BSU faculty question intent of buyout
'This sounds like a reduction in force to me,' one professor said.
MUNCIE — Ball State University has joined the growing list of schools offering a voluntary severance package to faculty.
Employee buyouts are a common strategy among employers that are downsizing to cut the number, and cost, of employees, while avoiding or delaying layoffs.
But unlike a number of its peers that are citing financial distress — brought on mostly by the pandemic and declining enrollment — as the reason for their voluntary early retirement incentives, BSU says that is not the rationale for its decision.
Some BSU faculty, however, are skeptical about the purpose of the plan, and they’re also concerned about the potential consequences, including fewer tenured faculty and less research.
“This sounds like a reduction in force to me,” one professor said.
Another told me the buyout “gives the university the opportunity to get rid of the highest-paid faculty so that that part of the budget goes away. I can’t imagine they’re going to hire replacement faculty. They just want to get smaller.”
Faculty in one department already have been told that if the position of a professor who accepted the buyout in that department is filled, it would be with a non-tenure-line faculty member — a temporary, contractual faculty position “eligible to receive, but not entitled to expect, renewal of appointments.”
There are currently 1,045 full-time faculty members and academic administrators at BSU, Burris Laboratory School, and the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and Humanities.
Of that group, 285 — or 27.28 percent — were eligible to participate in the one-time buyout, according to Alan Finn, vice president for business affairs and treasurer at BSU.
Faculty must be at least 55 and employed full-time to qualify for a separation incentive payment, equal to 125% of the employee’s base salary.
March 4 was the deadline for faculty to sign up for the Voluntary Early Retirement Incentive Plan (VERIP). The retirement date for those who participate is two months away — May 14. The number of people who took the buyout is not yet available.
In a column in the Indianapolis Business Journal, Cecil Bohanon, a Ball State professor of economics, called the BSU buyouts “a perfect example of marginal analysis” — a central component of the “economic way of thinking.”
“It is no accident Ball State is targeting older, longer tenured and higher paid employees to reduce its costs,” he wrote.
Bohanon was one of only a couple of faculty members willing to be interviewed on the record for this article. Others declined to speak publicly because they’re taking the buyout, which includes a non-disclosure agreement that one professor said prevents participants from saying anything negative about Ball State “for the rest of our natural lives.”
Several faculty interviewed on background said they assumed declining enrollment was the driving force behind the buyout. “I don’t discount the possibility that the budget enters into this,” one professor said of the retirement incentives.
In the building where he works, that professor has observed empty classrooms in the 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. periods that had been full of students before the pandemic. Another faculty member cited vacancies in residence halls.
Regardless of the real reasons for the buyout, for aging faculty it could be seen as an expression of beneficence bestowed during a pandemic that required them to learn new approaches to teaching.
“As for VERIP at Ball State, my unofficial and perhaps under-informed reading is that it is a response to the declining enrollment … and the fact that not all faculty have responded as efficiently to bimodal and hybrid teaching as perhaps hoped for,” one professor emailed me. “It might also even be a partially humane move — while also saving money — in that the ‘Great Resignation’ seems to have been driven by retirements. A lot of older workers simply didn't expect this exhausting pace and level of adaptation. I speculate, but the motives behind the offer could very well be mixed. Things are changing in academia in what is being called the ‘Great Upheaval’ —there's a book.”
Among the 285 employees at Ball State, Burris and the Indiana Academy eligible for the buyout, 100 are at least 65 years old.
When I asked the Ball State treasurer how much the buyouts could cost the university, he answered, in writing:
“This plan was not created for budget reduction purposes; rather the plan is one effort to accelerate the implementation of our strategic plan by introducing new modalities and for additional alternative learning experiences. Similarly, we don’t have an expectation for the number of faculty members to participate in the plan because of its voluntary nature.”
That echoes what BSU President Geoffrey S. Mearns said in announcing the separation offer late last year.
The president explained that the school’s strategic plan, adopted before the pandemic, addressed changes confronting higher education, including the need for innovative new teaching methods and practices; new graduate programs; new micro-credentials and short-term learning modules for non-traditional students; and a new incentive-based budget model that aligns investment in faculty with achieving those objectives.
