At their annual retreat Friday in the Alumni Hall Ballroom, the Faculty Senate discussed the consequences and some potential responses to the budget crisis. Before adjournment, College Dean Edward L. Ayers said the University could best defeat the budget crisis through a large tuition increase.
Ayers emphasized that no immediate decision would be made, and that it is not his decision to make.
"Whether we have to implement them or not will depend on decisions made in Richmond and by the Board of Visitors and the leadership of the University," he said.
A tuition increase mostly would affect future students, who probably would be aware of the increase before applying here.
"We don't want to be subsidizing upper-middle class families," Ayers said. "With the rate we have now, in-state students pay for 28 percent of the cost of their education."
According to Ayers, the University cannot afford to subsidize students at such a high rate.
For those students who couldn't afford a sharp tuition jump, the University will work "to provide aggressive fellowship support," Ayers said.
Although Ayers saida tuition increase is "the most likely outcome," it is not the only one. "I will also work as hard as I can to raise private money," he added.
The key reason for a tuition hike is to enable the University to start hiring new and permanent faculty.
"To save money, that faculty will be junior faculty, who earn less than more senior scholars, and that junior faculty is more likely to be diverse," Ayers said.
As a result of budget constraints, the University now has "10 percent more temporary faculty than we would have normally," he said. "If the current trends continue for a couple of years, we could have temporary faculty as 20 percent of our faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences. That is a profound danger."
Twenty University faculty were offered positions elsewhere this past year. "Ten left, 10 stayed," Ayers said. "Almost all of those who left did so for private reasons, not from any sense of disappointment with U.Va."
Overall, senior faculty members rejected outside offers, while the junior faculty were more likely to accept.
The majority of junior faculty who left for other positions were minorities. The University as a whole lost seven or eight minority faculty; six of those in the College
"We can't afford to lose those faculty if we hope to build the sort of faculty we want and need," Ayers said.
University President John T. Casteen III addressed the other major faculty issue: the halt in pay-raises.
In the latest college rankings from U.S. News & World Report magazine, the University dropped from 28th to 35th in the category of faculty resources.
Casteen praised Ayers for enacting a hiring freeze last spring -- a move that drew much criticism at the time.
"We would be looking at layoffs if the dean hadn't done that," Casteen said.
Casteen said the administration also had managed to put together $6 million to offset budget cut damages, including $4 million that the Board of Visitors allowed them to draw from the unrestricted endowment.
Faculty Senate Chairman Michael Smith emphasized that 40 other states also are facing similar budget problems, often made worse by minimal state funding.
"State support has barely kept up with the rate of inflation, costs to universities have far exceeded it," Smith said.
The retreat concluded with the unanimous approval of a resolution supporting passage of the $846 million statewide capital construction bond referendum.
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