Regents should prioritize students over raises

On June 4-5, the University of Alaska Board of Regents will make final decisions about which academic programs to cut this year. On the chopping block, largely due to Gov. Dunleavy’s budget vetoes last summer, are programs serving more than 600 student majors and hundreds of other students across the system (500 of the students majoring in these programs are at the University of Alaska Anchorage). There is no doubt that academic and other cuts must be made in the current political and economic situation. But the public should be aware of a serious problem with some of the proposed cuts: They may be the kind of sacrifices that cause significant pain with minimal gain.

For instance, the Creative Writing and Literary Arts master’s degree program at UAA serves more than 40 students. Its graduates include prize-winning and best-selling authors such as Heather Lende (“If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name”) and Don Rearden (“The Raven’s Gift”). It contributes to a lively local literary scene. Community service is built into the requirements. You can find books by authors from this program being sold in every local bookshop. Yet it is slated to be cut for an estimated savings of only $60,000 — and all this while the university system is set to hand out $7 million to 10 million in pay raises over the next two years. It is ludicrous when so much can be found for raises that a successful, prestigious program would be cut for so little.

How can the Board of Regents choose to so starkly prioritize pay raises over opportunities for students? Habitually underpaying employees makes it harder to get and retain quality talent, true. But at a time of crisis, when administrators and faculty at universities all over the world are taking pay decreases of substantial size to maintain learning opportunities in the face of COVID-19, a temporary pause in pay increases seems reasonable — especially when it would serve hundreds of Alaskan students that may otherwise leave the state within the next few years.

Faculty and students have proposed other ways to supply the small amount the system hopes to gain through closing the creative writing MFA. A graduate surcharge could be added, something other graduate programs already do to cover costs. A current student wrote to administration begging for them to increase tuition rather than close. A faculty member has volunteered to go from full- to part-time. And an effort is underway by 87 faculty across UAA to individually forgo their negotiated 1% pay raise so that the pledged funds could go towards sustaining the creative writing program and nine other degree programs. So far, $92,000 has been raised.

If highly-paid administrators would match the faculty effort to forgo pay increases, more programs could be retained until stability is regained in funding and enrollment. All the degrees being cut at UAA will, at most, save $2.3 million. In a very real way, student majors and faculty jobs are being cut so that other university employees can get a raise. Redirecting even just a part of the money for pay raises to program maintenance would serve students and preserve enrollments while allowing adjustments toward efficiency and sustainability.

This is not the time to kill off healthy programs and further decrease enrollment. Pay increases can wait. The university system must work harder to find reductions that impact students less and to reign in administrative expenses, which outstrip national averages far more than academic expenses do. Maintaining opportunities for Alaska students must take priority.

Rebekah Radcliffe Potter is the wife of Joel Potter, an assistant professor in UAA’s Department of Philosophy.

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