A quick and easy breakdown of how the university was impacted by budget cuts.
The budget for this academic year was released on Sept 15. There are two sets of budgets laid out, the University Operating Fund and the All Funds Budget. Each budget provides the expenditure and revenue breakdown.
The All Funds budgets dates back to the 2015-16 academic year to display all changes that the budget had gone through throughout the last five years.
Both the Expenditure and Revenue All Funds budgets have significantly decreased in various ways.
The budget released this past week does not reflect any Center Activities, Center Arts or HSU dining services funds.
The revenue budget, is based on how Humboldt state University receives its money, is $164.6 million. According to the 2020-21 All Funds Revenue budget, this was decreased by $58.2 million. This is the first major decrease since 2015 and the lowest the budget has ever been since the last recorded academic year, 2015-16.
Educational Appropriations, which is just another way of saying state and local funding, make up over 50 percent of HSU’s revenue. The amount of appropriations received for the 2020-21 academic year is $85.6 million, resulting from a $5.1 million decline. This is the first reduction recorded since the 2015-16 academic year.
A quarter of the revenue comes from higher education fees, which includes tuition, student health, AS fees, graduation fee, etc. This portion stands at $42.2 million which is an $8.2 million decrease from last year. This could be the result of COVID-19 causing drops in enrollment.
The expenditure budget, which is the budget based on what the university will spend their money on, is $180.5 million. According to the All Funds Expenditure budget, this was decreased by $43.8 million. This is the first reduction in the budget since 2015 and the lowest the budget has been since the last recorded academic year, 2015-16.
The salaries and wages of HSU employees reflects 44.5 percent of the budget. These include not just tenured professors and lecturers but also department chair members, assistants, teaching associates, support staff and the university president.
The Regular salaries and Wages budget did have an overall decrease of $8.9 million. With the budget dropping across the board, the president managed to increase his salary by $10,000.
This is also the first time the revenue budget was significantly smaller than the expenditure budget since 2015. The usual trend is having the numbers very close in amount with a maximum $5 million gap. This year’s budget has a $15.9 million gap.
The Humboldt State University budget proposal is under overview from President Jackson
What?
The University Resources Planning Committee of Humboldt State University submitted its budget proposal to HSU President Tom Jackson on Dec. 23, 2019. The URPC spent last semester meeting each week to form a new budget to address a projected $5.4 million budget deficit for the next three fiscal years.
The proposal includes $2,500,000 of cuts from instruction, $720,000 of cuts from academic support, $420,000 from student services, $1,070,000 from institutional support and $690,000 from operations and maintenance of plant.
The total cuts amount to 4.4% of the total budget. The cuts would equal 4.4% of the instruction, academic support and operations and maintenance of plant budgets, 3.5% of the student services budget and 4.9% of the institutional support budget. The proposal must be approved by Jackson to come into effect.
When?
The URPC discussed the proposal in the University Senate Jan. 28, and will discuss it again Feb. 11., according to URPC Co-Chair James Woglom.
Why?
The budget deficit stems from HSU’s enrollment decline. Less tuition makes for a smaller budget. When Woglom spoke with The Lumberjack previously, he noted that the URPC has designed a scalable budget model, or a budget that allows HSU to be more flexible with its money as the University’s priorities change. Despite the cuts, Woglom assured The Lumberjack that the URPC was seeking to limit any negative impacts on students’ education. Thus far, HSU has publicly announced plans to phase out employees only through attrition, or not rehiring select employees, rather than outright cutting positions.
Only four students attended the first University Resources and Planning Committee’s public budget forum, according to Associated Students President Yadira Cruz.
Around 50 faculty, staff and community members were in attendance as well, according to Art Education Assistant Professor and URPC Co-Chair James Woglom.
Woglom said the URPC’s presentation, which can be found online at budget.humboldt.edu, focused on the URPC’s work toward creating a scalable budget model, or a budget that can be altered periodically to represent changing values.
“It ends up bringing more people into the process of decision-making, and thus hopefully reflecting more people’s feeling of what we want this organism to do,” Woglom said of the URPC’s new model.
