University of Maryland College Park - Terrapin / Reveille Yearbook (College Park, MD)

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The Budget a University crisis Students are protesting. Faculty members are complaining and the University administration is biting its fingernails. Campus riots? No, it is the annual battle with the Maryland General Assembly and Governor Marvin Mandel over the University ' s ever-shrinking budget. This year ' s College Park $131 million 1977 fiscal budget request included a tuition increase for students, 13 additional faculty positions and a 2 5 per cent across-the-board faculty pay increase. Although the budget was increased by i7 5 million over last year, the University is still facing a crisis situation In the fall semester, in-state students will have to absorb a $60 tuition increase while non-residents will face an added $190 to their fall semester bills, . . n i Mandel said the state could no longer afford to foot the bill for out-of-state students But this is only half of the budget problems. With only bare bones necessities, the University must deny faculty members pay raises which would keep them in line with the rising cost-of-living. And Potomac Electric Power Company rate increases plus those of the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission loom in the future General fuel cost increases last year caused a near panic state when there was no money to cover rising costs and the University faced the prospect of deficit spending Many state officialsattributetheir watch-dog like behavior to the decreasing state budget. But many state that this trend follows a nation-wide decline in support for higher education institutes Since the college students of the ' 60 ' s did not solve the problems of society, a college education is un- necessary. What good does it do, many disilusioned citizens ask. They cant even find jobs Also waning is state support for the University ' s fiscal autonomy Originally, the Board of Regents had been given the right to spend appropriated funds without legislative in- terference But since the autonomy acts approval, many legislators have had their regrets Little by little the University ' s automony has been taken away. Presently, the University still has the power to hire and fire employes and holds onto some purchasing autonomy There will be moves by the legislature this year, as there have been in the past, to take away the University ' s last shred of independence and put it solely under legislative power, much to the chagrin of administrators And the University ' s faculty is not escaping the legislature ' s cutting pen Mandel cut a proposed facLilty pay increase from 7 per cent to the 2 5 per cent. Faculty members have conckided the only way to procur pay increases was through collective bargaining. It is through this system that faculty members can barter for salaries and benefits But bargaining can only be gained through the legislature which does not seem willing to give it In the face of spiralmg inflation, faculty salaries cannot keep pace. And they won ' t again this year And faculty members and administrators in two of the university ' s academic divisions are being asked to give up money and people to other divisions The reallocation con-

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McDonald ' s of Riverdale 7

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troversy, which University administrators hoped to resolve by year ' s end, has raised basic and volatile questions about the institution ' s purpose The firestorm began in the spring of 1975 when the campus budget development committee, citing an unequal distribution of resources, recommended 116 faculty positions be shifted over a four-year period. The shift was to be mainly from the hard sciences, concentrated in the mathematics, physical sciences and engineering division, to such soft sciences as those in the behavioral and social sciences division The arts and humanities division also was to loose some positions. The reaction to the proposal from the hard sciences was swift and extreme, with 14 administrators in that division threatening to resign and accusing the administration of trying to make outstanding departments mediocre m the interest of fairness Reallocation proponents cited enrollment shifts and said that, as a result, professors and instructors in some division had tougher teaching loads than others But the physics professors and their allies said that teaching criterion ignored their valuable research work. As generally happens in academic controversies, a com- promise of sorts was reached. While the campus waited for its new chancellor, Robert L. Cluckstern, to arrive m July, most faculty shifts were delayed. Cluckstern set up task forces to consider the whole question and hoped to come up with some kind of moderate solution for the coming fiscal year So, only time will tell. Student organizations have been protesting in Annapolis over possible cutbacks and the University administration must make that annual .?0-mile trek to the great statehouse halls his semester to plead their case Whatever, the assembly decides, it appears the University will have to pull its belt in another notch over an expanding middle until it looses some weight or the legislature makes a new suit.