Pre-pandemic, Ball State was making progress on implementing these strategies. “…during the pandemic, however, we had to make some immediate adjustments, including converting all Spring 2020 courses to remote instruction,” Mearns wrote. “During the last academic year, we also had to offer more hybrid courses to mitigate the ongoing threat imposed by the novel coronavirus.
“Most significantly, the pandemic has accelerated the demand of our current and our future students for new modalities and for additional alternative learning experiences. As a result, our faculty will have to continue to adjust their instructional techniques, and we will also have to recruit new faculty with different experiences and skill sets.
“In short, it is readily apparent that we must accelerate the implementation of our strategic plan. That fact is the principal rationale for the recommendation that the provost and I presented to the board.”
More recently, Lea Cadieux, BSU’s interim vice president for marketing and communication, underlined the buyout message in an interview with The Daily News student newspaper, saying:
“With this plan, we are able to accelerate the implementation of our strategic imperatives related to future instructional needs in the areas of innovative pedagogies and transdisciplinary teaching and learning.”
When I asked Kesha Coker, chair of University Senate and an assistant professor of marketing at Ball State, what faculty thought about the buyouts, she said she had been instructed to refer me to the school’s spokespeople, in marketing/communications.
The Ball State chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which re-established itself on campus in 2020, also declined comment on the buyouts.
But Glen Colby, a senior research officer at AAUP’s headquarters in Washington, agreed to offer an opinion on the Ball State buyouts:
“I have been keeping an eye on early retirement issues for a while, and to be honest, I have never seen such a plan — an early retirement offer based not on financial exigency but on students’ demands for ‘new modalities and for additional alternative learning experiences.’ Without seeing the strategic plan that the president references — and an understanding of the process that was used to develop that plan — I cannot comment on its reasonableness.”
But he did tell me that among the 650 institutions that responded to the AAUP follow-up COVID-19 survey administered in March of 2021, 24 explicitly mentioned that they had implemented early retirement plans for full-time faculty members “in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.” “And I am sure many more did so without mentioning it in our survey. We did not directly ask about early retirement plans, but 24 described such plans in an ‘other’ item on the survey so we know the proportion is substantial.”
From an AAUP policy perspective, one potential issue with early retirement programs “is whether the tenured faculty members who retire through early retirement programs are replaced by contingent faculty members with less security, remuneration, and support,” Colby said in an email.
“The proliferation of contingent faculty appointments in the United States colleges and universities is well documented — in fall of 2019, 63 percent of faculty employed in the United States were on contingent appointments,” Colby said.
At Ball State, however, only 49.9% or 650 out of 1,303 faculty members in fall of 2020 were employed on a contingent basis, Colby said, citing the most recent IPEDS data from the U.S. Department of Education. Thirty-three percent were tenured and 17.1 percent were tenure-track. (The 1,303 number includes both full-time and part-time faculty).
“An increased reliance on contingent faculty members — those without opportunity for tenure — would threaten academic freedom because faculty tenure is the only secure protection for academic freedom in teaching, research, and service,” Colby concluded.
One junior BSU faculty member told me that a chapter of AAUP was re-established at Ball State two years ago because of low morale over lack of pay raises and other issues.
The faculty member feels that more was asked of younger faculty during the pandemic because they were less vulnerable than aging faculty to COVID-19 — and that more will be expected of junior faculty in the future for the reasons cited by Mearns, such as integrating new technology into courses.
In a Frequently Asked Questions list on the Ball State website, the school doesn’t give a definitive answer about replacing faculty who take the buyout.
Q: Will all of the faculty positions that are vacated under the plan be permanently eliminated?
A: No. The provost, in consultation with the academic deans, will recommend to the president how to redeploy some of the vacant faculty positions in alignment with our future instructional needs.
Several faculty raised concerns to me about the impact on research if Ball State cuts down on the number of tenured faculty.
Tenure-line faculty are “the best of the best,” one BSU professor said. “If you start hiring all contract faculty, you’re missing out on the really good faculty.”
There are some phenomenal contract faculty who only want to teach, “but there are an equal number of contract faculty who are not good enough to get tenure,” which requires teaching, research and service work, the professor said.
Shifting focus away from research and at the same time turning toward more marginal students puts Ball State’s research-university classification (“R2: Doctoral University high research activity”) at risk, another professor said.
In fiscal year 2020-21, $89.2 million in external funding was awarded to Ball State, according to the school’s Sponsored Projects Administration, which helps faculty, staff and students seek external funding to carry out research, scholarship and creative activities.