James Woglom, art education assistant professor and University Resources and Planning Committee co-chair, checking his laptop in the Humboldt State Univeristy library on Nov. 14. Woglom said the URPC has created a new scalable budget model that allows for more flexibilty and input from the HSU community. | Photo by James Wilde
URPC has been meeting over the course of the semester to form a three-year budget for Humboldt State. Woglom said the first step for deciding where to allocate funds is to clarify which values HSU should prioritize.
Besides the forum, the URPC is taking feedback online through an online submission form, a Google survey designed to scale which campus values are most important and a pie chart budget simulator that allows proposals of how HSU should divide funds. Woglom said he’d also be happy to take suggestions through direct emails.
While Cruz said she appreciated the existence of the online feedback forms, she said they can be obscure due to budgetary jargon.
“Although it’s available, it might not be accessible in that way,” Cruz said.
The Google survey, which is not yet released, lists a series of California State University values and asks the respondent to rate how much they agree with each one.
“It’s not saying that we want to devalue any of them, but it’s trying to get a quantitative sense of where the University’s priorities are in terms of allocation of resources based across a series of ideas,” Woglom said. “And then hopefully with that quantification we can make decisions based on where we can make things happen.”
The URPC’s current projections show a $5.4 million budget gap by the 2021-2022 school year, which reflects the impact of reduced tuition due to declining enrollment. According to the presentation, every 100 students generate about $560,000 in tuition.
The University Resources and Planning Committee pointed to declining tuition numbers as the cause of HSU’s current projected $5.4 million budget gap.
Joseph Reed, a political science and economics double major and a student representative on the URPC, said the key challenge has been ramping down the budget with the declining student body.
“It’s kind of been hard to keep this budget for about 8,000 students when we don’t have 8,000 students anymore,” Reed said.
Cruz said the budget should focus on the students HSU has now, and not the students it had in the past.
“Being in that cutting mindset is potentially jarring for morale. I mean, you’re coming from a space where you’re like, ‘Alright, what do we have to not do this year?’”
James Woglom
“I think every campus goes through these sorts of financial challenges, but I think how we move forward is centering students,” Cruz said.
Reed said the URPC has no plans to cut whole departments. Instead, Reed said cuts are more likely to be smaller and broader across the board.
“Every department is being affected, but each one has its own budget, so each one has its own certain amount that it’s being reduced by,” Reed said.
Over the past three years, URPC reduced the budget by $11.5 million. However, Woglom emphasized a difference between past and future cuts due to the new scalable budget model.
“[In the past] we’ve cut what we’ve determined to be at the fringe of the project of the University—so maybe not in direct agreement with the strategic plan of the University or the general values of the University,” Woglom said. “Being in that cutting mindset is potentially jarring for morale. I mean, you’re coming from a space where you’re like, ‘Alright, what do we have to not do this year?’”
The University Resources and Planning Committee showed three possible enrollment and budget scenarios in its Nov. 7 public forum presentation.
With the new model, Woglom said HSU can start with a specific budget number and then distribute it to the things HSU values most. Woglom said the budget can be continually changed, which allows HSU to scale back up or down if monetary realities change.
“We don’t want to make hurried and necessary decisions every year,” Woglom said.
The URPC uses Financial Information Reporting Management System codes, which are used in higher education to categorize expenses by their function, to compare HSU’s spending to other CSUs.
FIRMS codes break down HSU’s spending into five categories: instruction ($56.6 million in the current budget), institutional support ($21.6 million), operations and maintenance of plant ($16.3 million), academic support ($15.6 million) and student services ($12 million). Each of these categories represent a FIRMS program, and the budget determines what percent of the total amount of funding goes to each category.
Using these categories, the URPC also compares HSU’s spending to other CSUs. According to the presentation, spending at HSU in comparison to similar-sized campuses for the 2017-2018 school year was 17% higher at HSU for instruction, 24% higher for academic support, 3% higher for student services, 10% higher for institutional support and 1% higher for operations and maintenance of plant.
The presentation also showed three possible scenarios for the future of enrollment and its effects on the budget. The best case scenario, called the growth scenario, shows a leveling off of the enrollment decline and a budget gap in the $4 million range by the 2021-2022 school year.
The current scenario, upon which URPC’s projections are based, shows a continued decline that leads to the budget gap of $5.4 million. The worst-case scenario shows further decline and a budget gap of up to $7 million by the 2021-2022 school year.
The URPC’s current budget plans are based on the middle scenario of a $5.4 million gap.
