The state of Arizona proposes to cut community college funding by 50%. Texas is cutting also, and closing four campuses.

No, this is not a larger-scale Walnut College Case Study; it's real-world 2011.

"Dean Dad" asks you, what would you cut if you were a community college CFO in Arizona?

To get a sense of just how bad this is, you could reduce every salary at the college by 25 percent, and still not make up the gap. (That's because labor isn't the only cost.) Alternately, you could lay off 25 percent of the employees and still not make up the gap.

The 'squishy' things would be the first to go. That means travel, professional development, and food for college functions. This adds up to well under 1 percent.

Obviously, any new full-time hiring for non-unique positions is out of the question. Normal attrition, unreplaced on the staff side and adjuncted-out on the faculty side, might get you another percentage or two.

While stability may be a priority for colleges having budget struggles, a new provost can be the key to moving forward during a difficult time, says Jan Greenwood, president and chief executive officer of Greenwood/Asher & Associates, an executive search firm. A college undergoing budget cuts might be mistaken to seek out a “slash and burn” administrator, however, and should instead be looking for someone with a history of building consensus amid challenges, she says.

“One could paint a picture where you went out and got one of those [slash and burn] types and brought them in and created absolute havoc,” Greenwood says. “But when you hire someone who has an excellent reputation working with people and working through tough, tough issues, then that’s a different proposition.”

The editorial "we" often disagrees with Stanley Fish, but he often is provocative or interesting. This time we pretty much agree with his thesis, although perhaps not with his full analysis of the actions of SUNY Albany's president. It might be about time to declare the humanities officially endangered. Addressing what, if anything can be done, he writes:

The only thing that might fly — and I’m hardly optimistic — is politics, by which I mean the political efforts of senior academic administrators to explain and defend the core enterprise to those constituencies — legislatures, boards of trustees, alumni, parents and others — that have either let bad educational things happen or have actively connived in them.

And when I say “explain,” I should add aggressively explain — taking the bull by the horns, rejecting the demand (always a loser) to economically justify the liberal arts, refusing to allow myths (about lazy, pampered faculty who work two hours a week and undermine religion and the American way) to go unchallenged, and if necessary flagging the pretensions and hypocrisy of men and women who want to exercise control over higher education in the absence of any real knowledge of the matters on which they so confidently pronounce.

On the basis of his performance in this instance, President Philip (who is without a doctoral degree and who has little if any experience teaching or researching) is not that kind of administrator, although he does exhibit some skills. With little notice, he called a town hall meeting for Friday afternoon, Oct. 1, when he could be sure that almost no academic personnel would be hanging around. In an e-mail sent the same day, he noted the “unfortunate timing,” but pleaded the “limited availability of appropriate large venue options.” In effect, I can’t call a meeting on a convenient day because we don’t have a room large enough to get you all in, so I’ll commandeer a large room on a day when I know that very few of you will show up. Brilliant!

AGB [the Association of Governing Boards of Colleges and Universities] launched The Cost Project in 2006 with a generous grant from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation. This multiyear effort identified effective cost-saving measures being taken by public and private institutions and to stimulate a national dialogue on costs -- on campus and throughout higher education. The Cost Project offered guidance for on-campus discussions of cost containment; made presentations at AGB meetings over the two years of the project's existence; and published a series of publications for boards, policymakers, and administrators. 

Links to download the various PDFs are here:

• Strengthening Board Capacity for Strategic Financial Oversight; 
• Strengthening Board Capacity for Overseeing College Costs;
• What Board Are Doing - And Not Doing - in Reviewing Institutional Costs; and
• a Bibliography of Resources.

Iza Wojciechowska, writing in Inside Higher Ed, does a comprehensive review of state governor races and the potential impact on public institutions of challenges like the continuing financial impact of the recession and campaigning on illegal immigration:

Four years ago, higher education was one of the top issues in several gubernatorial races. But the economy crashed 13 months after the election, and the recession descended across most of the country, forcing governors to slash funding -- much of it from higher education. According to the most recent State Higher Education Finance report, state funding for higher education fell $2.8 billion in the 2009 fiscal year as a result of the recession. Federal stimulus funds worth $2.3 billion partially offset the costs, but state funding fell another $2.7 billion in 2010 and is likely to continue to fall.

The pressing need to deal with these fiscal problems is likely to force many of the new governors to continue reining in higher education spending. At the same time, however, their states will be feeling pressure to improve college completion, which President Obama has emphasized and which the National Governors Association is championing as its priority this year. The federal government has poured tens of billions of dollars into Pell Grants to do its part, but most of the heavy lifting in the college completion agenda will be left to the states, since the vast majority of American students attend public two- and four-year colleges.

"College life may look different in the not-so-distant future: Students squinting out dirtier windows, faculty offices with full wastebaskets and no phones, sporting events in which opponents never meet, and paper course catalogs existing only as artifacts of the wasteful old days."

"I’ve done a little math on my own budget that I want to share to show the dilemmas facing my small university with regard to adjunct employment. For context, we have about 1,000 students on the campus and another 2,000 in professional and online programs in 14 locations around the state. For now, I am only discussing our operations on our home campus."

"Numerous critics of practices surrounding adjunct employment accuse hiring institutions of “administrative bloat” which, if eliminated, could enable a solution to the overall problem. I’m probably not very credible on that matter since I am part of the administration, but at least at my institution, we run quite lean already. If we are to maintain operations and compliance with various regulations, accreditation requirements, and other external compulsions, even the most ruthless cutting of administrative costs wouldn’t get us more than perhaps $300,000 in budget relief. So it’s not likely that we can fix our adjunct situation merely by deflating a bloated management structure."

The good news is that anything related to direct instruction will likely be funded, but not optimally funded (i.e., a thousand small cuts). Everything else gets a big cut.

Sometimes I felt like a beheaded chicken because in spite of these, I still have to do research and service. Guess what, we have not have any increase for 2 years now and we are supposed to be getting this term, but I guess, I can forget that also. Bummer!

At Cal State X, the students are not allowed to print out schedules for fall registration. This paper-saving initiative creates more problems for advisors because few students come in with their classes planned.

In my own department and college, I've been impressed with efforts by our leadership to maintain transparency - information, as it comes in, has been passed down, discussed in open meetings, and on the whole we've kept our sense of humor about it (although our Dean and Chair tend to look at times like they're bearing the weight of the world on their shoulders); in fact our department meetings have been more amusing and more united than they've been in ages over the past semester. I deal with grad student funding, which is precarious at the best of times, and right now we are having to be very, very cautious in making funding decisions and in deciding how many to admit.

Clark Atlanta University, citing an “enrollment emergency,” laid off 70 faculty and 30 staff members this month and canceled physical education classes. Spelman, an Atlanta college for women that is among the wealthiest and most prestigious historically black colleges, has eliminated 35 staff positions and is projecting a $4.8 million deficit next year after a decline in its enrollment.

Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Ala., announced campuswide salary reductions and a furlough program, among other cuts, last week. Tennessee State University in Nashville, where enrollment is down 10 percent from last year, has eliminated 52 positions and is considering a reduction in scholarship money.

Colleges and universities of all kinds across the country are facing shrunken endowments, decreased giving and government cutbacks, and many have reduced their payroll and list of classes. But historically black institutions have two significant disadvantages when it comes to weathering hard times: smaller endowments, which mean heavier reliance on tuition and fees, and a higher proportion of disadvantaged students who are now facing a credit crunch when they apply for loans.