That $89.2 million represents a whopping 519% increase in external funding compared to more typical years, like $14.4 million in 2017-18 or $13.4 million in 2016-17. But the $89.2 million included $63.6 million in federal CARES Act economic stimulus dollars (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act). The $89.2 million also included BSU Foundation dollars that played out as externally sponsored projects.
In each of the past five years, externally funded research expenditures at BSU have ranged between $3 million and $3.8 million, hovering around $3 million in the past two years. The goal of the strategic plan is $5 million a year by 2024.
Cecil Bohanon, a professor of economics who has taught at Ball State since 1980 and is not ready to retire, was one of the few faculty members willing to speak on the record for this article.
“I have no special ‘inside’ knowledge of BSU’s financial situation,” he told me in an email interview. “I believe they are sound and have no reason to believe otherwise. But inside information is not required to surmise that higher education funding may well be under stress in the future.”
The number of 18 year olds over the next few years already has been determined, “and the number is not particularly growing,” Bohanon noted, adding:
“We do not know what the post-COVID enrollment trends are going to be. We do not know what post-secondary participation rates in university education will be. We do know that labor markets are undergoing a great deal of uncertain transformation. So who knows what young people 18-24 and their parents are going to do? And who knows what state Legislatures are going to do about funding of public universities? These all add a great deal of uncertainty to future budget forecasts. So while it is always prudent to cut costs where you can, the task becomes more urgent at a State U.”
It makes sense then to try to induce higher-paid employees out of their "permanent" tenured jobs if enrollment trends are going down, Bohanon added.
Tenured faculty are not “at will” employees like contract faculty, who generally can be terminated at any time for any reason.
Echoing colleagues who spoke on background, Chad Kinsella, an associate professor of political science and director of the Bowen Center at Ball State, said of the buyouts, “It is my understanding that the program is being offered to downsize as a budgetary move.”
Freshman enrollment at Ball State this school year dropped to 3,278, or 8% less than the freshman class of 3,555 the year before, on the heels of the record-breaking freshman class of 4,060 in 2019.
BSU’s overall enrollment, including online students, was down to 19,326 in the fall of 2021 compared to 22,541 in the fall of 2019. On-campus enrollment dropped to less than 14,000 (13,962) for the first time this century. In the fall of 2019, before the pandemic, on-campus enrollment stood at 15,969.
Kinsella cited some of the same factors that Bohanon pointed out, and he added that state appropriations make up a much smaller share of public college and university budgets today than was the case 20 years ago — “therefore we are all dependent on tuition and enrollment numbers.”
Kinsella also observed that Ball State is facing increased competition from Indiana and Purdue universities for fewer and fewer college-bound Hoosier high schoolers.
In his announcement last year, Mearns said, “There is also a more personal rationale for our recommendation.”
He explained:
“Throughout the pandemic, the provost and I have been impressed and inspired by how all of our faculty have responded to these changes and to these challenges. We are profoundly grateful for their creativity and their willingness to adapt and adjust.
“But we also appreciate that the pandemic has imposed extraordinary demands on our faculty and staff. That strain has affected people in different ways, depending on their health and their family circumstances.
“As a result of all of these factors, some of our experienced full-time faculty members may prefer to retire earlier than they had originally planned. The voluntary plan that the Board approved will allow these colleagues to make that important decision.”
On the one hand, Ball State is emphasizing that the buyouts were not necessary to keep its budget balanced. On the other, it acknowledges that the buyouts will help the budget.
“Because we have managed our institutional resources prudently for many years, including through the pandemic, we can fund this incentive program without adversely impacting our operating budget,” Mearns went on in his statement. “Indeed, if this plan is successfully implemented, our operating budget will be more secure.”
“So this all make sense,” Bohanon told me. “What is surprising is that the university did not do it earlier.”
Faculty buyouts were a trend in higher education even before the pandemic.
For example, in 2010, Purdue University implemented a one-time employee buyout designed to reduce salary and benefit costs “to meet current budget challenges, enable departments to realign resources to meet changing needs or strategic objectives, and avoid involuntary layoffs to the extent possible.”
And again in 2017, Purdue offered a one-time faculty retirement incentive.
