Well, at least we still have D-I football....
Over one hundred well-trained professionals are having a harder time this morning explaining why they would want to live in South Dakota. Our flagship university and my alma mater, South Dakota State University, has announced its full budget-balancing response to the third straight year of state funding cuts. Following this year's 10% cuts, SDSU finds itself forced to take the steps listed below.
The immediate impact: the university and Brookings lose 90.8 full-time professional positions. That's worse than the 78 jobs SDSU president David Chicoine predicted in February would get axed if the Legislature passed its kamikaze budget. That's several dozen households with breadwinners out of work and facing sparse employment opportunities in Brookings or elsewhere in South Dakota commensurate with their training.
The impact we may not see quite as quickly or clearly: students who have to leave South Dakota to get their degree. Take the park management programs, one of the best programs SDSU offers. It currently has 40 students and a 100% job placement rate. The park management program is a key source of quality employees for our state Game Fish and Parks Department. Now these students will have to go to North Dakota or Minnesota for their degree. During their undergraduate training, they'll network with parks departments in other states. When they graduate, they'll have more job offers from elsewhere, and South Dakota will lose good candidates who currently with an SDSU degree stick around and enhance our tourism industry with their native knowledge of our fair state.
The cuts also impact agriculture. Consider the elimination of the Soil and Plant Tissue Testing Laboratory. This lab pays for itself with testing services for area crop producers and homeowners. Now SDSU loses a revenue stream, and South Dakotans lose an in-state science resource.
Even if the budget cuts are over, even if the economy bounces back and our Governor and Legislature can begin showering our campuses with budget increases next year, the damage is done. How long would it take SDSU to rebuild these programs? How long would it take to recruit back top-flight faculty and students? how long would it take to rebuild reputation?
A serious question for all voters to ask: how do these program cuts do less harm to South Dakota State University and South Dakota as a whole than covering expenses with one-time money from burgeoning state reserves, or imposing a temporary sales tax?
Here's the full self-inflicted damage, copied from SDSU's list [with commentary from yours truly]:
Academic Adjustments
- Eliminate five academic programs and place one academic program on suspension
- Programs being eliminated are:
- Physics (M.S.) [?!?]
- Engineering physics (B.S.) [great pay]
- Electronics engineering technology (B.S.) [great pay]
- Manufacturing engineering technology (B.S.) [great pay]
- Career and technical education (B.S.Ed.) [increasing need in modern education; another hit for K-12 ed]
- Program being suspended:
- Software engineering (B.S.) [great pay]
- Eliminate two specializations
- Media production within the undergraduate degree in journalism
- Park management within the undergraduate degree in park and recreation management
- Move six full-time university faculty positions from 12-month to 9-month contracts [less time for profs to work on grants that support even more programs on campus, boost the state economy, and save the state money]
- Move faculty from 12-month to 10-month contracts
- 69 faculty research positions in Agricultural Experiment Station
- 30 faculty positions in Cooperative Extension Service
- Eliminate fall graduation ceremony [actually, I can live with less pomp and circumstance]
Reorganization
- College of Agriculture and Biological Sciences
- Eliminate two departments
- Horticulture, Forestry, Landscape and Parks
- AgBio Communications
- Create a Department of Natural Resources, includes existing program elements in:
- Wildlife and fisheries sciences
- Horticulture, forestry, landscape and parks
- Biology
- Animal and range sciences
- Agricultural Experiment Station
- Close sites in Miller and in Highmore
- Olson Biochemistry Analytical Services Laboratory
- Soil and Plant Tissue Testing Laboratory
- Combine International Affairs, International Student Affairs, and Continuing and Extended Education into one academic support unit
- Dissolve Department of Physics in the College of Engineering and move the program to the College of Arts and Sciences, effective July 1
- Study organizational structures of the Graduate School and College of Arts and Sciences
Efficiency Gains
- Implement academic program reductions by reducing faculty full-time equivalencies, increasing class size, and reducing number of sections
- Implement block scheduling in select general education courses
- Increase use of instructors and graduate teaching assistants
- Eliminate benefits for part-time employees
- Eliminate all faculty overloads and employee overtime
SDSU's press release says Provost Laurie Nichols led the process that identified these cuts. I know she's just dealing with the extreme, draconian, and most importantly myopic cuts imposed on the university by Brookings Senator Larry Tidemann, the Republican legislature, and the Rounds-Daugaard philosophy of education as an expense. Nonetheless, if I were her, I'd hate to show my face at the student union for the next few days. Senator Tidemann and Governor Daugaard might also want to stay clear of campus... though maybe the best thing in the world for them would be to come see campus and Brookings now, then come back next year and ten years from now to see the long-term damage they've done.
Related (update 10:30 CDT): The South Dakota Department of Agriculture will host the second annual Governor's Ag Development Summit June 29 at the Sioux Falls Convention Center. The summit will "encourage the use of innovation and technology" to promote South Dakota's ag industry and the $21 billion in economic activity it generates annually.
The full damage will take about 3 years to show. For the last decade, Faculty and Staff have believed the state was really interested in bolstering the research and technical capacity of South Dakota. Staff worked hard to support this mandate, despite significant limitations relative to colleagues in other states. As of today, most mobile faculty (ie the young hires) are out looking elsewhere (and yes - there are places hiring out there). Older faculty are retiring. Those remaining will either (a) give up and just teach for 9 months at lower pay or (b) dust off their CVs and look elsewhere.
