Florida’s two public land grant universities offer examples of the very different strategies that State University System (SUS) institutions are using as they spend their federal stimulus dollars.U.S. President Barack Obama’s Recovery and Reinvestment Act pumped hundreds of millions into the SUS.
FAMU has used all of its unrestricted stimulus dollars to save personnel jobs. The University of Florida has not.
FAMU received $7.4M education stimulus dollars for 2009-2010 and $8.4M for 2010-2011. It has used the money to support the salaries of staffers and permanent faculty members. FAMU has pared back on adjunct positions, travel, and new hiring.
Twenty-six FAMU employee salary lines are being paid with stimulus funds that will expire at the end of this fiscal year.
UF has taken a different approach with its stimulus dollars. Its administration has used a big portion of the stimulus to start easing liberal arts faculty members out the door. According to the Gainesville Sun, “UF used $6.4 million for final payouts to laid-off faculty and staff, and another $7.6 million was paid for early retirement incentives meant to prevent layoffs.”UF is using about $10M stimulus dollars to hire new faculty members. The new hiring is mainly in areas such as medicine which attract big research grants. After the stimulus dries up, UF will use tuition dollars to pay those salaries.
The laid-off liberal arts faculty positions are not likely to come back any time soon. UF's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has made headlines in recent years for its multi-million dollar deficit troubles. Back in 2006, the UF administration announced a three-year plan to downsize the college in order to address the ongoing budget problem.
“Our reading was they were taking this opportunity to redirect resources to change the direction of the institution,” UF faculty union president John Biro told the Sun.
FAMU might have to cut another $5M from its budget this year. Florida’s public universities also received notice that they might take another 15 percent across-the-board cut in 2011-2012. That would be $14.2M at FAMU.