YSU tries to stay within budget

The university has trimmed $500,000 from this summer's instructional budget.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Instructional costs for Youngstown State University's summer school program have historically run about $1.2 million over budget, but efforts are under way to reduce that red ink.
Dr. Robert Herbert, YSU provost, said the Academic Affairs Division has been able to trim about $537,000 in instructional costs from this year's program.
Program costs assessed to the instructional budget reached $3.8 million last year, and, like previous years, it exceeds the amount of money budgeted by about $1.2 million, Herbert said.
This summer's instructional budget allocation is set at $2,560,000, and every effort is being made to keep within that amount, he said.
One way to do that was to eliminate 52 scheduled classes that had nowhere near the university's minimum required enrollment of 15 students, Herbert said, a move he estimated will cut instruction costs by $220,000.
Efforts were made to ensure that no class essential to a student's progress toward a degree was eliminated, he said.
The university is still running 627 courses this summer.
Stipend elimination
An additional $207,800 was cut from the budget by eliminating all noninstructional stipends from that account.
Those are fees or wages paid to university employees whose work isn't directly related to instruction, such as employees who oversee student assessments, and internship coordinators, Herbert said.
Thirty people were affected, many of them doing work that actually doesn't have to be done in the summer, he said.
Those people will still be paid, but from the general fund rather than from the summer instructional budget.
Herbert said he also gave the Ohio Education Association (the faculty union) a proposal to allow instructors of courses with less than a full complement of 15 students to be paid on a pro-rated basis, determined by the number of students in the class.
Faculty members are paid by the workload (credit) hours of a course. The workload hour rate for faculty varies with each individual, based on their regular base salary.
The university's proposal, for example, would have paid an instructor of a 4 credit hour course with only 12 enrolled students at the rate of 3.2 workload hours.
Union rejects plan
The OEA rejected the proposal, he said.
Courses with fewer than 15 students can still be run, but the OEA contract provides that faculty be paid a maximum of two workload hours for such courses, Herbert said.
Some faculty members have complained that the arrangement is costing them about $5,000. However, it's saving the university $110,000, he said.
An OEA spokesman said the union had a number of problems with the university's pro-rated plan.
For one thing, preparation and presentation work for a class with 12 or 13 students is the same as would go into a course with 15 students (except for a couple of fewer tests to grade), yet the university proposal would pay the instructor less because of the lower number of students, the spokesman said.
gwin@vindy.com