  cuts  will  be  “uniformly distributed” across the College of Engineering departments.  During the June 6  meeting, the Dean was also asked about resources available for the permanent chair search in one year’s time.

Despite the fact that at least 6 new  “strategic plan”  faculty positions have been advertised directly by the College of Engineering  Administration (not by its departments) as late as March 2012, the Dean replied  that “..those two [currently  CISE] positions have been promised to BME..,” and “..I have no further resources..” giving no further details.   For further details that are inconsistent with the Dean’s statement,   read more  about strategic plan positions and other ample resources that are available to the College of Engineering

President Machen’s statement   after the final Board of Trustees meeting on June 7 indicates that during the coming year, some of the budget cuts for the College of Engineering will be covered by reserves.  Given previous statements by the central administration that  the reserves are essentially under the control of the colleges,  this would imply that some of the cuts for the college of engineering will be covered by the College of Engineering reserves.

Could  Dean Abernathy please  elaborate exactly which department’s  cuts will be covered by the reserves?   More precisely, how will department within the college will be cut,  and how are the  College of Engineering’s currently available resources being used?

[May 31, 2012  post]

The current acting Chair Gerhard Ritter was told by the Dean in early May, to “talk to the Provost” concerning what would happen when he steps down on June 30.  The Provost who was unusually present at the College of Engineering Faculty council meeting on May 17th was asked about it,   but the discussion centered around the process laid out in the Engineering Constitution for selecting a Chair.  When asked again on May 26, Provost Glover replied that he would be talking to the Dean about various issues on May 29th (after the Open Faculty Budget Forum called by the central administration, the day after Memorial Day weekend, during a tropical storm). He wrote back, saying he would only meet with the department if the Dean was present, and asked if  “it was still interested.”  The meeting was  scheduled for June 6 when several faculty were away on travel.

Other posts about CURRENT CISE limbo

CISE Starvation – Not “across the board” after all

Older CISE status posts

“Off the table”, “set aside” ? (Recent news: CISE chair rejects Harris-Abernathy “hostile takeover,” CISE left out of Chairs’ Budget Planning)

A Good Faith Effort by CISE

One Step in the Right Direction (two steps back?)..

“Abernathy Plan” off the Table – Link

What Is This All About? (Updated, May 31)

“They can and will do anything to your professional life.”  “No matter how irrational their decisions, watch out what you say: they don’t like it if you question their decisions, and they have ways of using the tiniest pretext to professionally harass you.”  “If your department speaks out collectively, then they will retaliate and harass your department.”  Statements such as this have become increasingly common among College of Engineering faculty as the tenure of the current Dean progresses. In the current limbo when the departments in the College prepare their 2.7% across the board cut (announced as the 3rd and hopefully final of Dean Abernathy’s proposals for the 2012 budget cut), this atmosphere of fear of retribution and retaliation is palpable. What does this say about academic freedom within the College of Engineering?

The following emails were “sunshined” as part of a public records request.

“Evil and Nefarious Undertakings”

The first email below  is from Dean Abernathy to  Associate Dean (and former Chair of ECE) Mark Law, in response to a message from Mark Law saying that he did not get a Dean position at Auburn. It was sent on the evening of the same day that the Dean announced the Abernathy plan for dismantling the CISE department and stripping it of its research activity.

NOTE: UF is one of 24 US universities with a fully functioning nuclear reactor.  The UF training reactor was associated with the Nuclear Engineering department that was recently dismantled by the College of Engineering administration, without even paying lip service to Senate Bylaw 22 on restructuring. Here are excerpts of a letter to the provost from a highly successful Nuclear engineering faculty member who departed as the department suffered the college administration’s “nuclear option” akin to the  Apr. 11 Abernathy plan for CISE.  The nuclear engineering program still exists as a disembodied entity split among unrelated departments. One of these departments is Materials Science and Engineering (the Dean’s department),  where the program boosts their otherwise low undergraduate student credit hours.

Profiling Faculty as “Inside or Outside the Tent”

The next email below is from Associate Dean Angela Lindner, sent soon after the Abernathy Plan (to dismantle the CISE dept and its research activity) was publicly announced on Apr. 11, causing an uproar and plenty of activity in social media. Several PR personnel and some faculty inform administrators of activity in social media sites. This message by Angela Lindner suggests more than just information.

Note: The comment by President Lyndon B. Johnson on  FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, NYtimes, 31 Oct 1971: “It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.” Read also about LBJ’s famed “Johnson treatment” ,  his penchant for one-on-one persuasion, and his ”credibility gap” during the Vietnam war.

For more Dean Facts, please follow this link.

“While this budget represents less direct funding for the universities, we appreciate the stated commitment of legislative leadership that the $300 million reduction will be restored to the baseline next year. Our Universities will continue to tap their reserves year-round in order to save course offerings, retain faculty and account for enrollment growth, among other critical demands.”

