KU budget cuts could mean larger classes, fewer offerings, say grad students, faculty
Abby Barefoot was on track to finish her doctorate at the University of Kansas this fall. But suddenly, $75 million in proposed budget cuts could derail those plans.
She faces losing her graduate teaching position as well as the tuition waiver that came with the job.
“There is so much up in the air,” said Barefoot, who is from Iowa and has been working toward her doctorate in American criminal justice reform and sexual violence for five years. “I don’t know if I will ever be able to teach at KU again, and that adds stress to finishing up my dissertation. I just don’t think a lot of thought has been put into this. Stop the cuts. That’s a good place to start. Have conversations about alternative cuts.”
About 1,100 graduate teaching assistants are instructing students, according to the Graduate Teaching Assistant Coalition, the GTA bargaining unit. They are worried and in some cases “terrified” that their education, as well as the education of undergraduate students, is in jeopardy if the university follows through with plans to cover a $75 million budget loss with them on the chopping block.
The coalition says the university plans to strip 440 — or 40% — of them of their tuition waivers and teaching stipends.
Student and faculty leaders are frustrated that the university isn’t saying what happens to all the classes GTAs teach if they are suddenly gone.
“There is a culture of secrecy at KU,” said Neill Kennedy, president of the coalition.
However, some speculate, “If GTAs are not there to teach those classes, the total number of classes KU can offer goes down,” said Nick Syrett, the chair on leave from the department of women gender and sexuality studies. “Or faculty have to teach more classes because no one, no students, are in favor of larger classes.”
KU officials did not address that speculation in a statement to The Star.
GTAs are paid a minimum $17,700 a year for teaching, on average, two eight-week courses per semester.
“We teach 40% of the classes at KU,” Kennedy said. “And we are not the lackeys of the faculty.” They are more than just a face in front of a lecture hall, she said. “We are on the front line of the one-on-one with students.”
“I teach about 100 students a year. Why do they need to cut from instruction?”
University officials blame the budget problem on COVID-19. KU lost nearly $72 million in revenues from enrollment, housing, dining and other areas when the pandemic landed. It was also hit with $44 million in expenses for personal protective equipment, testing, technology upgrades and reconfiguring the campus to mitigate virus spread.
The university has already cut $34 million. Officials project a $75 million shortfall for fiscal year 2022, which begins July 1.
In a statement to The Star, the university said it was leaving budget decisions up to individual departments.
This month, departments across the campus were instructed to report back by March 25 on how they planned to cut their already tight budgets.
Because the lion’s share of spending goes for salaries, department heads said their only option is to cut jobs.
“No tenure faculty salaries can be cut or reduced, so if we are going to cut the budget, almost every department will have to cut the GTA budget,” Syrett said. “It’s the only thing they can cut.”
“There are lots of reasons for GTAs to be angry,” he said. For some, losing their teaching position could postpone their education and stymie career goals if they have to leave before finishing their degree to work a job just to make ends meet.
Inside Higher Ed reported last summer that “Ph.D.s have a sell-by date, and in some disciplines, your value declines with alarming speed. It varies among disciplines.”
Also, Syrett said, the university had promised tuition waivers and teaching positions when these student researchers were admitted.
“Many people came to KU because they were told we were going to fund them for at least five years,” Syrett said. Many GTAs, depending on the research they are doing, get extensions to finish up their work.
“So now the university is breaking that promise, only they want us department heads to do it for them.”
Then there’s this: GTAs say many of them are persons of color and the only persons of color some students ever see as instructors during their time at the university. Taking away their teaching jobs takes a huge chunk of diversity out of the university’s teaching pool, said Kennedy, who did her undergraduate studies at KU.
“I’m a poor kid from Topeka, a Mexican American kid who is the first one in my family to graduate from college,” Kennedy said. Having GTAs she could relate to as an undergraduate student, she said, “changed my life.”
It’s one reason why KU’s Black Student Coalition this month has protested in solidarity with GTAs.
For Marcy Lynn Quiason, who’s been a GTA at the university for four years, losing her teaching position could be devastating.
“I would have to get a full-time job, one with health insurance,” Quiason said. “If that means working at Walmart then that means Walmart. It would change the trajectory of my life, but if it means choosing between me finishing my dissertation and being able to pay for my heart medication, the dissertation would have to wait.”
This story was originally published March 13, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
