UPI@WIU July 16,2017

(Almost) All Unit B Contracts Re-

newed

Ending weeks of anxiety and uncertainty, yesterday afternoon the Provost’s Office sent an e-mail to Associate Faculty, informing them their contracts were being renewed. It is our under-standing that nearly every Associate Faculty waiting for a contract received one. The sole ex-ception is the already laid off Christina Norton. She remains unemployed. The email also asks everyone to be pa-tient while Academic Personnel loads contracts over the coming weeks. An enigmatic sentence in the email had some people worried. It reads, "Please note that your contract is subject to change due to the processing of PAAs, promo-tions, and minima bumps through August 18, 2017." People contacted me, worried that the ad-ministration might be trying to withhold these. Russ Morgan, the Associate Provost for Contract Administration, said that though these items had not yet been added to contracts, they would be. The email in no way acknowledges the anxi-ety and uncertainty people were put through. A terror of liability, perhaps, renders the admin-istration mute.

BOT Retreat: Newest New Normal

(N3) has an Online Focus and Focus

on Enrollment.

UPI attended the first 4 hours of the BOT

retreat held in the obscure fastness of the Re-

new Moline boardroom. UPI VP, Molly Homer,

and I came to listen to Matt Bierman’s budget

talk. But first we sat through several PowerPoint

presentations by the Dr. Thomas, Seth Miner and

Ron Williams, and Brad Bainter, parts of which

were not without interest.

Two themes emerged over the morning’s

PowerPoints: Aside from cashflow issues related

to when the new budget will actually arrive, en-

rollment problem is now the fiscal problem. Seth

Miner outlined plans to make enrolling at WIU

easier and the turnaround time from application

to admission quicker. Miner also wants to con-

nect prospective students with the institution at

an earlier age. To that end, WIU is joining other

schools in purchasing lists of likely high school

sophomores and juniors. (Some colleges are be-

ginning to woo eighth graders.) By curating—

purposeful word choice—these individuals, they

will identify themselves as bound for Western

by the time they are seniors. WIU, like other in-

stitutions are reaching into the high schools in a

more direct fashion. Mark Mossman, Chair of

English, is going to be teaching a for-credit col-

lege class at Cambridge High School. It’s not

known whether this model will be highly replica-

ble. Typically, AP courses are taught by high

school teachers with Masters (often our own

alumni). Also, the schools are unionized and

might not like another school poaching labor.

Those caveats aside, for schools that lack teach-

ers with the appropriate credentials, this might

be a good model. It is also an interesting return

to the past. 50 years ago Western staffed and

managed a number of local primary and second-

ary schools. These were effectively satellite lab

schools.

Admissions and marketing are also craft-

ing a new message focusing on our students’

BOT Retreat: Matt Bierman Demonstrates the 10m

in cost savings from personnel from 2015 to 2017.

To see larger image, click on image above.

UPI@WIU July 16,2017

success after college.

Faculty have expressed disappointment

that we are not seeing enrollment turnaround

more quickly. Seth Miner has a hard job—and he

is addressing the issue. Whether his actions will

succeed will not be known for another year or

two. He must undo the damage of a decade of

enrollment decline. If in two years’ time, we are

not headed toward 10,000, then we will know we

need another plan. Till then, I believe we should

help him in whatever way is appropriate. Enroll-

ment is not a faculty and staff responsibility. It

is a management responsibility. On the other

hand, we’d be silly not to help management suc-

ceed. I encourage everyone to do so. Contact Mr.

Miner and let him know you are interested in

helping.

The second theme, sounded by the pres-

dent, and echoed by various and sundry, is that

online courses—and entire online programs—are

to be a larger part of WIU’s N3. During his

presentation, the university president praised

the Anthropology Program for moving its major

online. He admitted he looked with favor on

such efforts. Online programs were also touted

as a way to grow enrollment among non tradi-

tional students, a focus of the “Come Back to

Western” campaign. The president did note (I’m

paraphrasing) that that some disciplines are

more suited to online learning than others and

that the future would always contain face-to-face

classes. Nonetheless some of those present

dropped into an “Online education is the future

mode,” more appropriate to 2003 than 2018. To

his credit, Trustee Steve Nelson seemed to un-

derstand the president’s message and asked if

he could audit an online class to see what it was

like. I applaud him for that. I hope every Trustee

follows his example.

