To Serve the Masses?

Friday, March 13, the last day of second-term classes, was a crisp, late-winter Michigan afternoon. Exams would start Monday, but many Michigan State University [MSU] students had more important things on their minds. More than 500 undergraduates stood outside the Administration Building, carrying signs and chanting slogans. University President M. Cecil Mackey tried to slip in unnoticed through a back door, but the protesters spotted him and chased him.

Temporarily frustrated when the president jumped into an elevator and rushed into his fourth-floor office, a group of students followed in other elevators. As Mackey hid inside, the demonstrators continued their verbal assault in the hall and pasted "Mackey Mouse" stickers on the walls. Minutes later, someone spied the president escaping out a rear exit, and the crowd followed him outside the building, where an unmarked police car rescued him and sped away.

The cause that drew students into the streets of East Lansing in numbers unmatched since the bombing of Cambodia was neither solidarity with people halfway across the world, nor opposition to their university's "immoral investments." (MSU divested of its holdings in companies involved with South Africa several years ago, one of a handful of educational institutions to do so.) The driving force behind student militancy this year was self-preservation. Students sought to shield their academic interests from the budget ax, as the MSU administration struggled to cope with a budget deficit that was out of control.

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The coming decade threatens to be a damaging one for higher education. Like every segment of society, colleges and universities must contend with mammoth costs brought on by rampant inflation. The past 20 years have been an era of growth for higher education. Now, too many institutions will have to complete for a tighter market of students because of a drop in the college-age population--a large portion of which is cynical about the value of a degree in a world marked by rising tuition and cab-driving Ph.D.s. Compounding these problems is the Reagan-Stockman offensive against federal spending, which will chop away at college budgets throughout cuts in grants and student loans.

In the difficult years ahead, most universities will have to cut back, and some may go under. Though all have felt the effects of economic hardship, one of the most serious victims to date is Michigan State University.

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"It Has been apparent for some time that MSU is confronted with its most difficult financial problems of modern times." President M. Cecil Mackey,   State of the University address,   February 12, 1981

While the rest of the country has been slowed by a recession, the state of Michigan has been paralyzed by what some call a depression. The state's well-being depends on the automobile; with Chrysler faltering, and Ford and General Motors cutting back, Great Lakes State residents have been especially hard hit. Even after Draconian cuts in the state budget--including $100 million from appropriations for higher education--Michigan still faces a $150-million deficit.

MSU depends heavily on state aid. Sixty-five per cent of its $200-million operating budget comes directly from state coffers. When Gov. William G. Milliken decreased the university's budget by $16 million this year--the legislature traditionally had appropriated increases that compensated for inflation--he pushed the university into making the most severe budget cuts of its 126-year history.

Last December, school officials tried to save money by placing all university employees on a two-and-one-half-day payless furlough. Weeks later, it became apparent that more drastic action was needed. On February 6, the board of trustees, staring at a calculated $30-million deficit, voted to declare Michigan State University in a "state of financial crisis."

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"They decided they would not try to compete with Harvard, but rather to serve the masses."   Frederick H. Horne '56,   MSU professor of chemistry

Much of MSU's problem can be traced to what Mackey calls its attempt to "be all things to all people." Founded as the original land-grant college. MSU has based its development and curriculum on the philosophy of providing good education for a wide variety of people. Today, the university serves more than 40,000 students, boasting the second-largest on-campus population in the nation.

The university already has one of the highest public-school tuition rates in the country, and school officials feel reluctant to increase tuition much higher, fearing that doing so would scare off many potential students.

The land-grant philosophy has caused the university problems on what it must offer students. While every part of the state budget is trimmed to save costs, MSU is expected to increase appropriations for its agricultural programs. Cuts in other areas lead some to cry that MSU is reneging on its duty to serve all kinds of people. As a result, many identify MSU as an "overextended" university.

