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One thing is certain about the budget cuts the University of Hawai'i faces: Nobody knows how they will impact students.
Local lawmakers are proposing $33.6 million in cutbacks to the university's general fund budget, a number that is expected to increase following last week's projection by the Hawai'i Council on Revenues of a 5 percent decline in revenue for the current fiscal year, leaving administrators and student organizations scrambling for answers.
"The situation will get worse in the near future because the Council on Revenues reported that our state government will have less money to spend this year and over the next two years than originally predicted," said Gregg Takayama, director of community and government relations. "This means that when the state Senate acts on the budget proposed by the House, it will impose further cuts."
Other campus officials said that Gov. Linda Lingle may avoid slashing university funding, despite the decrease in state revenue.
"It is up to the governor to come up with a plan to balance the budget," said Kathy Cutshaw, vice chancellor for administration, finance and operations. "We do not know if her plan will impact UH Mānoa, since there may be other ways the state can make up the shortfall without touching higher education."
Student groups, for their part, are concerned about how potential reductions will affect the quality of instruction.
"Based on what we've heard from the Chancellor's Office, there could end up being cuts of entire programs, meaning some students might lose their majors," said Associated Students of the University of Hawai'i President Jamie Sohn. "That's what we are most concerned about."
Prioritization process
To prioritize the needs of the campus community, Hinshaw asked all administrative offices and academic departments to perform a self-evaluation. Two committees, the Budget Workgroup and Process Committee, were created to facilitate the assessment and recommend strategies for handling financial reductions.
"The prioritization process, initiated last summer, was established in order to guide us in making strategic decisions in the future," Cutshaw said. "Rather, it is looking at the function and service each program provides."
Instead of auditing expenditures, officials involved with the process are reviewing program quality, according to Mary Tiles, executive committee liaison to the faculty senate's Administration and Budget committee.
"Departments and deans have been asked to indicate targets for growth and investment, as well as programs that should be merged, reorganized or phased out," Tiles said.
According to Sohn, who sits on the Process Committee, department heads are required to submit priority lists to vice chancellors, who will establish an advisory group to determine how well priority assessments comport with the institution's overall strategic plan.
"The Process Committee is tasked with crafting a set of criteria for university priorities and rating each of the college's departments," Sohn said.
Rankings made by vice chancellors must by submitted to the Process Committee by March 31, after which committee members will begin their own evaluation.
Opposing views
Opinions vary on how budget cuts are already affecting the university, as well as the consequences posed by future reductions. Some administrators believe students will be spared the worst of the fallout.
"This year, we have received a total of $6.6 million in budget reductions, which we are addressing by not filling vacant positions," Cutshaw said. "There has been no impact on students."
Vacant positions have not affected student programs, according to Vice Chancellor for Students Francisco Hernandez, because such programs are subsidized by alternate funding sources.
"The cuts to the general fund budget for this fiscal year have eliminated a few positions within the student affairs area, but the cuts have had minimal impact on students," he said. "Some of the student programs are paid for from student fees or from state and federal grants."
Department chairs and professors disagree, however, saying that they are already eliminating class sections and course offerings due to financial constraints.
"I can assure you that fewer hours of classroom instruction will be offered next fall," said Tom Ramsey, former chair of the mathematics department and a member of the Budget Workgroup. "For some of that, departments will try to compensate by changing class sizes from around 30 students to 60 or 100 students."
Larger class sizes will mean less time for interaction between students and professors and could lead to fewer course offerings because of facilities shortages, Ramsey cautioned.
"The strategy of larger classes is limited severely by the number of rooms that have the larger capacity," he said.
Additionally, the cutbacks have forced the university to implement a hiring freeze, according to Takayama, with the exception of critical personnel.
"The freeze was imposed because of the need to reduce spending in the current fiscal year and in anticipation of further cuts in the next biennium budget," Takayama said. "When positions go unfilled, as people quit, retire or their contracts expire, we have to operate with fewer personnel; so, in effect, we're already suffering from job cuts."
Extending the hiring freeze is an untenable long-term solution and could impair undergraduate education, according to Tiles.
"If savings are made by not hiring lecturers, there will be an impact on the numbers of classes offered to undergraduate students and this will not make sense because these are the most cost-effective classes," Tiles said.
Research interests could also be affected by the budget cuts, impacting the university's ability to generate revenue for the state. According to Kimberly Burnett, an assistant specialist with the University of Hawai'i Economic Research Organization, UH Mānoa's contribution to the state's gross domestic product is about 2.3 percent, with $1.07 billion in expenditures going to the local economy.
"We saw these cuts coming," said Vice Chancellor for Research Gary Ostrander. "The environment for obtaining external grants has become much more competitive and we've become much more conservative in doling out dollars.
Ostrander also expressed concerns about the extent of future cutbacks, which he said could hurt UH's research budget, the majority of which pays faculty and research assistant salaries.
"Future impacts could impact the institution's research abilities, too, and I expect they will," Ostrander said. "At the end of the day, though, if we can't do a project, we simply can't do a project."
Student organizations echoed the concerns articulated by faculty members, while also expressing concerns about the implementation of new fees.
"A lot of departments are looking to institute new student fees in order to address the cuts they're facing," said Sohn, who emphasized that student senators are monitoring the problem closely. "We're looking at individual fees and asking whether or not they are good for students."
Ultimately, though, the university community may be forced to adapt to a new economic climate, Tiles said, by rethinking its mission.
"The hard truth is that we have to face up to the fact that the Mānoa campus can no longer afford to be what it has become," Tiles said. "So our question is, What do we want to be in the future and how can we get there while remaining affordable?"
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