The University of Florida’s annual report as well as an independent audit reveal the financial health of the university. Conservatively, the University of Florida is sitting on a mountain of cash classified in many different yet equally accessible ways. It doesn’t matter whether we discuss the $1.015 billion total, the $111 million in “unrestricted net assets,” or the $540 million classified as “restricted expendable.” President Machen and Provost Joe Glover have decided to make permanent cuts to the university’s structure when cutting a check would suffice.

Several faculty, students, and staff have joined a university-wide coalition outraged at the disconnect between state lawmakers and university administrators. The SaveUF! Spend the Reserves campaign is actively protesting this unnecessary austerity.

On May 14, President Machen admited that spending the reserves may be a viable delay strategy but is an ill-advised longterm strategy. We disagree. We disagree because the Board of Governors as well as state lawmakers have repeatedly affirmed that the budget shortfall will be returned to baseline next year.

On May 23, the SaveUF! Spend the Reserves coalition led a teach-in where its members gave short speeches to the public, educating them about the budget cuts and the administration’s strategy. WUFT-FM interviewed members of the coalition as well as an official university spokesperson, Janine Sikes. The Gainesville Sun ran a webpoll and discovered that 69.7% of those polled are in favor of spending reserves to meet the budget shortfall, while only 21.4% favor making permanent cuts (8.9% argue that the university should raise funds through benefactors and other means).

On June 7-8, UF’s Board of Trustees meets to vote on President Machen’s university budget cut proposal.

You can buy the T-shirt online and we’ll ship it to you.

For more information, please visit the Facebook page.

One of the options that has gained the most backing from external supporters is for the CISE department to transition into an independent College of Computing at UF with CISE at its core. Here is the link to the Foundation of a Vision for the College of Computing. This transition will need a fund.

Here we are reaching out to individuals and organizations interested in contributing financially to maintain a nourishing environment for Computer Science at UF through  a College of Computing at UF with CISE at its core.

WE ARE NOT COLLECTING ANY MONEY AT THIS TIME, ONLY PLEDGES. Through this form, we are assessing the level of support available from external donors who would be willing to contribute financially to our cause, in a time of need. So please pledge to our cause in a manner you can honor if the College of Computing – with CISE at its core – becomes a reality.

Here is the list of people who have pledged financial support to the College of Computing and have agreed to have their names publicized (more or less up to date).

Time since the pledging started:

The total amount pledged so far is:

Here is the pledge form (It contains background and recent events information).

The College of Engineering’s “FY 2013 Budget Cuts” document lacks critical details necessary to judge the health and safety of any individual department. Engineering is not alone. Almost every budget cut proposal omits a department-level breakdown, a breakdown for which concerned parents, students, and alumni of affected units are anxiously awaiting.

We expect Provost Joe Glover would require his deans to produce publicly available, detailed reports. It is shocking that he accepts such minimalistic levels of detail for budget cut proposals. At the April faculty senate meeting, he acknowledged that these budget cuts will cause serious pain to the programs and offerings at the University of Florida.

On April 17, Florida’s Board of Governors declared, “Our Universities will continue to tap their reserves year-round in order to save course offerings, retain faculty and account for enrollment growth, among other critical demands.” President Bernie Machen has elected not to spend the University of Florida’s reserves and to instead interpret the one-time budget shortfall as recurring.

Spending of UF’s reserves is just one strategy to address these state-mandated one-time cuts. Another is by closing some of the 102 open faculty positions. If the university is in such dire financial straits, its administrators should carefully consider adjusting their hiring strategies before making permanent modifications to their colleges’ teaching, research, and services. In Florida, the university with the second-most aggressive hiring strategy in these delicate financial times is FIU. FIU has 2 open positions.

Nuri Yeralan
CISE Lead Coordinator

Towards a public discourse about Higher Education Performance  …  starting within UF colleges, on to the national level.

Performance analysis of UF College of Engineering by department using 4 metrics (Published May 22, 2012)

CISE at UF Performance Statistics

Foundation of a Vision Document for a College of Computing at UF

Ideology and Politics in Florida’s current Higher Ed “reform” — initial prep for Rick Scott’s “Blue Ribbon Task Force” coming up

Texas Coalition for Higher Ed excellence (in response to “Rick Perry’s Seven Breakthrough Solutions (funny video)”)

The SaveUFCISE community urges all stakeholders to demand accountability for  the events of the past 4 weeks that have caused severe damage to UF’s reputation among prospective students, parents,  concerned citizens, academics, alumni and industry partners, who might have considered joining or supporting the Gator Nation.  Start by calling for scrutiny of the sketchy  “final” 2012 budget cut proposal.

UF and Engineering

In Search of Transparency, Rationale and Accountability  (and a recommended 2012-2013 budget plan for UF Engineering)  (June 1)

Budget Cut a Check!  (May 30)

Dean Abernathy’s Final Budget Cut Proposal (May 2)

CISE

Impact of Plan to Dismantle CISE at UF (June 8)

Paying for Past and Preventing Future Damage (May 3)

AROUND THE NATION AND THE GLOBE

Administrators  ate my tuition

The Fall of the Faculty:  Rise of the All-Administrative University

The Riddles of NeoLiberal University Reform (Bologna Process)