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In the weeks following the financial crisis declaration, the university's course of action has varied. Initially, the president recommended cuts totalling $19 million, slating the college of urban development, a public policy college, a science college, and the nursing school for elimination. In addition, he targeted the university's general education areas of humanities, social sciences and natural sciences to bear a large burden of the cuts.

But when the board of trustees approved the cuts April 4. two months after the crisis declaration, the public policy and nursing colleges were saved and cuts in the other major areas were reduced. Only $16.9 million was trimmed off the university's budget for next year. While proponents of certain programs could celebrate their salvation, the grim prospect remained that the university might take the most drastic money-saving step--firing tenured faculty.

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Never in academic history have such cuts been envisioned as MSU now proposes. At the outset of the crisis, more than 200 tenured positions were threatened with elimination. Now, even with the scaled-down proposals, 108 tenured faculty members may fall victim to fiscal austerity in 1982-83, although some observers think that only 50 tenured professors may lose their jobs.

But the sharp debate that has gone on in Fast I ansing centers not on the actual numbers, but on the implications of the actions. Tenure is an unwritten agreement between the university and a faculty member which promises a professor job security. A district court recently rejected a law suit, initiated by a professor to block the impending layoffs, ruling that the board of trustees could take such drastic action if it felt it necessary to deal with financial problems.

But several professors believe that the damage done by initiating such a step for outweighs the dollars saved. Michael Rubner, an associate professor at James Madison College of Public Policy, argued in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article. "Once you breach tenure, you set a precedent. Breaching the tenure system will affect faculty coming and faculty staying. Researchers won't come. They leave places that tamper with the tenure system because their job security is not guaranteed."

Horne, who serves as chairman of the steering committee of the faculty, plays down the long-range implications, maintaining that tenure cannot always provide job guarantees. "It's difficult, almost impossible, to get tenure at Harvard. At MSU, its been very easy to get tenure, almost automatic. So its in a different context altogether."

Others ridicule the notion of giving such high priority to the preservation of tenure in the academic world when the area surrounding the ivory tower is experiencing an economic Dunkirk. Nothing that Michigan is being forced to release several prisoners because the state cannot afford to maintain its penitentiaries. Peter Fletcher, a member of the board of trustees, says. "It's difficult to tell the tax-payers we can't lay off tenured faculty." Fletcher calls the protest over "firing" faculty members "histrionic games," explaining. "You're just laying off people as in other industries."

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"It's pitted department against department, college against college, students against faculty."   Collette Moser.   MSU associate professor of agricultural economics

"There are lots of tenured faculty that just aren't pulling their weight. There's not much student concern for firing tenured faculty."   Bruce A. Studer, senior, former chairman of MSU's undergraduate student government

Perhaps the worst damage from the whole budget crisis is the division it has created within the university community. Long after the fiscal sting has disappeared, students, faculty, staff and administrators will remember the bitter struggle for scarce resources. The "open process" by which Mackey conducted the budget-cuts decision-making probably exacerbated the problem, as supporters of every program from the planetarium to highway-safety training pleaded for hours at open meetings. "I am sure we heard all the reasons why we can't make any cuts in any program." John B. Bruff, chairman of the board of trustees, said at one of the sessions.

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"Let us agree that these difficult times must be productive times: that we will work together in the context of the fundamental values of academic excellence: a strong system of faculty tenure, opportunity and accessibility for students, affirmative action and sensitivity to the diversity of the society we serve--that if values come in conflict, we will seek resolution in the best interest of Michigan State University."   President Mackey's State of the University address

If anything good can be said about the budget ordeal at MSU it's that for the most part, it's over. Studer says that student morale is pretty high now that all the cuts are definite. "At first, it was perceived there would be a mass exodus from the university. Now there's very little talk about that. It's a process you'd only want to go through once, but the university and the students will come out stronger for it." And Studer notes that MSU has purged from its system what several universities have yet to confront.

Some information for this article was taken from stories in the State News. Michigan State University.