Life as a Physicist

The problem with politics is that even when you are mad you have to bite your tongue. These 20-30% cuts I’ve been talking about are, however, going to be a disaster for us. Our president has decided that it is time to apply a bit more public pressure. This scares me – this means all the private tools and backroom access he has available have failed. From a Seattle PI article:

Emmert said he was "offended" by the funding proposals coming out of Olympia. Across the nation — including hard-off states such as California and Michigan — no states are proposing such drastic cuts to higher education funding, he said.

Nationwide, Washington is ranked 30th in state funding for four-year institutions, Arkans said. After the proposed budget cuts — using either the House’s or Senate’s budget proposals — Washington would drop to a rank of 42nd.

"We’re running out of adjectives and adverbs," Emmert said. "It’s unprecedented in the state’s history. What’s happening in the Senate and the House may be unprecedented in the States — the United States — in the post-war era."

This was in the middle of a discussion he was having on layoffs that will hit the U by the end of this April.

BTW, I mentioned several times that we were #1 public university when it came to federal funding. I don’t think that is true any longer. New statistics I just say indicate that NIH funding levels dropped us to #5 overall, and #3 for public institutions. NIH funding is the largest part of our funding, so that means our total funding rank has probably also dropped.

In the previous posts I mentioned the legislative atmosphere towards higher education and some general parameters in the ongoing budget discussions.

So, lets consider a 20%-30% budget cut. First of all, you can’t absorb that in straight staff cuts. As much as some professors would like to believe, the staff at the UW makes it run. Without them we’d never get to teach or do research or anything else.

What if you could slim things down a bit? Say you want to keep class sizes similar to what they are now (something that many legislators draw a red line in the sand over). How about doubling the teaching load for each professor? We professors are currently assigned a single course a quarter. This generally means between 3 and 4 hours of face time with the students (in the classrooms), some class preparation time, and some office hours, and some grading time. Class prep time varies depending on the course. An easy course might require only a single hour of prep time to teach one hour. The graduate level class I was teaching the last two quarters required about 5-8 hours of prep time for every hour of teaching. In the case of a heavy load you couldn’t double it – obviously – there aren’t enough hours in the week. But why not the light classes? I don’t know the legal basis of our agreement with the University, but most of us joined the University because we wanted to do both teaching and research. If a change like this happens it will change the balance of our research and teaching time. That will certainly drive a lot of the people currently at UW away – UW will no longer be one of the top ranked research universities in the USA, and will no longer get the largest amount of public funding for a public institution in the USA. All of this will mean the students that are attracted won’t be as good, we will have less students (less grant money to fund students), etc. UW will not be what it is today – it will become more like a teaching institution rather than a teaching and research institution. A game changer, as I said earlier.

What else could you do? How about attrition? Initially we were considering a 13% budget cut. My impression is that it would take 2-3 years for attrition to shrink the faculty to the correct size. That is 2-3 years of no hiring. I’m sure departments could survive, though they would be gritting their teeth at being unable to compete for some of the best people on the market (which many department at UW normally do). And that 2-3 years is well matched to the budget cycle in the state of Washington – we do it in 2 year cycles. But when you are talking 20-30% budget cuts now you are talking 4-6 years of attrition. Massive forward loans would have to be arranged. Perhaps you could use some of the federal stimulus money to help – but that is only around for two years. Attrition would have another side-effect: increased class sizes and longer times to graduate or fewer students to be admitted. UW is a state institution – one of the main charges is to educate the population of the state – so none of these options are very palatable to either the faculty, the university administration, or the legislature.

Ok. What’s next on the list? The tenure issue (at UW) can be gotten around by closing a full department. For example, decide you don’t need physics any longer – at that point my tenure no longer means anything. The university has committed to doing its best to find me a job, but, lets be serious – in these times? This is a pretty crude tool. I’m sure you could come up with some small departments on campus that aren’t nationally ranked and have very small numbers of students and aren’t considered vital to a liberal arts education – but I wonder if you could come up with enough of them to absorb a 20 or 30% cut. Any organization our size is bound to have some fat – but 25% fat? I doubt it.

Finally, another option is to raise tuition. Currently we are allowed to raise it 7% per year. If that was doubled to 14% per year, and done for two years in a row, the end result would be mitigating these 20-30% cuts to something more like 10%. A 10% cut the university can deal with without a fundamental change in its mission. This option is generating the most political heat right now. On the face of it, it looks pretty bad – raising tuition during hard economic times isn’t exactly smart. However, it turns out part of the federal budget increases and stimulus bill were a bunch of new money for financial aids for undergraduates. Some projections I’ve seen from the university say that if you are family making less than 160K you won’t notice the increase at all. So raising the tuition seems like a good way to transfer more federal money into the university’s accounts. There is one hiccup here, unfortunately: graduate students. Cuts in the budget that would happen due to 10% cuts would reduce the number of TA’s we could hire, which means graduate students would suddenly find themselves unemployed. Graduate students make almost nothing anyway – and now we have significantly upped how much they have to pay. Fortunately, relatively speaking, graduate students are a small fraction of the university student population – so solving that problem is much easier than solving the same problem for the undergraduate population.

