WMU radically cuts research support despite significantly improved financial picture

A message from WMU-AAUP President Dr. Cathryn Bailey, and Vice President Dr. Whitney DeCamp

We’ve been hearing a lot of good news lately about research achievements, enrollment, and state appropriations. Whether or not the picture really is so rosy, you can imagine our surprise at the University’s stepped up plan to slash support for faculty scholarship. New amounts for travel and scholarship support have been established according to WMU’s website, and here are the dollar figures for the support funds that are accessible to all faculty.

• Travel (FRTF): $133

• Publication and exhibitions (PPP&E): $13

Keep reading to learn more, but don’t expect these shockingly low numbers to change as you read on.

Historic Achievements

In the September 14 update on enrollment, President Montgomery noted a “historic graduate student enrollment increase,” as well as various indicators of improvements in enrollment retention, and the “smallest decline [in enrollment] in more than a decade.” This, combined with the 6.4% increase in Michigan state funding for universities all suggest good news in terms of finances at WMU. Even on research specifically, things are (were?) looking up.

Scholarship takes different forms across the many disciplines, so it is difficult to quantify. It would be impossible, for example, to count all the research, creative activities, and other forms of scholarship and produce a composite measure of achievement. Dollars, of course, are easier to track, and more often reported by the university. Here was what President Montgomery had to say in his August 30 email about funded research over the past year:

“Externally funded research expenditures soared in fiscal year 2023, totaling $35.3 million—a 24% increase over FY22. Expenditures have not been this high in at least the past 21 years. Moreover, total awards hit $41.9 million, which is an 18% increase over the previous fiscal year.”

It sounds great. But, rather than match the “soaring” increases in funding with increased funds for faculty, we are seeing historically unprecedented cuts. With apologies to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, bragging about historic research achievements and then cutting support for research “is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

Massive Cuts to the Support for Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities

The webpage for the Faculty Research Travel Fund (FRTF) was recently updated to show the allocation of money each qualifying faculty member can expect with certainty:

“The initial reimbursement level for 2023-24 is $133. Per Memorandum of Action (MOA) 03/10, this is the total FRTF budget divided by all eligible bargaining unit faculty. If funds remain at the end of the fiscal year, it will be proportionally divided among faculty members who had approved travel, up to the amount of actual travel expenses.”

In case you think that number might be a typo, it’s worth noting that the webpage for the Final Preparation and Publication of Papers and Exhibition of Creative Works Fund (PPP&E) also shows an embarrassingly low amount:

“The initial reimbursement level for 2023-24 is $13. This is the total PPP&E budget divided by all eligible bargaining unit faculty. If funds remain at the end of the fiscal year, it will be proportionally divided among faculty members who had approved applications, up to the amount of actual expenses.”

Both websites newly refer questions about the funding amounts to “be directed to your RPC representative.” However, the Research Policy Council, a Faculty Senate committee, is not responsible for deciding how much funding the Administration allocates overall to the Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities Support Fund. That decision rests exclusively with the Administration.

Here are the four relevant funds, including the two competitive funds, and the award amounts for fiscal year 2023-24:

• Travel (FRTF): $133 (down from $2,500)

• Publication and exhibitions (PPP&E): $13 (down from $2,000)

• Faculty Research and Creative Activities Award (FRACAA): $10,000 (down from $15,000)

• Support for Faculty Scholars Award (SFSA): $2,000 (down from $3,000)

WMU has not provided aggregate budget totals, but the dramatic decrease in the total funding available from the Administration is self-evident from the figures above. Knowing that there are approximately 760 faculty as of this post, some inferences can be made about the funding amounts listed. If the minimum guarantee of $13 for publication and exhibitions was distributed to each faculty member, that would mean that WMU has allocated $10,000 total for that spending bucket. Compare this to the $61,039 distributed for publication and exhibition in fiscal year 2022-23. Similarly, the much more widely used fund for faculty research and travel would appear to be capped at about $101,000 for this year, with $133 the minimum guarantee per faculty. Contrast that figure with $367,961, the 2022-23 fiscal year expenditure for faculty research and travel.

