Layoffs Contemplated Due to Budget Issues

Due to declining enrollment, reduced retention rates and a lack of reserve funds, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is considering cuts to academic staff.

According to Margo Anderson, a distinguished professor who sits on the University Committee, less students and less funding equals less instructors.

“It’s not that anybody wants to lay somebody off. It’s just like a housing developer who has no contracts to build houses. He’s going to lay off his contractors.”

Freshman enrollment has continually declined for the past six years at UWM, going from 4547 in 2007 to 3256 last fall. Committee members blame it on falling high school graduation rates in Wisconsin and the state’s shifting demographic. Mark D. Schwartz, chair of the University Committee, said student fees are critical to the campus’s economic health.

“Basically, the tuition revenue is now one of our major sources of funding – much more so than it was in the 90s, the last time we had an enrollment downturn. So the loss of funding is something we have to pay a lot of attention to.”      

Instructors in immediate danger of losing their jobs include teaching assistants, graduate students, specialized lecturers, and teachers of large, low-level freshman classes, hired on short term contracts unlikely to be renewed.

“A lot of people who do that work have other jobs or are advance grad students who teach while finishing up their graduate programs,” said Anderson.“I’m not saying this couldn’t be major hardship for people caught in it. We sometimes hire retired faculty, or retirees from a different university, to teach a specialized course. If there isn’t enough demand for the course, that course isn’t offered. Well is that person laid off or just not hired?”

Schwartz said that while layoffs to permanent faculty aren’t imminent, without changes in funding they will “eventually be on the table.”

He underlined the university’s current predicament, adding that budgeting money to save jobs now is a vicious cycle as “some of those cuts can actually reduce our enrollment farther, so it’s a very difficult situation.”

The UW-System recently made news and an appearance in Legislature because of the reported $142 million of excess floating cash it carried over from the 2012 fiscal year. Schwartz explained that while it’s tempting to look to that figure as UWM’sbudget savior, the economics aren’t so simple.

“It is part of the fiction, because when they talk about this big pot of money, first of all it’s not one big pot of money. It’s given to the system then it’s divided up among the 13-14 campuses whose budget reality is very different.”

“The debate by the Legislature about reserve funds or whatever you want to call them is a crucial one,” continued Schwartz. “Because this is exactly the kind of situation – when there’s an unexpected quick downturn enrollment-wise – when the university would want to have some funds in reserve.”

But the UW-system hasn’t yet guaranteed any handouts to its Milwaukee branch. In the meantime, the university is implementing more localized strategies to combat funding problems.

Not only are freshman not signing up, but students aren’t staying on campus once enrolled. The total student body headcount dropped 3.6% in a year between springs 2013 and 2014. Additionally, every undergraduate grade saw decreased numbers from the previous year.

Each lost student represents the same amount of lost income through tuition money as one freshman failing to enroll. Rich Givens works at the Student Success Center, which runs a number of programs aimed at boosting retention.

He said “retention issues really are something the university is worried about,” and so his team leads surveys, peer mentoring programs, and living learning communitiesto help freshman and transfer students happily settle at the university.

Maia Stack, a freshman and part of the Honors Living Learning Community, is one of the group of students that resides together on one floor of the Sandburg Residence Halls.

“It’s really like a home base,” said Stack. “A community of people who know you and respect you, and you respect them. It’s kind of like your family away from your family and you get to be really good friends with these people because you live with them. Our Resident Assistant arranges lots of events and things for us to do. It’s just a really great way to build your community at the university.”

Though official retention statistics are not yet collated for the next academic year, according to Givens, the programs work.

“Early evidence suggests, for those involved in the programs, map works surveys, living learning communities, and peer mentoring have contributed to a noticeable increase in minority retention and increased retention overall.

Stack understands why: “I think a lot of times the people that leave the university are people who feel they don’t have a place here. The LLCs make you feel grounded, like you do have a place here, because you have these people.”

But such strategies only help long term, and the need for layoffs might come too soon.