Volume 35 Number 9	Edmonton, Canada	January 15, 1999
http://www.ualberta.ca/~publicas/folio

SU president Sheamus Murphy: crunching numbers

Despite a year of unprecedented student input and cooperation with administration in the tuition issue, the Students' Union says they are prepared to argue against a proposed 6.7 per cent tuition increase because they say they've found $5.2 million the University of Alberta could save.

"The board raises tuition not because they want to but because they have to, or so they claim. We dispute that fact," said SU president, Sheamus Murphy. "We believe there are other sources they can go to for increased revenue. We also think there are some areas of the university that might not be as efficient as could be."

The Graduate Students' Association (GSA), on the other hand, said they "reluctantly support" the proposed 6.7 per cent increase. In a prepared statement, the GSA said they "felt the university administration, academic staff, non-academic staff and the Board of Governors have made a concerted and sincere effort" to keep the tuition increase below the maximum level. Grad students were concerned cuts to faculty budgets would "harm the quality of education.and affect grad students directly through the elimination of graduate assistant, sessional and new faculty positions."

By comparing the U of A to Canada's Top 5 universities, the SU executive concluded that while U of A salaries were low, staff benefit costs were high, almost double those at the other universities. It also argued the Faculty of Extension was losing money and charged too little for non-credit courses; as a result, students were subsidizing an inefficient operation "that does not benefit undergraduate students."

U of A's vice-president (finance and administration), Glenn Harris, said an across-the-board comparison between universities is not possible because accounting and reporting practices are different. "When you take a closer look at the [SU] data, their conclusions are not supportable." In addition, the data were not audited and the terms of reference are loosely defined, he said.

To arrive at their figures, the SU purchased a copy of reports produced by the Canadian Association of University Business Officers (CAUBO) which collects data from all universities through Statistics Canada. Then, using the latest data available (1996), the executive compared the sources of general operating revenues at the University of Alberta with those of comparable sister universities - Calgary, Toronto, British Columbia, McGill and Montreal.

The executive felt their battle last year for a less than maximum tuition increase failed "because we didn't have the numbers to support it. We had them on the heartbeat argument.but we didn't have them on the university budget," said Murphy.

This year, as a result of their number crunching, the SU believes it can show the university is "over-reliant on tuition and underperforming in revenue generation." Said Murphy: "[The university] keeps going to tuition fees because it's the easy thing to do, it's the easy way out."

Murphy is the first to admit the SU analysis "is not scientific" but he does want the board, especially the new members, to think about their arguments. "The board members have seen this debate unfold in a way it never has before," he added. "We're just saying, if we're wrong, then tell us and justify it."

Looking at the U of A's non-credit courses, the SU found the Faculty of Extension was operating at a loss of about $3 million while its counterpart at the University of Calgary had a modest profit of $166,000. Extension operations at each of the four other universities produced, on average, a loss of almost $1.5 million.

By increasing extension non-credit course fees, but still only charging "half of what our peers charged, we could generate an extra $1 million. If we restructure the Faculty of Extension so that it only lost half of what it currently loses.we can save another $1.3 million from our core operating budget."

Not so, says extension dean, Dr. Randy Garrison. "Extension courses make money. All extension programs and courses recover all their direct costs and then some." Extension gets a base operating budget of $1.5 million from the university. Said Garrison: "The subsidy, in essence, goes to our faculty. We are a faculty, like any other faculty on campus, and our faculty sit on boards, do research and teach." Extension also gets a direct provincial government grant for one program, government studies.

Vice-president Glenn Harris said U of C numbers "indicate no operating subsidy at all; therefore, they show a modest profit. Calgary is only reporting the direct costs of its programs, not their overhead costs." Factor this in, said Harris, and the two programs are similar. U of A's Faculty of Extension had excess revenues in 1995 of more than $150,000, said Garrison.

But, argued the SU, money given to extension, from the province and from the university, is money taken away from undergraduate students.

Not so again, said Dean Garrison. Undergraduate students in other faculties take extension courses and can get transfer credits in business, engineering and oil sands technology. Currently, extension is working with agriculture and forestry for a block transfer of courses. This is happening in the face of a 65 per cent decrease in extension's base funding since 1991. Over the same period, non-credit course fees have risen anywhere from 50 to 170 per cent.

"University of Calgary uses outside facilities, like hotels, for its business clientele; therefore, it charges more for courses. It's a very different market," said Garrison. More important, there's a provincial mandate for extension's existence at U of A. "A public institution like this one has an obligation and a responsibility for outreach. U of A has had that responsibility since 1912," said Garrison.

Still, Murphy feels the extension faculty should work towards being a completely self-funding operation within the university. And another area in which the SU wants to see changes is the costs of staff benefits.

Vice-president Harris said it appears benefit costs are out of line but, in reality, they are comparable to the other universities. Any apparent difference is due to the 1995-96 accrual of liabilities associated with retirement payouts that were part of the faculty renewal program. (Full accrual is part of new accounting standards, and U of A was the first university to adhere to it.)

"Factor number two," said Harris, "is, in this province, we pay a higher cost towards our pension plan because of an unfunded liability." The University of Toronto, for example, had a "full pension contribution holiday" due to massive surpluses, said Harris.

But during a financial crunch, it's incumbent on administration to look everywhere for savings, said Murphy. And the SU wants university employees to start paying for some of their benefits, just as SU employees do. Applying the SU rates and ratio of single/family coverage to the 7,150 university employees, the executive freed $2.9 million. Add this to their calculation of $2.3 million savings from extension, and voilà: $5.2 million extra budget dollars.

The Students' Union wants to split this amount three ways, explained Murphy: for salary increases, faculty programs and students. With $1.73 million going to students, this would cut the proposed tuition increase to 4.6 per cent, said Murphy.

"We don't expect the administration to be able to do this - we don't know that they can. We want to hear why they can't," said Murphy.

Still, the SU president said he's keeping all the numbers in perspective. "There are a lot of areas we're just not going to agree on. We can't expect to know the numbers better than [administration] does."

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