Distance education today is a crowded

field with competition on a national, not region-

al, scale. It does not work well in all disciplines.

Online education is a supplement to, not a

wholesale replacement for, face-to-face educa-

tion. Many students do not have the self disci-

pline needed to succeed in it—and, as was re-

ported at the BOT, some admit this. The market

for our distance education program may be old-

er, motivated individuals who did not finish their

Western degree, but wish to do so now. This the

focus of the Welcome Back to Western program,

which may be our best market for distance edu-

Chart at BOT Retreat comparing known Freshmen Admits

(not yield) as of April 2017. Red is 2016. Blue is 2017. To see

a larger version, click on image.

Chart at BOT Retreat showing increase in Online Offerings.

UPI@WIU July 16,2017

cation.

In addition to faculty expertise,

competing requires steep startup costs in tech-

nology and additional personnel—and mainte-

nance of online classes isn’t cheap either. Suc-

cessful online education needs support people

(tutors, librarians, etc.) who can help students. It

also requires an ongoing commitment to provid-

ing the hardware, the bandwidth, the video, au-

dio, graphics and animation expertise, etc. that

make online classes less like a PowerPoint with

some files attached and more like a class.

Matt Bierman’s budget report was curious-

ly subdued and brief—instead of dozens of

graphs, there were only a few—though these few

were of interest. The fact that WIU has shrunk

and saved $10,000,000 in payroll between FY

2015 and 2017, means that the new legislative

appropriations are effectively the same as the

old ones. Of course, decreasing enrollment

means that our tuition income is smaller now

than it was in FY 2015. Bierman is still working

through the implications of the budget, particu-

larly the way its payment schedule with interact

with our cash flow needs. WIU did receive its

first installment of the FY 2018 budget, 6.8 mil-

lion from the Educational Assistance Fund. Bier-

man says this will help with payroll in July and

August. Illinois Comptroller, Susana Mendoza,

says she is prioritizing education spending.

MOA Update

People have asked me if the MOA will be suspended due to the new budget. The answer is, “No.” The agreement has another two years to run. This year we give up 3%. In FY 2019 our sal-aries return to FY 2016 levels. There is some possible good news. UPI members just might get some part of the 3% deferral back. When UPI ne-gotiated the MOA last spring, we insisted that there be provision for a partial payback if the budget goals were met. Paragraph 3 of the Agreement states: If condition 2.b. [Appropriations] is met, but condition 2.a. [Enrollment] is not met by the 10th day of the Fall 2018 semester (FY’ 19) and by the passing of the FY 19’ GRF budget, a reopener will be triggered

to discuss deferral.” Remarks in [] mine. IBHE documents show that WIU eventually received 70% of FY 2015 in FY 2016 via the stopgaps. (Stopgaps are appropriations.) The first target was 60% of 2015 in 2016. The second target is 90% of 2015 in 2019. This year’s budget (90% of 2015) would seem to make that an easy target to hit. Should you start planning that February 2019 to Whistler? Maybe not. Rauner’s hard right turn might make the FY 2019 budget another hair-raising trip to override lane. So partial re-payment is not a sure thing—but for the moment it is in view.

Pension Changes Coming — but not for Tier 1.

One of the bills passed before July 1 was

SB 42, the Budget Implementation Act or BIMP. It

contains changes to the pension system, creating

a hybrid defined benefit / defined contribution

plan known as Tier 03.

Tier 3 is an attempt to solve the

problems with the terrible Tier 2 pension. Imple-

menting Tier 3 will not affect current employees

in Tier 1. Let me repeat: If you are, as I am, in

Tier 1, SB 42 will not affect the ability to make

regular payments on your RV. If you are a new

employee or currently in Tier 2, then Tier 3 will

af-

fect

you

at

some point, when that point will be is not yet

known.

