Foundation of the Future (FOTF) is a process that reallocates funds between programs, both academic and administrative, in order to augment the University’s competitive quality and cost efficiency. When it was introduced to us last year, there was much controversy over it.
As fall semester 2013 winds to a close, many students are wondering where the University stands with FOTF and what they can expect in the near future. They are also wondering how the University is saving costs, especially since the Strategic Plan will require sufficient funds to implement.
Provost Sharon L. Vasquez and Vice President for Finance and Administration Arosha Jayawickrema answered these questions and more, and want to remind students that most of the details are available to them online.
From 2011-12, the Academic Task Force of faculty members evaluated 152 undergraduate and graduate programs. Its goal was to reallocate $3.8 million, seven percent of base financial reports.
The Administrative Task Force, which comprised of faculty and staff, evaluated 98 administrative units and had a goal of reallocating seven percent of the administration budget: $3.1 million.
Each task force based their decisions on five criteria, including University-wide importance, external and internal demand, quality and benefit over cost. Report templates were completed by department chairs and program directors of each program.
Once all programs were evaluated, the task forces placed each one into one of four categories: invest, maintain, restructure or divest.
In total, 41 programs were recommended for divestment. Provost Vasquez moved 27 of these programs to the Senate to vote on it. During this process, the Dean, Department Chair and Program Director of each program under vote spoke to the Senate about the program. The Senate voted to divest in 18 of the 27 programs proposed for divestment. Of those 18 programs, six are currently under appeal.
When asked why these 18 programs were divested in, Vasquez responded that student demand was a large deciding factor for many of them. Anthropology, for example, was cut because not a single student had declared the Anthropology major in three years. One student every three years majored in Organ and one student every five years majored in Cantoral Studies. The cost of these programs was higher than their benefit.
Nine of the 27 divestment proposals before the Senate were voted down and referred to President Walter Harrison. He decided whether or not these programs would be divested; as of now he has made decisions on all but one of them. His decisions were made public and the students involved in the programs were specifically informed.
Fourteen of the 41 programs recommended for divestment by the task forces were deferred to Vasquez instead of being immediately passed to Senate. These 14 programs are currently being restructured and are under continuing evaluation. Department chairs submit progress reports to Vasquez and she assesses them based on what the programs are doing to improve the cost-efficiency, quality and impact of their programs.
Students involved in programs that were chosen for restructure by the task forces may notice slight changes, but any changes to curriculum will take longer to review and hence will not affect current students.
Most of the restructuring is happening on an administrative level, such as merging smaller units into larger ones or offering a minor through a different department.
Maintained programs will not see any changes and programs invested in will see improvements over the next few years.
Overall, FOTF will redirect $5-7 million between programs over the next five years.
FOTF maintains the same budget, it simply restructures how much money each program receives. Yet the University is constantly finding ways to save costs.
Automating a lot of services such as payroll saves time and investment. The University is also improving the school’s printing service so that it can complete more printing jobs and the University can rely less on external printing services.
Most impressive is the University’s recent refinancing of its long-term debt, decreasing its debt service (interest, essentially) by $1 million per year.
Another way the University has saved money is by improving energy efficiency. UHa has reduced its utility cost by 20 percent since 2009.
A wellness program that provides reductions in the health care costs of faculty and staff members if they exercise healthy behavior has also been invested in. This focusing on saving individuals money, not just the University as a whole.
This wellness program is just the beginning for numerous incentives the University is planning on offering faculty and staff. Administration officials plan to offer higher salary raises to high-quality faculty and staff members in order to incentivize staying at UHa.
The University is considering doing the same for students, and administration members are beginning to ask themselves, “Are we giving sufficient financial aid to the students we want to keep because they can contribute a lot to this University?”
In the meantime, “We want to be reasonable with tuition increases and not go above what inflation demands,” said Jayawickrema.
Jayawickrema stresses that the finance administration is also planning to invest more in international and non-traditional students to increase the diversity of the student population. Furthermore, Saturday term, summer term, winter term, online and graduate classes will receive more attention in the future.
One way to do this, Jayawickrema asserts, is to maximize the housing stock on campus and offer housing for graduate students.
The University also plans on fundraising by getting alumni more involved.
Whether they donate financially or network the University with their personal connections, alumni have the potential to be great investors in the future of the institution. “Long-term, endowed gifts like the Shaw Center” are huge contributions to the University that have a lasting impact on the whole UHa community, Jayawickrema stated.
Why did none of these ideas take priority in FOTF?
“The goal of FOTF was to invest in capital,” answered Jayawickrema. “So we focused on improvements to the freshmen complexes.” Investing in first-year students’ experience increases the likelihood those students will return to the University for a second year.
Overall, the University wants “to reach financial equilibrium,” Jayawickrema said. “Simply ‘balancing the budget’ does not mean we are reaching the desired outcome.” And a part of doing so is cutting some programs so that other programs can expand and new programs can be added to improve the University.
FOTF prepared the University for the upcoming five-year Strategic Plan, partially by reallocating resources. “The strategic planning process is informed by FOTF, along with other major planning processes we have undertaken in the past several years.”
Town hall meetings about Strategic Plan will most likely occur in December and the official document of the plan will most likely come out in February 2014, Vasquez said.
More information about the Strategic Plan will follow in December.