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Contract not the cause
The opening paragraph of the April 11 article from the St. Cloud Daily Times, "SCSU Contract to Force Freezes, Tuition Hikes" was patently unfair. It said, "The contract ratified Tuesday for the state university faculty, including about 700 locally, will force St. Cloud State University to raise tuition 13 percent, reduce reserves and leave about 40 jobs open."
Last July, long before the faculty contract settlement, St. Cloud State University proposed a 10 percent increase in undergraduate tuition rates from fiscal year 2002 (the current year), and a projected 15 percent increase in the fiscal year 2003. The 10 percent for FY02 passed, but the decision on FY03 was delayed to this year. I understand SCSU is actually going to decrease its proposed tuition hike for FY03 from the 15 percent requested last year to 13 percent. The contract settlement did not cause the tuition increases.
The cause of SCSU's tuition increases and tight financial budgets are due to a lack of state financial support. Last year the legislature funded only 40 percent of MnSCU's appropriations request. This year the legislature cut about $24 million from the MnSCU budget. When the state does not appropriate enough money to cover its share of the cost of higher education, the burden is shifted onto students in the form of higher tuition.
The faculty contract came in very close to budget projections. The increased cost of the new contract, using the uniform legislative formula that takes into account percentage increases, supplemental increases, pension and health costs, is in line with the cost of other state union contract settlements and compensation plans for managers. The increased cost, over the next two years, if the Inter Faculty Organization contract is 6.39 percent. The AFSCME settlement was 6.35 percent and the proposed MnSCU administrative plan cost increase is 6.25 percent The department of finance's latest economic forecast shows that in the two years since the last IFO contract settlement, personal income in Minnesota, as a whole, grew 7.6 percent (2000) and 3.1 percent (2001).
Our state universities recruit from all over the nation. They must offer competitive salaries to attract high quality new faculty and to keep current faculty from being recruited away by better paying universities. Currently, over one-third of the searches to fill faculty positions fail because of non-competitive pay and workloads. At present, faculty salaries at state universities are near the 50th percentile of pay among comparable institutions nationally. This means nearly half of the institutions nationally are in a better position to recruit and retain quality faculty.
MnSCU made a wise decision when it agreed to increase the competitiveness of faculty salaries; it will help our state universities to continue to improve the quality faculty and therefore the quality of instruction that students receive. The cost of the contract was reasonable, and it is not the drive behind the tuition increases being proposed.
Sincerely,
James C. Pehler
President, IFO
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