There is much that is not known about

Tier 3. I am not going to try to explain it as the

UPI chapter presidents practically took an oath

not to try to explain it as the inner workings of

Tier 3 are as complex and mysterious as the

physics of a black hole. The IFT is working on a

UPI@WIU July 16,2017

report on the pension changes that it will be

sending out in a few weeks explaining Tier 3.

Showing the division of the appropriated monies for FY 2017.

To see larger image, click on the chart.

Recapping WIU’s Budget Ap-

propriations

The legislature appropriated an addition-

al $ 28,000,000 for FY 2017 Expenses. Adding

the November 2016 emergency funds brings

the total for FY 2017 to $59,000,000, about 8m

above FY 2015. The legislature also appropriat-

ed also appropriated $45,320,700 for FY 2018,

a 10% drop from FY 2015’s 51,400,000. As not-

ed earlier, WIU’s payroll has shed about

$10,000,000 since 2015. WIU is not as big nor

expensive as it was. If that 10M shrinkage is

added back onto our 2018 appropriation, it ac-

tually puts us about 4M ahead of 2015. As we

suggested last week, by showing the ratio of

payroll to appropriation, we about where we

were in 2015 relatively speaking. This is true of

enrollment, too. Because it shrank alongside

the faculty, the student to teacher ratio (which

we brag about) is where it was in 2015. What’s

the problem? 2015 was not a good year. We still

have a mountain of unpaid bills to pay. If en-

rollment continues its downward slide, we will

be headed into the same slough of fiscal de-

spond we just emerged from. The vulture capi-

talist in the governor’s mansion is replacing his

neoliberalist staff with libertarians. We can ex-

pect another budget war in the spring—and

with the elections around the corner Republi-

can legislators may not have the heart to vote

against Rauner again. Let’s hope that is not the

case. All that said, we are in a better place. We

must be vigilant to stay there.

Here is an IBHE chart of the different

Illinois publics and their appropriations. More

budget data here.

The End of Fair Share is on the Horizon

The Supreme Court is expected here ar-

guments in October on the constitutionality of

Fair Share, the practice of charging all members

of a bargaining unit—whether they belong to

the union or not—dues to support the work of

the union. The argument for doing this is, eve-

ryone in the bargaining unit benefits from the

work that the union does for them at the bar-

gaining table, down in Springfield, or in griev-

ances and arbitrations. If you share in the bene-

fits, you should share in the costs. The argu-

ment against Fair Share is essentially that by

compelling people to pay dues who do not

want to belong to the union, the law is compel-

ling them to “speak” with their cash in ways

they don’t want. This is the reasoning behind

Citizens United, the idea that the way we use

money constitutes a form of speech and needs

to be protected as free speech.

Unions expect that given the current

makeup of the Supreme Court we will lose Fair

Share this year or next. When that happens, we

will need to re-card everyone. Those people

who want to belong to the union will still pay

for that privilege. Persons who do not want to

belong, will no longer have to pay. They will,

however, still get to reap the benefits of being

in the bargaining unit.

We hope that you will continue to belong

to UPI and continue to pay dues. We need the

dues money to pay for the training, support

personnel, lawyers, etc. that make unions

strong. We have an IFT contract expert who

comes to most of our bargaining sessions and

advises us. His services are supported by our

dues. The lawyers used in our arbitrations and

Unfair Labor Practices are necessary to combat

the lawyers the administration uses in those

UPI@WIU July 16,2017

same arenas. The same goes for the issues advo-

cacy in Springfield. We have lobbyists working

every day of every session to give a strong voice

to students, faculty, and staff. All of this costs

money and that money comes from our dues.

We share the benefits and the burden. That’s

how unions work. We will keep you advised as

the end of Fair Share approaches. In advance of

the expected change, we will begin the re-

carding process this fall.