Steps to Further Reduce Budgets while Protecting Washington's Top Priorities for Western
The cuts announced in Olympia today come on the heels of prior reductions in state support totaling more than $50 million to Western, this biennium. That is a 34% reduction in state support. Today, we were told that, for the fiscal year we are already in, Western's budget will be further reduced by $3.05 million. That is another 6.3%.
We were and will be guided by this straightforward priority: serve current students who have every right to expect that they will get the quality of education for which Western is now widely known.
Serving current students is the university's top priority, shared by those who are the university and who support the university. However, it is also more. It follows from over 100 recent conversations around the state and with people from all walks of life who talked with us about their priorities for Western. This is not Western's top commitment alone, it is Washington's top priority for Western.
People also speak with their feet. Western is in ever higher demand. Receiving 10,000 applications for 2,700 openings, that demand has been disproportionately in the areas of high tech and science-based preparation. Western recently cut substantially more than the required $50 million and reallocated the difference to eliminate course bottlenecks, largely located in these burgeoning but more costly areas. That commitment to students to get the classes they need in a timely fashion must and will be sustained even as further cuts are now necessary.
Critical to Washington is to have the baccalaureate capacity necessary for better futures for our state. Right now, Washington ranks 48th out of the 50 states on this dimension. These needed students of tomorrow will come disproportionately from families of limited means and so we must also address fiscal barriers to access. We will continue to fight aggressively on both these fronts for here are serious clouds hanging over Washington's future. But, tough choices must be made. Ethically, we have to first stand behind the commitments made to Western students: today's and tomorrow's.
For some weeks, Western has been preparing to respond to the need to make further cuts this fiscal year, heeding the Governor's direction to do so by finding new ways to do business while protecting mission critical functions. Washington's mission critical function for Western is:
Students admitted to Western, currently and in the future, must be able to count on getting the high quality of education that Western is known for.
As to new and different ways to do business, that too has been our focus. Our open budget processes continue and there will be further announcements and further refinements as these processes continue. Today, though, these steps are now underway:
- Further restricting admissions to Winter and Spring quarters; the magnitude of the restrictions depend upon careful analysis of Fall term student retention rates, class availability, and student mix.
- Reducing the award of new tuition waivers for Winter and Spring by $250,000. Tuition waivers are a form of financial aid. Current students with such awards are not affected.
- Following campus procedures, 14 academic programs for which program admission is currently suspended because of low demand will be now proposed for elimination.* Because of trends in demand, 12 others are being considered for suspension or elimination. All currently admitted or enrolled students will be served.
- Reviewing all academic programs for costs per student using national benchmarks has been completed. Good news is that our programs come in at well below average national cost, looking program by program; bad news is that there are no particular programs to further analyze for possible savings.
- Reviewing academic programs to determine if further capacity limits are necessary to assure quality and timely progress for the students that are admitted to the programs. The focus is on the programs that, in the Western context, are more costly.
- Consolidating support services through partnerships with other entities. Several opportunities are being actively pursued and one has just been put in place: by combining print services in a partnership with Whatcom Community College, Western positions in this area have been reduced from 10.5 FTE to 5.5 FTE while maintaining, through the partnership, current service levels.
- Actively reviewing other academic, administrative, and student support services to achieve further savings through consolidation, partnerships, or centralization. These include but are not limited to the ways in which the university supports IT functions, fiscal support services, and the bringing together of related student support services.
- Forming a coalition of two-year and four-year institutions in our area so that ever more scarce resources can be more effectively pooled to serve shared needs. The institutions are Western, Everett Community College, Northwest Indian College, Whatcom Community College, Skagit Valley College, Bellingham Technical College, and Olympic College. Among many opportunities we are pursuing are initiatives now in progress that, through collaboration, will improve efficiencies, effectiveness and opportunities in the following areas: support for the veterans who enrich our campuses; international experiences; and meeting our communities' economic and development needs in the areas of marine trades, green business, ecosystem viability, and sustainability.
- Bringing units in leased space to campus. The campus will become significantly more crowded as units currently located in buildings that the university now leases are moved to campus.
- Implementing university-level budgeting systems to address the extra work and inefficiencies that happen through use of multiple and different departmental homegrown systems.
- Critically examining all related business practices in the course of implementing university-level systems and approaches in order to identify further efficiencies.
- Keeping vacant top administrative positions: examples are the Director for International Education and the Director for Extended Education and Summer Programs.
- Renegotiating contracts for services with the goal of obtaining university savings or further efficiencies.
By national data, Washington's public universities top those of the other 50 states in efficiency. Still efficiencies must continue to be relentlessly pursued and, as the foregoing illustrates, that is one part of Western's strategy.
Another component of our strategy, and as is also illustrated above, is to guarantee quality for the students we do serve but doing so, in part, by limiting the students we are able to serve – through overall admissions, through the programs and curricular choices we do continue to offer, through available aid, and through admission to particular programs.
Inevitably, other savings come from reductions in the quality of services that support students, faculty, and staff, targeting reductions in those services least critical to the core academic mission. There will also be consequences for the programs and services community members access as well as for the programs that support community and economic development.
Each preceding bullet, in a few words, covers significant complexity and much nuance. They also do not add up to the $3.05 million cut. They are what we have to date. Many more ongoing efforts continue, within Western's planning units, to identify further savings and efficiencies. As part of the established budget processes, all these efforts will be shared with campus at the end of the month.
Vice Presidents will be working with their units to provide additional detail, to facilitate implementation, and to continue the ongoing exploration of the additional ideas for savings now under active consideration within their units.
*The 14 programs are: M.Ed. Art Education; M.Ed. Advanced Classroom Practice; M.A. Sociology; M.Ed. Technology Education; M.A. Theatre; General Science – Elementary with Biology; General Science – Elementary with Chemistry; General Science – Elementary with Earth Science Major; General Science – Elementary with Physics Major; Accounting/Computer Science (combined major); Environmental Science – Environmental Chemistry emphasis; Industrial Technology – General Specialization; Health Promotion Minor; Destination Graduation.