Administrators have promised tenure and tenure-track faculty merit raises if Ohio University meets its enrollment targets next year, which would require about 100 additional in-state students or 50 out-of-state students. OU budget planners say it is too soon to tell whether those goals will be met, or if they are realistic.
The Budget Planning Council, a group of faculty, administrators and students that advises President Roderick McDavis on budget decisions, has been discussing the variables that could affect whether faculty see the raise pool next year.
The merit increase would come on top of a 1 percent across-the-board increase. In order to provide the merit increase, OU officials said they will need about $750,000 in additional tuition revenue.
It would take roughly 100 additional resident or 50 additional non-resident undergraduates to bring in the extra $750,000, said John Day, associate provost for academic budget and planning. OU had 21,303 students on the Athens campus this fall, a 3.1 percent increase over last year.
Beyond simply getting those additional students to campus in September, however, OU would have to retain new and current students through all of next year to earn the full $750,000. Day said OU tends to assume 95 percent retention from quarter to quarter.
Several members said the council has seemed in favor of giving the raises even if OU only gets partway to its enrollment target.
Faculty raised concerns in the past about whether enough faculty and classrooms are available to teach the students, but a report from the provost's office indicated room is available.
However, OU cannot simply consider increases in the number of students because several categories of students would not bring in revenue for the raise pool.
An increase in regional campus students would not assist in funding the merit raise pool and some other programs, such as the Ohio Program of Intensive English, are also factored out of the calculation because they keep the tuition they generate.
The council is struggling with whether to count graduate students toward the enrollment goal, Day and others said, because most graduate students receive some degree of tuition waiver. The council has considered putting money from paying graduate students into the raise pool and simply not counting graduate students who receive waivers, but has made no decision yet.
Undergraduates on tuition scholarships are another sticking point. Those students generate less revenue than their peers paying full tuition, but Day said those funds for scholarships from OU are already set aside, so those students should work toward the $750,000 goal. Students on endowed scholarships would count toward the $750,000 because their tuition comes from entirely separate accounts.
International students, who do count toward the raise pool, will also be difficult to factor in because OU does not have commitments from all of those students until the fall.
Day and Executive Vice President and Provost Pam Benoit, who co-chairs the council, said much of the debate has focused on when OU can safely say it has earned enough money to give the raises, as well as on whether there should be a pool even if revenue exceeds projections but does not reach $750,000.
Day explained that with so many different variables, the university will not be able to give particularly accurate progress reports.
There's so many ways to get there that you can't produce a simple scorecard for people to say
'You're making it you're 50 percent there ' like a fundraising drive
Day said. We can't have a little thermometer ... If it's a priority just fund it. That's why we're not trying to be that exact.
Benoit said it is a question of how much risk OU is willing to assume. If OU triggers the raise pool during Fall Quarter, before final enrollment numbers are in and before it knows retention rates through winter and spring, it could lose money.
How much risk are we willing to take? If we are not willing to take any risk
we'd wait until the end of the year ... But that's not going to be satisfying to people
Benoit said. We won't know these bits of information ... until much later in the school year.
Joe McLaughlin, chairman of Faculty Senate and a member of the council, said he thinks it is important to trigger the raise pool as early as possible.
I know they want to wait
understandably
until they see what fall enrollments are like
but they should have enough information - I believe - that they could be ready to go with end of October
first of November paychecks
he said, adding that faculty should be patient in waiting for data. It's very complicated