Woglom said the URPC still has to figure out how to allocate its funding to keep current programs intact.
Budget projections from the University Resources and Planning Committee’s Nov. 7 public forum presentation show a $5.4 million budget gap by the 2021-2022 school year.
“It raises interesting questions about where you can move within that,” Woglom said.
Just one day after the URPC’s public forum, HSU released a campus announcement detailing the process for filling staff vacancies during the current enrollment decline and budget deficit. The announcement said that while current staff positions will not be eliminated, positions deemed “non-critical” by the vice president of the relevant division won’t be backfilled when a person leaves that position.
Woglom confirmed that announcement.
“The intention of the University at this point is to work to determine where attrition will happen and backfill positions in that manner,” Woglom said.
This backfiring process does not apply to faculty, according to the announcement.
The URPC’s next and final public forum is scheduled for Dec. 3 at 11:30 a.m. in the Goodwin Forum, during which the public can review the URPC’s draft plan before it is sent to the University president for review. Woglom urges everyone to give their input.
“Any ideas that people have that they’d like to share with us, the better our decision-making process can be,” Woglom said.
“I think [student input is] a challenge in itself,” Cruz said. “But I think that just because it’s challenging doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be pursued.”
Yadira Cruz
Reed and Cruz said they don’t think two public forums are enough to gather sufficient student input.
“I think overall we should be making a stronger effort to connect with students and get their overall opinions,” Reed said.
Reed suggested that the URPC should seek to get input not just from some students, but from the majority of students. Cruz agreed.
“I think that’s a challenge in itself,” Cruz said. “But I think that just because it’s challenging doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be pursued.”
Looking into ICF International’s report on HSU’s economic impact
According to a recent ICF International report, Humboldt State University generates over $567 million in annual industry activity.
ICF International, a global consulting firm based in Virginia, previously studied California State Universities in 2010. ICF uses a model that tracks HSU institutional, student and alumni spending and then calculates the resultant impact.
The report splits HSU spending into three categories: operational, auxiliary and capital.
HSU spent $166 million in the 2017-2018 fiscal year on operational expenses, which includes instruction, research, public service, academic support and student services.
HSU spent $26 million on auxiliary expenses, which includes the bookstore, campus restaurants and research institutes. $16 million went to dining services while about $10 million was spent on parking and housing.
HSU spent $5.5 million on capital expenses, which includes construction and renovations. The report said HSU expects to spend $33 million on capital projects over the next two years.
“University expenditures supported a total of 3,920 jobs in Humboldt County, as well as over $96 million in labor income and more than $293 million in industry activity,” the report said.
To reach the final figure of $567 million of industry activity, the report includes $70 million of student spending and $207 million of regional alumni impact.
“ICF used the average “Cost of Attendance” estimates from the HSU Financial Aid Office to calculate the total student spending impact,” the report said.
The report calls the alumni impact figure conservative, as it does not account for California’s relatively high wages in comparison with the rest of the country.
“California wages tend to be higher than the national average,” the report said. “In 2017, California real per capita income was approximately $2,650 dollars higher than the U.S. national average.”
The report says 58,000 HSU alumni are still in the workforce, while 23% of alumni live in Humboldt County.
“In 2017-18, HSU degree holders living in Humboldt County earned $973 million in wages,” the report said. “HSU degree holders statewide earned more than $3 billion.”
The most comparable CSUs in terms of student population are CSU Channel Islands, CSU Monterey Bay and Sonoma State University. While the locations of each of these universities makes them significantly different, HSU appears on par when compared.
In terms of regional impact, HSU placed second out of the four aforementioned CSUs of comparable student population size.
The CSU website lists summaries of each CSU’s economic impact, as recorded in the previous 2010 ICF analysis.
In terms of regional impact, HSU placed second out of the four aforementioned CSUs of comparable student population size.
In 2010, CSU Channel Islands generated $114 million of regional impact from $135.5 million of spending. CSU Monterey Bay generated $133 million of regional impact from $155 million of spending. HSU generated $190 million of regional impact from $232 million of spending. Sonoma State generated $330 million of regional impact from $213 million of spending.
The new ICF report was conducted only on HSU, so it’s not known whether HSU remains on pace with other CSUs.
“It should be noted that the previous study’s methodology is not directly comparable to the current study,” the report said.
