UH wrestles budget realities
By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer
The projected elimination of hundreds of classes at Hawai'i's community colleges couldn't come at a worse time.
Fall enrollments are up, and education officials expect the number of high school graduates to jump in the next few years, signaling that even more classes will be needed.
But $12 million in budget cuts and spending restrictions ordered in the past few months — and the possibility of more — signal that tough decisions lie ahead for a state university system that had thought its worst days had ended with the end of the recessionary 1990s.
The result is that administrators must contemplate not only eliminating classes but creating larger class sizes, trimming programs, cutting back on classes taught by lecturers, freezing new hires, even raising tuition and cutting waivers — all of which have serious implications for students.
The picture is just as gloomy in the rest of the country, as state universities tighten their belts while trying to cope with record enrollments. It has meant slashing classes while raising tuitions because of budget shortfalls brought on by serious economic downturns in virtually every state.
Recent reports note that 1,000 students had to forgo beginning Spanish at the University of North Carolina; Virginia Tech eliminated an education major and suspended mandatory history classes; and the University of Illinois canceled about 1,000 classes on hundreds of subjects.
In Hawai'i, "The demographics are such that the populations coming out of high school will continue to rise until about 2008-09, so we're going to have increasing demand," said David McClain, vice president for academic affairs for the University of Hawai'i system.
He said these kinds of issues are usual each fall when classes begin, and he trusts that because the situation is so fluid, the picture will change for spring.
No relief foreseen
But at the moment, things are so dire at UH-Manoa that Rodney Sakaguchi, interim vice chancellor for administration, finances and operations, is looking at ways to cut back on postage, conserve water and reduce the electric bill, including such steps as encouraging people to turn off lights every time they leave a room and make sure computers are off overnight.
The kind of budget problems forcing such cuts aren't expected to disappear anytime soon. The governor is awaiting word from the Council on Revenues by mid-September to see whether more restrictions (which cover money that has been budgeted but cannot be spent) are needed or if she can ease those in effect now.
And yet UH is one of the few state universities that hasn't turned to big tuition increases, which are boosting student costs by as much as 26 percent at some colleges. That is being reassessed at UH, although university President Evan Dobelle has said he doesn't want to impose further increases.
Manoa is in the midst of a five-year, phased tuition increase of approximately 3 percent per fiscal year through 2005-06. Also, administrators are looking at how they might modify the student waiver program, which provided $17 million in full or partial waivers to 7,630 students in fiscal 2002.
While Hawai'i's seven community colleges are facing a total of $2.5 million in new restrictions mandated by the governor, the flagship UH-Manoa campus is taking the biggest hit, with $6 million under the governor's latest restrictions on top of $2 million in cuts made by the Legislature last session. And, UH-Hilo is restricted by $700,000, UH-West O'ahu is restricted by about $100,000, and the system's administration has a restriction of about $600,000.
That amounts to a 4.5 percent drop in the budget from a year ago, Sakaguchi said.
Manoa administrators are wrestling with how and where to make trims — whether an across-the-board percentage cut that could do serious harm to smaller programs, or trimming more deeply in specific programs. Deans are being asked to voluntarily restrict budgets by 2.5 percent, but most of the cuts are expected in the spring semester.
Searching for solutions
Every dean and college at Manoa is looking at ways to trim costs — from plans to eliminate part-time lecturers to putting a hold on new hires.
Full-time tenured faculty are guaranteed salaries from state general funds, but non-tenured and part-time faculty are at risk of losing jobs or having cuts made in the number of classes they teach.
McClain has been meeting with the chief academic officers of all campuses to look for solutions, including using distance learning.
At Hawai'i's community colleges, more than 200 classes are expected to be lost this year on three of the largest O'ahu campuses.
No room in class
Honolulu Community College professor Karen Hastings said she has never had so many requests for "overrides" — exceptions to the rule that restricts class size.
"I've had 43 students ask," said Hastings. "I just don't have any spaces."
However, as classes with lower enrollments are folded into one another, efforts are being made to keep the integrity of the curriculums and core requirements so that graduation won't be affected.
"We're putting our money in fall and hoping that things change in the spring," said Elizabeth Ashley, director of the enrollment management group at Windward Community College, which is not cutting classes for fall but is looking at a cut of 25 in the spring.
"Or perhaps the budget cuts are not going to be as deep as we fear," said Ashley. "But it's just now becoming a reality that we cannot avoid."
Even the loss of elective courses can be painful.
For HCC fashion-design student Kiniokahokuloa "Kini" Zamora, 19, there will be no way he can take an important technical class before he graduates at Christmas. He signed up, but the class was canceled because of insufficient enrollment.
"I'm taking the swimsuit class instead, but I really wanted to learn alterations," he said. "It's a more technical, difficult class. But now I won't get it."
Zamora is applying to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.
"I was kind of irritated because that's what we go through college for, to learn," he said. "Hopefully, they offer that class in New York."
'Bursting' at LCC
Although higher fall enrollments across the 10-campus UH system mean more tuition income, the numbers are straining the teaching corps, especially with full-time community college faculty receiving a workload reduction of one course this year as part of their union contract.
"We're bursting here," said Doug Dykstra, interim chief academic officer at Leeward Community College. LCC faculty were told a week ago that under the "worst-case scenario" 250 classes would be cut this year, but administrators scrambling to find solutions have revised that to about 105 classes — 35 this fall and about 70 in the spring.
But that means asking faculty to raise the head count by five in each class (to around 30 or more) and enrolling maximum numbers of students in classes taught by lecturers in the spring so that tuition covers the cost of those classes.
Dykstra estimates he needs an additional $400,000 for spring to run 100 essential classes in writing and math, courses in which head counts are kept low. He has only $100,000.
"These are the basic academic skills classes, which is what our students need. They're capped at 25 per class for math and 20 for English writing."
And so the university system gropes for answers, still staggering under cuts that began a decade ago as Hawai'i struggled through the 1990s.
As one administrator said: "People seem to just think that Manoa's big so we can absorb cut after cut. But we've been cut for so long something has to give."
Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.
