Graduate students feel sting of budget cuts

Since last spring, UNM administrators have been developing a plan to help the University cope with more than 3 percent in budget cuts.
Still, the cuts have major effects that have already trickled down to each department, as each struggles to scrape together its own 2011 financial plan.

Mark Peceny, chair of the political science department, said departments have not implemented their plans, which must be approved by the Provost and the Board of Regents. He said the University decided not to slash staff and faculty salaries, and instead cut departments’ operating budgets and graduate assistants’ salaries.

“If we don’t touch our staff and faculty salaries, that takes about 85 percent of our budget off the table,” Peceny said. “We are left with cutting things in our operating budget like telephones, money for conference travel expenses, paper, toner and ink.”

In a memorandum to the provosts, UNM President David Schmidly said “cost containment” will be the route administration will take to balance the budget, a strategy that means minimizing administrative spending in all areas, offices and functions. Schmidly said food, printing, equipment, furniture and computer expenditures will require approval by department deans and directors. The political science department is charged with cutting $53,000, but Peceny said its operating budget is $35,000.

“Even if our entire operating budget is gone, we still can’t make the cut, and that’s left most of the College of Arts and Sciences with no choice but to look at the graduate assistant positions,” he said.

According to a Sept. 3 mandate from Provost Suzanne Ortega, base budget reductions and mid-year rescissions enacted from March 2009 to July 2010 have totaled more than $21 million for UNM’s main campus. But, a two-part strategy consisting of cost containment and tax increases have been developed to cope with budget challenges.

Still, Ortega’s mandate made it is clear that most budgets cuts cannot be met without cutting personnel costs. She said in a news release that layoffs, phased reductions in staffing, planned retirements and voluntary furloughs are approaches to be considered at the departmental level.

“No strategies are being proscribed at this point, but it is important to note that there are many approaches to this challenge,” Ortega said.

Peceny said revenue enhancements, the use of non-recurring money and the diversion of normally restricted funds to other uses are also taking a toll on smaller departments. He said graduate assistants and part-time professors provide most instruction at the University.
“These are dedicated professionals already getting very small wages. We already can’t pay them what they’re worth, but if we eliminate their positions, we are not actually cutting something that is part of the actual budget,” Peceny said. “We are basically just cutting from our ability to hire tenured faculty and making life more difficult for the teachers we keep here at UNM.”