Grants sound like a logical way to supplement salary, but the federal cuts make that unlikely. Add to that reviews received in the last 6 months by research faculty detailing that "SDSU is not a suitable research environment" as a reason for rejection, and you can guess what these same study sections will say next year.
The interesting thing about the Soil testing lab is that they are self sufficient... they pay their way.
Now, if Madison's economic development folks were on the ball... I think they'd maybe find a way to scoop that lab and staff up and move them to Madison.
I can share my opinions now, since I'm no longer employed at KJAM.
Lauri! While I'm pleased you can share opinions, I'm bummed you're out of work! What happened?
By the way, that's a heck of an idea about trying to land that soil testing lab. Madison would be a great location. We could move the LAIC and Chamber out of the depot, give the science lab space right next to the conservation office. Then we could renovate the Masonic temple and move the Chamber up there for better visibility (imagine it: being seen by everybody who drives through Madison... and right next to Dairy Queen!).
It's the self-sufficiency that makes me wonder why they cut it - did they do something that might tick off Monsanto?
So much for the program that helped get my father an above-average paying job in SD (Electrical Engineering).
I think SDSU needs to be transparent about the rationale behind cuts. If we're cutting the most efficient, effective and successful programs with the highest job placement, then I think the wrong values are in play. Should we be cutting the parks management program with 100% job placement, or should we be taking from programs with lower placement rates?
If we're concerned about outcomes, let's really track outcomes and let everything reflect it.
I've been wondering down those lines, Eve, but I can't get my conspiracy-theory motor running on that possibility. If I'm Monsanto and I have a university president in my pocket, I'm happy to keep labs open on that campus, since I can exert some swing over said labs. And heck, Monsanto and its customers benefit from soil and plant testing, right? But I'm open to rank speculation and internal documents from other eager readers. Is there any Monsanto angle to all these ag cuts?
Cutting the labs was mostly about space. There was some minor cost associated with running them, but the big issue was all the new hire researchers with absolutely no lab space - and these labs took alot of space. The Dean was pretty transparent about that.
The irony is that most of these new hires are young, and some have already announced they are leaving for greener pastures. Many of the rest are looking. Because they are mostly young Assistant Professors, they are by far the most mobile group.
I'm pretty sure the soil lab was still subsidized by the state. Note that the services page clearly indicates that the lab itself provides subsidized services to SD farmers. The claim that they were self supporting probably means that they were perhaps meeting their consumables budget but weren't paying their salaries/overhead.
From a school standpoint, I agree with Phud that this type of service is expensive. It appears that they just provided lab services and didn't bring in grant money. Grant money is the holy grail for schools. They get to tax it at a specific rate, some of it is used to pay student tuition/staff salary, and the rest gets used for equipment that becomes property of the state. This is a much bigger economic win for the school that something that is "self sufficient".
Oh, let's face facts - these budget cuts (and the ones that are still coming) will have every professor (at SDSU, and other state universities) who can applying elsewhere. The ones who will stay are those who are closest to retirement, totally rooted in South Dakota, or who don't have the research credentials to be able to get another job in a very competetive market.
{CAH: I hope people will see me as part of the second category, not the third!}
Isn't Larry Tidemann married to a dean at SDSU? That's gotta be interesting dinner conversation.
Yes, Larry's wife, Gail Dobbs Tidemann, is the Dean of the Office of Continuing and Extended Education at SDSU. In the "I got mine now you go get yours" department, Larry was also a longtime State employee and alumni at SDSU. Even with the decades of affiliation as a student, graduate student, and employee, I just never considerd him a friend of higher education.
Where were the University presidents and college deans during the legislative process. The budget axe was being swung and narily a whisper was heard. Like Bernie Hunhoff said in the Argus leader today-where was the public discussion on this during the session? This week, I believe it is DSU turn to "make the news". When it comes down to it, "silly us" for standing by and to allow the "butchering to occur".
I will place some blame on the university presidents, but who is supposed to represent them, their students and families?
If you sere looking for proof that the majority in our legislature were there to support the governor and the party, this might be a good example.
I would think that the University newspapers would be filled with questions on what each of the legislators were thinking when they pushed this through and of course the follow up questions should be sharp and probing.
Some could be "...you knew that this would have a very negative impact on our university, why didn't you come and speak to us face to face?"
"So what other of your constituencies are you strapping a 7% increase on while at the same time cutting services?"
"Which of your cuts will hurt your largest campaign donors the most?"
"at what point do we need to get before you stop the current trend of cutting education funding?"
"Do you think your cuts make us more or less competitive in our region, country and a broader global economy?"
I'm sure they will all be eager to explain their answers to each of these question.
Anyone else have a good question a university newspaper could ask?
Wonder if we'll see headlines from chambers of commerce supporting the loss of 90 high paying knowledge workers and the elimination of millions of dollars into the local economies.
Maybe they needed the lab space for Monsanto? Go take a look at the campus and see the const. going on. Like a fancy north entrance and east ent. and all the landscaping and remodels going on. A place to start cuts at is the top. Ask the workers on campus about all the wasted spending and you might learn some thing you don't want to know. Oh by the way look at north Medary ent. and see the soon to be northwest dev. ( you want dirty politics come see )