In the end I’m sure it will be a combination of some the above. Whatever, I hope that the rhetoric calms down enough so people make a rational decision based on the minimal impact to students, research, the university mission, and still make sure that the state budget gets balanced. There is no way to escape cuts at this point, but lets not throw the baby out with the bath water.

There are probably other options that are out there that I’ve not thought of. Feel free to leave a comment!

A 20% or 30% cut in the university budget is a game changer – the University of Washington would not be the same institution it is today if it is cut 20%-30%.

Last post I mentioned that Washington higher education state funding was facing something between a 20% and 30% cut. It is important to know what is actually being cut. It turns out the university gets its funding from three sources, roughly equal: state funds, grants, and endowment. The endowment money is colored: when it was gifted to the university it was gifted for a particular purpose – and often that can’t be used to hire people. I believe UW’s endowment is down about 25% or so right now. Grants are the research grants that people at the university get – for example, my NSF grant. The university skims off 20%-30% of the money from each grant and puts it towards operating expenses. Stimulus funding and increased budgets at the federal level mean that the grant income is about the same or even a bit better – as long as we don’t loose the people applying for those grants.

The final bit, the state funds, are what pays for most of the people here at UW – graduate student’s TA’s, staff, and, of course, the professors. When we talk about cutting 20% or 30% here, we are talking about cutting only the state portion of the budget. If we were to do this across the board this would mean a 20%-30% cut in the number of people (professors, TA’s, administrators, etc.). This is complicated by the concept of tenure. You can’t fire a tenured professor as long as they are doing their basic job (teaching, participating in the department administration at an acceptable level, etc.). You can layoff a tenured faculty if you close down their whole department, however.

The final bit of information is about the UW itself. We are a major research university. This means our mission is not just teaching, but also research. Students (undergraduate and, obviously, graduate) are fully expected to participate in this research. We are one of the largest public universities in the USA. We are the largest research university – that is, we receive more money in grants than any other public university. I think we are second only to Johns Hopkins (which is not a public university). Of course, our ability to get those grants has a lot to do with the people applying for them and the fantastic facilities here which means the federal research dollars are well spent.

Next I’ll talk about some of the cut scenarios.

Check out this picture:

Sorry if it gets cut off – click on it and look at the 2nd page of the PDF that comes up. Those numbers are the size of proposed cuts to higher education state-by-state – smaller is better!! Washington is highlighted. You’ll note Washington has the largest number. I’ve heard that Nevada is the one state that is worse. If you look at other state universities that are similar in size and stature to UW you’ll find they are getting 6%-8% cuts.

Our state is particularly bad off – but not the worst in the nation. I believe, for example, Florida is worse – they are planning on cutting their higher education program by 1% or 2%. Arizona – the only other university of similar size (though I think we are better ranked then they are) is planning on a 30% tuition increase to counter their cuts. A friend of mine, who is a professor there, commented “I wonder if there will be a physics department when I get back?”

So, what is going on in Washington?

Frankly, I don’t really understand what is going on. Higher education here is getting cut harder than other programs in the state. The talk that is coming from some of our state politicians is so factually incorrect that it makes one wonder if facts are being stretched to make a point motivated by other forces (that I’m not aware of). I should also state that I see cuts to our budget as inevitable. There is just no way to avoid them – the whole state is going to suffer and everyone is going to have to bear some of the pain.

But these cuts will be painful!

I eat lunch almost every day at a cafeteria near by my office. UW has made a big effort in the last two years to make all the garbage that comes out of their cafeteria’s compostable. I met one of the guys who works on that at a party a few months ago. At the time he told me that almost 90% of all the garbage that comes out of the cafeteria is compostable. If they could do soda cups they would be at 95%.

Compostable has a very specific definition. 60 days in a heap and it has to have broken down. One of the out growths of this is “silverware” made out of corn starch. It works great – until you put it in hot soup. The spoons have this very odd behavior of curling up, which makes it difficult to fit in your mouth (or hold soup).

Apparently cups that hold cold liquids are the hardest to make compostable. Hot liquids are easy – you coat the inside of the cup with something, and the cup is good to go. Cold cups, however, have to be coated both inside and outside. The reason is condensation! If the outside isn’t coated, and the cold liquid causes condensation, then the water droplets that form on the outside of the cup will cause the paper part of the cup to disintegrate. Not so good! The fellow at the party told me he had found cups that would be compostable under a 90 day definition, but the UW composting contractor didn’t do 90 days.

Apparently they have solve the problem. Above is the cup. There is a twist, however. I tend to bring these cups back from lunch with some rootbeer in them. After that is gone I fill them with water and use them until the next day. If I eat lunch in my office the next day, the cup will remain in active duty. Sometimes for several days.

No more. These new cups make it almost 48 hours. At that point I noticed a ring of water forming around the cup. Still, it is very cool to see UW have such a high rate of compostable material coming from its cafeterias. The fellow I was talking to said that the next step was to tackle the office work areas. He said this was going to be much more difficult because he had much less control over them. I would imagine so, just looking at all the stuff we throw out! I’m waiting to see!