Budget strains pit students against MSU administrators

EAST LANSING — Facing the continued pressure of dwindling state money and philanthropic donations, Michigan State University has proposed a series of cuts to its budget which will eliminate numerous programs, and scale back others. And that move has some students up in arms.

“We’re devaluing our education,” said Jesse Draper, a 35-year-old doctoral candidate in American studies. “Education is hopefully the backbone of a great state.”

Draper’s program faces elimination.

Draper, who serves an executive in the graduate student union, has joined with other students to fight the announced cuts to educational offerings in the state. Among those working with Draper is undergraduate Kevin Lynch, 19. Lynch is studying philosophy and Russian. He said the reorganization, and the continued increase in tuition, fees and board at Michigan State are weighing down students with thousands of dollars in debt that will “constrain their lives.”

Lynch knows because he pays for his schooling himself, and as the tuition increases at MSU kick in this year and next, he is on the line for another $2,000 in costs.

Lynch, Draper and a group called Alleft MSU are planning to host a town hall meeting on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. in the Education Building’s Kiva room, to discuss how students can respond to the cuts, as well as increased tuition costs. The students say they have invited the administration and the Board of Trustees to the meeting.

University spokesman Terry Denbow, said on Friday he was unaware of any invitations for the event, or any confirmed plans to attend by administration officials. But, he said, that doesn’t mean administrators aren’t interested in having discussions about cuts.

“I think people are open to any ideas students have, and they deserve to be heard,” Denbow said.

While the students are organizing to find other ways to balance the MSU budget, Denbow said the institution is moving forward on “reshaping and re-sculpting” the university. He said the administration has been immersed in discussions about structural reform, out of which came the recommendations of program eliminations, for months.

“The transparency is merely a publicity campaign,” Draper said.

“This is not a top-down decision process,” Denbow said. “The final decision have not been made.”

Denbow noted the university counts on raising revenue from three areas: state funding, private donations and tuition. Yet two of those funding areas have been undermined as the state and national economy continue to be in a rut and are the dominant forces driving the current process at the university, Denbow said.

The university faces a $50 million shortfall in the next two years, and as a result has developed a plan which will eliminate 590 positions from the employment rolls. At the same time, employees will see a 2 percent increase in their salaries because of bargaining agreements.

President Lou Anna K. Simon has rejected any increase this year on her $520,000 annual salary. The university has already carved $70 million from its budget in the last decade.

The proposals would also eliminate programs such as Draper’s American studies program and the geology program.

One area students proposed as a possible revenue source was adding an education fee for sporting event tickets. Denbow said he has not heard an idea like that, but said it was interesting.

Draper said the fee could raise as much as $600,000 in revenues for the university.

Denbow said the athletics programs at MSU are completely self-funding, and pointed out that the department is responsible for funding the scholarships provided to the student athletes.

In addition to the idea of an education fee attached to athletic event tickets, Draper and Lynch said the university should look at a salary freeze similar to the one instituted by the University of Illinois. That freeze was instituted in July. Indiana University has also instituted a salary freeze.

Denbow said everything was on the table, but each cut or change had to be evaluated based on how it impacted other programs and how those impacts could be mitigated.

In the end, Simon summed up MSU’s funding crisis this way in an exchange with MSU Media Communications Manager Russ White:

The numbers are just bleak for the state and for the country. You know, today in the newspaper, it suggested that unemployment had dropped in some other states. People are projecting a turnaround the day before Michigan’s went up. We’re in a difficult state, but the other reality is that if people don’t support higher education now for the future, and to support innovation‑ I mean, you could go to any meeting, whether it’s at your community, at the state level, at a national summit, here or any place else actually in the world – everybody says the same thing: it’s innovation and education that are going to lead the way and you’ve got to invest in innovation and education. So, there’s some optimism that maybe the state will reorient its own priorities to recognize what everyone is saying in unison.

The proposed program cuts by the university are not the only issue of concern to MSU students. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm will be at MSU at 10 a.m. on Nov. 18 to rally students to revive the Michigan Promise scholarship, which gave up to $4,000 to qualifying students in Michigan. Thousands of MSU students relied on that scholarship to pay for the current semester of school, but lawmakers scrapped the program in the final 2009-2010 budget signed into law late last month.