Citing flat enrollment and strained budgets, DePauw University downsized in 2019 with faculty buyouts and staff layoffs.
Schools that have provided faculty buyouts since the pandemic broke out have ranged from Northwestern University “as a result of financial shortfalls caused by the coronavirus pandemic” to Western Kentucky University because of “the COVID-19 pandemic, declining state support, enrollment changes and other evolving dynamics affecting higher education” to Yale University (limited to age 70 and older) due to “financial uncertainty brought by the coronavirus pandemic.”
Ball State becomes at least the eighth of 12 schools in the Mid American Conference to offer buyouts in recent years.
A ninth MAC school, Bowling Green State University, which “before this global crisis was in sound financial position with growing enrollments,” in 2020 temporarily furloughed and cut some faculty and staff; the president took a pay cut; and other expenses were reduced to address a projected $29 million budget shortfall.
Buyouts have occurred at these MAC schools:
The University of Akron, in an effort to balance the budget following enrollment declines and other budget pressures.
Kent State University approved a second round of voluntary buyouts for full-time faculty months after nearly 300 faculty and staff took buyouts as part of cost-cutting efforts related to the pandemic.
Ohio University, “as the school navigates budget challenges amid declining enrollment.”
Eastern Michigan University, where 142 employees took buyouts in 2019, “hoping to reap savings as it looks to stabilize its budget,” the Detroit Free Press reported. The buyouts were “not designed primarily as a budget-saving measure,” the school said, but were meant “to provide the university the opportunity and flexibility to re-organize how we perform our work of serving students.” EMU had eliminated 42 open staff positions and laid off 17 people in 2018 to help reduce a budget deficit.
Northern Illinois University, in 2019-20. “Frankly, the COVID impact on our cash flow would make it much harder to reauthorize a program like this, so at this point in time we have no plans to repeat the program,” the school’s president said.
The University of Toledo, as part of efforts to address budget deficits exacerbated by the pandemic.
Western Michigan University, which said its buyouts were “specifically designed to help WMU reduce budgetary demands and faculty numbers.”
Faced with the same financial pressures as its MAC peers, Ball State has been forced to cut costs including the elimination of 128 job positions in the 2020-21 budget and another 25 positions trimmed from the previous year’s budget; tighter travel and supply budgets; and closure of the E.B. and Bertha C. Ball Center, an intellectual bridge in town and gown relations that for decades had offered community programs out of a historic Ball family mansion. Five staff and two student employees were terminated.
(Last year, Ball State reported that it was adding more than three dozen new staff positions, including academic advisors, success coaches, faculty success fellows, One Stop staff, director of communications strategy, Latinx recruiter, and transfer-student recruiters, to address declining enrollment, student success and retention).
At the same time, Ball State continues to hold the line on tuition hikes, allowing it to boast of being one of the most affordable schools in the Midwest, especially among Indiana and MAC schools.
Time will tell how much more downsizing Ball State might have to undertake, and the consequences.
During a budget presentation to Ball State’s board of trustees in 2020, the school’s treasurer reported that "we have fewer people doing the same work on campus as we did 10 to 12 years ago.”
In its most recent financial report, for the year ending June 30, 2021, Ball State said, “The COVID-19 pandemic continues to have a direct impact on the University’s finances, the extent of which cannot be fully measured.”
Kinsella, who thinks professors get a bad rap overall, is concerned about replacing the faculty who take the buyout.
“… at most universities, including Ball State, the amount of work for professors is pretty high and a lot of that is ‘behind the scenes,’ like research, meetings of all kinds, grading, class preparation, and assorted other administrative work,” Kinsella told me.
“ … I have a couple of colleagues who are taking the buyout and I would definitely not label them as ‘deadwood.’ They are teachers, researchers, administrators, and mentors — for other faculty and students — and many of them are at the top of their game in terms of their ability in these areas. So when they retire, a lot of knowledge and know-how goes with them that is not easily replaced or, in many cases, irreplaceable.”
(An earlier version of this article reported that Bowling Green State University eliminated its baseball program during a budget reduction, which is accurate. However, the program was later reinstated. I regret the error. Also, a clarification: the earlier version reported that there are currently 1,045 faculty members at Ball State. I should have clarified that there are 1,045 full-time faculty members, and that the 1,303 faculty members cited later in the earlier version of the story included part-time faculty. I regret the confusion).