GPSA: Students left out of budget

In a GPSA meeting rife with budget cut concerns, Provost Suzanne Ortega said cutting graduate student jobs is likely.
“Do I think we will end this year without any budget cuts that affect TA lines?” she asked an assembly of 30-plus graduate students. “I think it would be unreasonable to suspect that everything but TA lines will be cut.”

The statement comes on the heels of the unveiling of Ortega’s Academic Program Prioritization. The program is a two-staged approach to critically evaluate all spending across all departments, degree and non-degree granting alike, Ortega said.

“The budget challenges are real, and they are all of our problems,” she said. “Our challenge is to think through how we will be strategic and honest and use all the skills we have as academics, scholars, scientists and researchers. We have to understand how budgets are constructed and make hard decisions where hard decisions are called for.”

Some of those hard decisions involve TA salaries.
GPSA president Lissa Knudsen said students are worried they won’t have the chance to be involved in deciding the proposed budget cuts.
“One of the things we were really concerned about with regards to the most recent TA/GA cuts — the $500,000 cuts in the spring — is that we weren’t invited in any way to participate in that decision making,” she said.

Ortega said no students would be involved with the board making budget cuts.

“We are trying really hard not to use the review panel as an advocacy group,” Ortega said. “I have been trying to get as much distance as possible from the people who actually have personal stakes in the outcome of the programs.”

Ortega said the College of Arts and Sciences has the greatest budgetary concerns.
“There are almost no budget cuts that affect TA’s in any other college for this year,” she said, “Arts and Sciences is going back to think about different strategies.”

The Academic Prioritization Program calls for a look at all departments — not just small ones, Ortega said. The first tier of the program deals with degree-granting programs and is overseen by University administrators, she said. The second tier of the program focuses on non-degree granting programs, specifically ones that are not attached to a college or school. The second tier is overseen by an outside council with attachments to UNM, but no active role in the University’s day-to-day functioning. Group members include emeritus professors and alumni, Ortega said.

Ortega said these two tiers decide the budget cuts that will likely affect TA positions. She said students aren’t completely ignored on the matter and can have input at a lower division.
“The real place for you to participate is at the college and departmental level,” she said. “These decisions are delegated to deans.”