The report includes benefits beyond direct economic impacts, such as research, small business development and contributions to the community and local education.
Most of the report’s findings in these extra-economic areas appear to have data behind them. However, the report includes public radio station KHSU as one of HSU’s contributions to the community.
“Through its innovative, high quality programming, KHSU hopes to educate, enrich, enlighten, and entertain its listeners on local, national, and international issues,” the report said.
HSU abruptly fired all seven KHSU employees last April, citing a need for reorganization and streamlining. KHSU is run by one employee under a short-term agreement lasting until the end of October.
Nevertheless, HSU’s impact on the surrounding community appears significant, even in the midst of an enrollment decline.
Humboldt State University held an open budget forum on Feb. 2 to discuss the threatening budget situation that could put the university in a potential crisis.
Shortly after the forum, HSU President Lisa Rossbacher sent a message to the campus community:
“In short, HSU’s budget situation has worsened over the course of this year due primarily to ongoing deficit spending in some areas, unfunded increases in salary and benefits, a continued decline in enrollment and projections based on the recent state budget for 2018-19 proposed by the governor,” Rossbacher said.
Rossbacher wanted students, faculty and staff to take away a few things from the budget forum.
First, a sense of the position that we’re in and the history of how we got here. Rossbacher wanted to make clear that it’s not anyone’s fault. This crisis has been ongoing from decisions made 10 to 30 years ago.
“I want people to understand the situation that we’re in, the importance of working as a community to address it and solve the problems now,” Rossbacher said. “All of us that were involved in the discussions and planning are acutely aware of the impact the decisions will have on people… employees, potentially on students.”
“We’re trying to do this with care and compassion,” Rossbacher said.
Beth Eschenbach is the chair of environmental resources and engineering. She doesn’t quite know how the budget cuts will affect her.
“I think everybody is afraid of saying what they’re really going to do,” Eschenbach said. “What I fear, they keep telling the academic side to save money, but the only way to save money is to teach fewer classes.”
Zack Pitnick, environmental studies major, is a senior at HSU. He was one of the three students that showed up to the budget forum.
Pitnick decided to come to the forum after hearing about it from his environmental studies professor. Pitnick wanted more of a student input in the discussion.
“There needs to be a lot more transparency and [student] involvement,” Pitnick said. “I think there still does need to be cuts to higher up faculty salary. If they are so focused on this budget deficit, that should be the first thing to start instead of the very last resort.”
Alex Enyedi, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs for Humboldt State, described the financial crisis in a nutshell.
“It’s a simple overspending of the budget, and the next steps are to identify and trim back where spending is too much,” Enyedi said. “For example, we’ve got certain areas where we’re deficit spending, so we need to stop the deficit spending and that will help us with our budget.”
Enyedi went on to say the problem is solvable, but it’s going to take combined efforts to solve.
“It’s not the students’ problem,” Enyedi said. “It’s the administration, the staff and faculty’s responsibility to figure this out and we’re on it. This is a high priority, [and] we don’t have sufficient reserved dollars to be able to keep on covering the deficit spending.”
Humboldt State University’s Third Street Gallery in Eureka may shut down in an effort to reduce the university’s spending budget. The proposal to close the gallery calls for $55,000 of the gallery’s budget to be reduced. That makes a third of the gallery’s whole budget and the remaining two thirds transfer to other gallery programs on campus.
Jack Bentley is the Third Street Gallery director.
“The proposal to close this gallery is actually very short-sighted,” Bentley said. “It misses the point of what the purpose of this gallery was and the inherited highly developed community expectation of what we do here.”
The Third Street Gallery was founded in 1998 to provide students with real world, hands-on learning through work and internship opportunities. It’s also meant to give HSU opportunities to reaching out to the community.
Pedro Uribe Godoy is an art major and works at the gallery.
Godoy opposes the proposal to close the gallery and thinks it is “destructive” as it will cut out a venue for learning for current and future art students.
“There’s a lot to learn here and for them [HSU administrators] to take it away and not expose new students to this line of work, I think, is very destructive,” Godoy said. “They are limiting students of what they’re gonna learn and what kind of avenues of work they can plug themselves into.”
The gallery is supported by the university, revenue from art sales and public donations. The Third Street Gallery raised around $22,000 from both sales and donations during the first half of the current fiscal year.
