This report proposes some fundamental changes in the way that the University does its work. Several recommendations centralize business functions and scheduling, but there are also new incentives to academic programs to be more enterprising on their own behalf and a new emphasis on departmental-level responsibility for operating budgets. For particular programs, the academic calendar will be expanded, and the student recruitment will be more aggressive. The division between academic affairs and student affairs will be bridged in certain student support functions. The University will take fuller advantage of new computing and telecommunications technologies in teaching and scholarship and in its business functions. Such recommendations will require investment before they can pay off in budget savings, and investments are planned as part of this report. A new concept in financial aid will help the University to contain rising costs. With respect to academic programs, although budgets must be stretched, the priority of fundraising and development will be the core mission of teaching and learning; in this way, we hope to develop new resources for the University's central mission. Although programs will be consolidated and curtailed, if all of these recommendations are followed, we have done everything possible in the circumstances to protect the quality of education offered at the University. Indeed in some respects quality will be enhanced by the changes proposed. In all of these recommendations, the Planning Council has endeavored to promote the distinctive mission of New Hampshire's only public university.
This report is now transmitted to the President, who will schedule the implementation of those recommendations he approves. In addition to the work that remains to be done with elements of this report, recommendations will be forthcoming from the Athletic Advisory Committee and from a specially appointed committee to review Alumni Affairs and the UNH Foundation, to be assimilated into current planning. The charge to the Planning Council was to address a specific budget shortfall, but the principles that guide these choices will be affirmed in this process and will serve the University for the long future.
Independent reports from the six task forces were sent forward to the Planning Council in October. The recommendations included in these reports were, in some cases, overlapping and even competing, and certain subjects were left out of consideration. The first objective of the Planning Council was therefore to digest and evaluate the recommendations, to organize them around common themes or topics, and to fill in the gaps. The Planning Council understood that, in order to maintain the support of Trustees and to satisfy the original charge, this plan should be comprehensive and coherent. It should be built on principles that are firmly established in the history and character of the University and that will serve the University well in the future. In this sense, the report of the Planning Council was meant to take a long view, even as its immediate purpose was to bring current operating budgets into balance.
In this process, certain ideas and emphases, some of them new to planning at the University, took the foreground. Not all of these ideas are easily reconciled, but all are prominent in this plan.
In this process, we must also try to protect the University's reputation for quality in general undergraduate education, for the practical reason that this reputation helps to draw good students to the University. UNH is seen as oriented to the liberal arts and sciences, even as it offers a wide array of academic programs, both liberal and professional; classes are thought to be relatively small, and senior faculty are thought to be involved in teaching even beginning courses; the tradition continues of special attention to student writing; undergraduate research is invoked as an ideal that is afforded at least to stronger students; the campus has an attractive residential ambiance and, importantly, looks much smaller than it really is. In ways like this, the University has found a niche in a regional market dominated by private colleges and universities, such that even our steep out-of-state tuition seems a good family investment.
There is no denying that, at UNH as elsewhere, quality measured by such a criterion as the size of lower division undergraduate classes has already been compromised as instructional budgets have been stretched. New teaching technologies may help to stretch budgets further if the up-front costs can be afforded, and recommendations of this kind are included in this report. But the Planning Council does not regard credit-hour production as the primary problem behind the budget deficit--or as its primary solution. By objective measures, the UNH faculty is remarkably productive with respect to teaching and the other elements of the University mission. Indeed, this report stresses the importance of capitalizing on the special talents of faculty, staff, and students in the changes that are envisioned for the University.
We affirm that these people and the interactions among them are what constitute the University, not the buildings or equipment which represent capital investments from the past. Looking forward, UNH will be advantaged by the extensive building program of recent years, insofar as new and renovated facilities improve the conditions for learning and students are attracted to a vibrant residential campus. For the next phase of history at the University, however, the focus of development should be the core activities of teaching and learning. Indeed, by formal vote, the Planning Council recommends that no further major capital expenditures be approved except as reviewed and approved by the University community as a whole, specifically including the Council of Deans. Thereby, the transfer to plant funds for these purposes will be kept to an absolute minimum.
In the effort to bring our operating budget into balance, the Planning Council has evaluated ongoing commitments from the standpoint of programmatic priorities and recommended to reduce or eliminate what is peripheral. We have also made a principle of protecting the people themselves--faculty, staff, and students--against the consequences of the changes that we recommend by implementing these changes over time.
The values that inform this report are the distinctive values of the contemporary public research university. The standard tri-partite mission of higher education--teaching, scholarship, and public service--has a special application in this kind of institution. To insure that this report is grounded in the distinctive mission of the University, the Planning Council has incorporated the current work of the academic department chairs toward a revised academic plan. The chairs have reworked the statement of mission, and we advance that statement as an appendix to this report (Appendix A), with the expectation that a new academic plan will incorporate the strategies recommended here.
This report is structured according to priorities set by the Planning Council in response to the task force recommendations. That is, the Planning Council has developed a flexible plan that can be implemented at different levels, according to further budget projections. The first set of recommendations should be implemented as quickly as possible: these are viewed by the Planning Council as positive choices for the University, whatever the circumstances. Recommendations that are ranked in the second priority list are preferred choices for meeting a budget shortfall. Those in the third priority list are offered reluctantly, only because the shortfall is so great that sacrifices must be made. The Planning Council offers recommendations on this third list with the understanding that they will be implemented only if University budgets are not brought into balance by implementing the first two sets of recommendations. The Planning Council recognizes that genuine damage will be inflicted upon the University if recommendations on this third list are implemented. In evaluating these choices, the Planning Council operated by repeated discussions and formal votes, and each recommendation has majority support. Task force recommendations that the Planning Council does not endorse are not advanced as part of this report.
Recommendations are not organized within priority categories according to budget task force domains. Rather, they are ordered according the Planning Council votes, with higher ranked (preferred) recommendations appearing higher on the list. Related recommendations and parts of recommendations are separated if they were considered separately.
About recommendations that affect academic programs in particular, the Planning Council, like the Academic Programs Task Force, relied heavily on judgments from the Deans' Council. Attached to this report is the so-called Provost's List from the report of the Academic Programs Task Force (Appendix B). At the direction of the Provost, the reviews identified on this list are already being implemented, independent of the Planning Council process. Any budget savings that are realized in this way will be claimed for the University and will affect the budget shortfall and the status of Planning Council recommendations in turn, but inclusion of this list with this report does not constitute Planning Council endorsement of any of its individual items.
Certain recommendations offer estimates of new revenues or expenditure reductions that are contingent on approval outside the University; others require further evaluation before dollar figures can be posted. This is to say, how far down the priorities for reallocation the University should go will depend not only on the size of the shortfall but also on what can be implemented from among the preferred choices.
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