Cutting Costs at UNH: AFP-NH Has a Suggestion, and So Do I... - Granite Grok

Cutting Costs at UNH: AFP-NH Has a Suggestion, and So Do I…

UNH Burning through YOUR Money

AFP-NH Director Greg Moore fills the “Another View” slot in today’s Union leader with the question, “If you were running a business, how much would you pay your employees not to show up for work?”

He then proceeds to ask, how, in this economic environment, the same University system that cannot control costs, that begs for more and more taxpayer bailouts, can still afford to spend an estimated 6.5 Million dollars per year for professors to take paid sabbaticals that could last up to a year in length?

…we’re not talking about paid time off for vacation, earned by the employee, or other typical situations, such as maternity leave or sick time. Instead, these are the salary and benefit costs paid to professors at the University of New Hampshire, Plymouth State University and Keene State College when they t… are not in classrooms or labs, teaching our students, yet they add to the ever-growing cost of higher education, which is rapidly becoming less affordable each year.

I know you know this but t’s not just Sabbaticals.

UNH happily pays professors like Ed ‘Flash’ Larkin — for years — while he had no interaction with students.  In fact, he was prohibited from interacting with students.

Dr. Edward Larkin gave a pair of women at the Milford Market Basket More for their Dollar last November when he approached them in the Supermarket parking lot with his “franks and beans” exposed.   It turned out to be an unadvertised special, but one that New Hampshire taxpayers continue to pay for.   The UNH professor, placed on leave after the incident, is still on the University payroll, collecting $87,375 per year while we wait for the bureaucracy to remember how it is exactly that you fire a State university professor doing nothing on the taxpayer dole.

In the end the Union stepped in and he kept his job, his 87K plus salary, and for three years got paid to not interact with students.

Under the terms of his probation, as reported in the Sunday Union Leader, he will remain on the UNH staff for another three years before being permitted to meet with students.  That restriction prevents him from teaching during that time. We can only assume that a University that pays full salary during an investigation does likewise when they are told they cannot terminate said employee.  Without knowing any other details, this amounts to five years worth of salary at a state supported university, to a German Language professor, for what?   Exposing himself in public.

Talk about a government jobs program.  Show some strangers your “little professor” at the grocery store parking lot and we’ll give you $436,875.00 over five years.

For those wondering about the math, he was on paid leave from the fall of 2009 to the fall of 2011, after which he was put on three year probation.  It may be that they rolled in the previous “administrative leave” time so if we cut him some slack on that point the bottom of the free ride ticks in at $262,125.00.00 (ish).

So there are other opportunities available to cut waste, though I admit sabbaticals are a more common and more tangible expense.  More from Greg’s comments.

“…through a series of right-to-know requests, AFPF learned that since 2004, USNH professors have taken 178 year-long sabbaticals and 743 part-year sabbaticals. This represents 550 years worth of paid time off provided by the students and the taxpayers of New Hampshire. When officials have publicly made, and continue to make, a loud case for higher tuitions and increased state funding, one has to wonder if this practice represents the best use of instructors’ time.

The average salary and benefits of tenured USNH professors, who represent 77 percent of faculty, amount to $139,943. Non-tenured professors (the other 23 percent) average $103,420. One has to think that those sums amount to a significant financial investment from the universities’ coffers to compensate those who are not in a classroom, adding value to teach students.

These sabbaticals, in total, amount to nearly $65 million over 10 years, by AFPF’s estimate. In fact, this number is very conservative, as anecdotal evidence seems to indicate strongly that more senior (and thus more greatly compensated) professors are more likely to take sabbaticals than are junior, and often non-tenured, faculty members, though USNH could not provide details on these specifics.

Ed is still working at UNH, by the way.  Between his administrative leave and not being fired his pay rose to 89,230.00 per year.  It may be even more now.

Meanwhile, if we cough up the 20 million Governor Hassan and or Democrats demand, the University system says it will promise not raise tuition for two years.  Call me unimpressed.  All this means is that I am bailing out an operating model whose cost of goods and services is in no way connected to the economy or the rest of the state.  A business model that increases what it charges exponentially more than real-world compensation or cost of living can account for while simultaneously demanding that we pay them tribute for the privilege of their inability to keep tuition rates anywhere near any average-anyone’s ability to pay them.

My answer to all of that is the same as it has always been.  Cut all public funding and force them to fund-raise and make the kinds of business decisions that will allow them to compete for tuition dollars from students who want what they are selling.  If they can’t then let them fail, because if they are unable to operate without annual taxpayer bail-outs in the tens-of-millions, how will they learn to operate if and when the bottom falls out and we have to decide between medicare/medicaid, unemployment, pensions for the elderly, or roads and bridges, or to prop up the salaries of over-paid professors at a stuffed-shirt state university system that has an entire economics and business department but can’t for the life of them run their school without begging for taxpayer bail outs?

It’s time to progress away from the failed model of taxpayer funded universities that then charge tuition rates that most of those same taxpayers cannot even afford.

Greg  makes some great observations, and the New Hampshire State University System needs to address how if can beg for money while wasting billions to pay people to do nothing, but it must also look at how that money-for-nothing culture likely affects every aspect of how they do business, and how that keeps pushing tuition rates up and out of reach.

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