“It’s kinda messed up for the university to take away this gallery and undermine all the donors that have been donating for this gallery for so long,” Godoy said.
Andrew Daniel is an art alumnus who graduated from HSU 16 years ago. As a student, he had his work shown in the gallery. Daniel wrote a letter to HSU administrators expressing his displeasure with the proposal to close the gallery.
“The gallery brings a unique perspective to the community. It brings in work from out of the area,” Daniel said. “I don’t know if we’ll get those artworks if not for this gallery.”
Over the years, Humboldt County has gained a reputation for being a haven for art and artists of all kinds. Besides student artists, local artists exhibit their artwork in the gallery too.
“It’s such a valuable thing to our community,” Daniel said. “There are a lot of artists in our community that would just not even show their work if it didn’t show at that gallery. It’s such a unique venue.”
In such a rural area, the Third Street Gallery provides students and the community access to different forms of art from different parts of the world.
“We’re rather isolated. Here, people have access to art forms and new ideas that otherwise they won’t have,” Bentley said. “They would have to travel several hundred miles to either Portland or San Francisco to have that type of access.”
The gallery host exhibitions for local artists and other visiting artists from outside the area. It also provides a venue for students and alumni artists to exhibit their work in a professional gallery off campus and in the community.
“Student artists and alumni artists exhibit here where they have a much higher probability of coming into contact with the public than they would if they’re exhibiting their work on campus,” Bentley said.
Living in a rural area like Humboldt, art students at HSU can find it difficult to find a job or an internship related to their major.
Ann Valdes is an art student at HSU and also works in the Third Street Gallery.
“Being in Humboldt, we’re so removed from a large art market. It’s really hard to get good solid work experience if we didn’t have programs like this,” Valdes said. “We’re learning all the lessons that we may not be able to learn if we’ve never worked in a gallery.”
HSU prides itself on offering plenty of hands-on learning opportunities for its students. Students say HSU Third Street Gallery provides students with real world experience.
“I’ve been learning valuable lessons here,” Godoy said. “There’s no more hands on than this. This is hands on.”
Valdes thinks the proposal to close the gallery goes against how HSU advertises itself.
“What this budget cut proposal intends almost goes against the way Humboldt State University advertises itself,” Valdes said. “For them to cut this program is almost undermining what Humboldt says it’s about.”
HSU owns three art galleries. Reese Bullen Gallery and Goudi’ni Native American Arts Gallery are both located on campus, while HSU Third Street Gallery is located off campus in Eureka.
Bentley thinks all of these galleries are important and serve important purposes. The most important purpose, he believes, is that the Third Street Gallery serves as community outreach.
According to Bentley, the art department is planning on launching a new Bachelor of Fine Arts program in the future.
“This gallery is the natural venue for the BFA exhibitions,” Bentley said. “Here, students will have the opportunity to gain more studio time.”
Bernadette McConnell is another art student who works in the gallery. She opposes the proposal to close the gallery. McConnell thinks the proposal to close the gallery is ill-informed.
“If it wasn’t for my job here at the Third Street Gallery, I wouldn’t be here at Humboldt State,” McConnell said. “If this place gets shuttered, I have no reason to be at Humboldt State. I will leave Humboldt.”
Bentley has received many letters that oppose the proposal.
“The letters I received are very supportive of the gallery,” Bentley said. “Letters from former students, community members who object the proposal very strongly.
Every summer, the Third Street Gallery hosts an exhibition of work from HSU art graduates.
All graduates who have a piece in the senior show get to show their work in the gallery. In the Third Street Gallery, students get exposure to the overall community off campus.
“Every summer we have a show dedicated for graduating seniors from the art department. They get off campus public exposure that they otherwise wouldn’t get,” Bentley said. “If this gallery closes, those type of exhibitions will simply be on campus and not available to the broader community.”
The proposal to close the gallery came as a surprise to Bentley. He learned about it by reading the list of proposed budget reductions.
“There’s been no outreach by any of these communities to the gallery,” Bentley said. “I learned about it by opening the proposal. This is how I learned about it.”
Godoy hopes the community comes together to help keep the gallery open as they did with the football program.
“I’m hoping that the community does that for us too,” Godoy said. “Hopefully, it all comes together well and we all fight together for it, and I’m hoping that we can keep it alive with the help of the community.”
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