The phrasing on the website promises that unspent funds will be proportionally divided among the recipients at the end of the fiscal year (June 30, for anyone wondering how long it might take for reimbursements to be processed). Whatever number that ends up being, it will clearly be massively insufficient if the two funds are slashed down to tiny fractions of the previous years expenses – 16% and 27% by our calculations. This is in addition to the logistical and practical nightmare for faculty who want to publish, exhibit, and travel, but won’t be able to assess the level of support from WMU.

A June 23 email from Dr. Remzi Seker, Vice President for Research and Innovation, referred to $300,000 being the “recurring budget” for the Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities Support Fund. Whatever was meant by “recurring,” the figure is far less than typical. In the decade prior to the pandemic, the typical annual WMU allocation was $475,000. It appears, based on available information, to have never dipped below $445,000 between fiscal years 2009-10 and 2019-20. With rising costs, support for faculty research should be increasing commensurately. Instead, not only has WMU failed keep up with inflation, administrators have now further drastically slashed support. Whether the total amount provided is $300,000, or perhaps a more generous $350,000, or even some other slightly better figure, it fails to live up to the historic standard, which was never overly generous in the first place.

How much longer can WMU continue to claim to be a research institution if it is not willing to spend as much on the research support fund for the entire faculty body as it spends on the salary and benefits for a single executive administrator? Will administrators be subject to the same constraints being placed of faculty? Perhaps a new Vice President for Saving Money could investigate further.

The crisis here is not just for individual faculty seeking to fund their professional expenses, or faculty members calibrating professional decisions to an amount they can subsidize with their personal savings. That is bad enough. But the crisis is one of WMU’s increasingly suspect claim that we are an institution that values research and that our trajectory as an institution is one of soaring excellence.

Impact

With only $133 in guaranteed funding for research travel, how will faculty continue to present at and attend conferences? In most professional associations, this is not even enough to cover the registration fee, let alone airfare and lodging. (Actually, $133 is the per diem rate to reimburse a one-night hotel in city such as Detroit or Houston; places such as Chicago, New York, and San Francisco tick up to as much as $330 for one night’s stay.) Some departments can provide (small) additional support, but even then the amount varies substantially and creates further inequity between the disciplines. The fact is that this change will result in most faculty being forced to either pay for their travel themselves, or simply discontinue attending conferences. Surely the Administration will be disappointed when research productivity drops in subsequent years as faculty miss out on a vital component of networking, learning, and collaboration.

Likewise, with publication models shifting in favor of open access publishing, the effective discontinuation of support will decimate the ability for faculty to publish in open access journals. Although there are many journals that allow an author to select the old subscription-based model, the changing market makes that choice counterproductive: fewer people will read the publication, and the research will therefore have a smaller reach. The fund is also designed to support the exhibition of creative works, and an amount of $13, probably less than you give your teenage kid in lunch money for a week, is absurd.

In addition to how this affects scholarship productivity in general, we also must consider how this affects some faculty differentially. Who is most likely to see paying for travel themselves as necessary? We would assume it will be our untenured colleagues, who are evaluated on their scholarship at regular intervals, with positive reviews needed in order the keep their jobs. These early-career faculty are among the lowest paid and most vulnerable faculty – and among the most likely to seek jobs elsewhere if they are inadequately resourced at WMU. One faculty member, upon hearing the news about travel funding cuts, texted a friend at another university to vent. The friend replied with a description of the support they get, and a link to a posting for an open position at their university. How can WMU retain its faculty under these conditions?

This is certainly obvious to any faculty member reading this, but it should be highlighted that this issue, although financial, is not about salary or benefits. The ability to publish articles, to exhibit creative work, to present research at conferences, and to engage in other forms of scholarship is not, as a human resources perspective might say, a “benefit.” These are the tools needed for faculty to do their jobs and fulfill the university’s research mission. Not only do we individual faculty members deserve better, then, but so does our entire university. As a research-intensive university, Western Michigan University cannot afford to make such shortsighted, irresponsible fiscal decisions.