As Humboldt State University slashes entire programs from its curriculum, Dr. Howard Bunsis, a professor of accounting at Eastern Michigan University, said that few of the budget cuts to HSU are needed. In fact, his audit of Humboldt State’s budget shows that HSU is in solid financial condition, and he has the numbers to back it up.
Chris Haynes is co-president of the Humboldt chapter of the California Faculty Association (CFA). The CFA commissioned Bunsis to conduct the audit this February. Haynes said, “We just didn’t buy into the budget figures that the president and the provost were using for program elimination.”
Haynes said that the CFA has fought budget cuts to school academics for five or six years now. He said that the school administration is not always forthcoming about the budget, which is why CFA commissioned the audit. “We weren’t sure we were getting the whole story,” he said
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In his report, Bunsis said that HSU had roughly $27 million dollars in reserves at the end of 2008. The school sets more money aside from reserves each year. His report recommends that “the use of reserves is much more appropriate than trying to balance the budget by making draconian cuts to the core academic mission.”
What Bunsis calls the core academic mission of HSU is, simply put, teaching.
Senior Communications Officer Paul Mann explained that HSU’s reserve fund is similar to a rainy day fund. “Say, for instance, the campus had a fire. Reserves coupled with insurance would help cover the unanticipated expense,” said Mann in an email. “Reserves are kept on hand for unforeseen events.”
Haynes had another view on the reserve. “They call it a rainy day fund,” he said. “And, when we’re cutting academic programs, it’s raining.”
Though reserve funds could not contribute directly to academic programs, they could, said Haynes, be used to offset other costs. These, in turn, would allow us to keep academic majors and programs.
Academic Senate Chair Saeed Mortazavi said that some information was inaccessible to the auditor. HSU’s fixed costs were withheld from Bunsis’ audit. Fixed costs to a university like HSU are costs that do not vary with the number of students who attend the university.
This includes administrator salaries. Mortazavi said that the audit confirmed what some faculty had suspected. HSU’s fixed costs were too high. “To get HSU back to financial health, we have to cut our fixed cost,” he said.
At a public, state-funded institution like HSU, information about fixed costs should be a matter of public record. Mortazavi said that knowing HSU’s fixed costs are essential to understanding if we are in good financial shape. “A public institution must be completely transparent,” he said. “For every dime that is spent on this campus, there must be accountability.”
According to Dr. Bunsis’ report, HSU’s operating budget for the 2009-2010 school year was not any more costly than next year’s anticipated budget will be. The budgets are nearly identical, which means that severe cuts to the budget may not be necessary, though some have already been implemented.
Bunsis called for the idea of severe budget cuts to be revisited. He said in the report, “If there are budget cuts, they should not be made from the core academic mission. As has been demonstrated with both the audited financial statements and the most recent budgets, the HSU administration has not been true to the core academic mission of the university.”
The report goes on to say that “cuts must be made to the administration” before any more academics get cut.
When asked about the report’s claims concerning the administration, Paul Mann wrote in an e-mail that the claims were “irresponsible nonsense.” He explained that the recent WASC report and the recent recommendations by the Cabinet for Institutional Change were evidence of the university’s progress academically.
A press release from the CFA quoted Dr. Bunsis saying, “The Humboldt administration needs to be true to the core academic mission of the university in how it allocates resources, especially during tough economic times.”
Haynes said that priorities were perhaps where the heart of the problem was. “They have made it clear that the president and the provost have very different priorities than most of the faculty would, and probably that a lot of students have, too.”
For the complete text of the report, visit http://www.calfac.org/budcuthu.html
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