A well-placed source at UH Manoa says there have been more than 15 administrative-professional-technical staffers laid off recently without warning, complete with the experience of being escorted to pick up personal items and then immediately escorted off campus. Those involved reportedly had all been in their jobs for less than three years and had no union protections.
If true, these would appear to be the first warm-body job losses at UH in some years.
Also from UH–some critical observations about the state of the Manoa campus made by a team of mainland academics as part of a review of programs in the College of Social Sciences completed earlier this month. I’ve added the emphasis in the following excerpts. These general comments preceded reviews of individual programs within the college, which ran the gamut from critical to relatively glowing.
Graduation rates:
…the 9% four-year graduation rate and 40% 5-year graduation rates on the M?noa campus are extremely low. Even when one takes into account the financial and educational background of the students, these graduation rates are far below those found at peer institutions. No one at the college, campus, or university level seems to take responsibility for addressing this situation. Faculty, staff, and administrators do not appreciate the huge financial burden this long time to degree places on students and on the institution. Changes are needed on many, many fronts if this situation is going to turn around.
Advising:
…though students praise the academic advising and mentoring they receive from the faculty within their field of study, there is uniform condemnation of the advising that occurs at the Arts and Sciences and university level. The student:advisor ratio in the Arts and Sciences is 529:1; it is 1,500:1 for students who have not yet declared their majors. Though the advising staff is excellent, supportive, and passionate about the work they do on behalf of students, the caseload makes it impossible for them to be effective. Advising is dramatically under-resourced.
Support for graduate education:
The very modest level of graduate student funding undermines the quality of graduate programs across the college. Although funding for graduate students varies widely across departments, there is not a single graduate program with adequate funds to recruit or support top students.
Fundraising:
We were surprised by how little focus there is on alumni relations and fundraising. There is a lack of clarity on the campus about who is responsible for leading these efforts. Over the past five years,
the college has raised only $4 million in private gifts, with half of that amount raised by the Osher Center. Given the large alumni base and its geographic proximity to the campus, there is a huge potential to deepen relationships with alumni and to dramatically increasing private giving. At the moment, there is no culture of private giving at the university, campus, college, or department level.
Space:
Space ranges from inadequate to totally unacceptable. The lack of space and the poor condition of the facilities make it difficult to recruit students, faculty, and staff. It undermines effective teaching and research. It can damage collections and other important research materials.
Campus leadership:
We are deeply concerned about the lack of effective campus and university leadership on many fronts – including research, undergraduate education, curriculum, advising, graduation rates, facilities, information technology, internal financial model, alumni relations, and fundraising. The success of the College of Social Sciences hinges crucially on the effectiveness of the campus as a whole.
Earlier this year, a number of UH Foundation staff were shown the door in similar fashion, not all based on seniroty but all with the same brusque, “you may clean out your desk while we wait to escort you from the building” style. I assumed it had not gained mention because these folks are not UH employees per se but, given the the comments above about the dismal state of fundraising, it certainly bears mention now since the Foundation is the fundraising arm of UH. It didn’t help that the person wielding the hatchet, and some of her recently arrived cronies get paid far more than those who actually raise the money and that those terminations may have enabled the continuation of those inflated salaries. Can you say Evan Dobelle or Virginia Hinshaw or . . . . . ?
the history of UH Manoa [can't speak to other campuses] will show a long, slow, steady decline into an inferior institution. There is no emphasis on excellence. There is an acceptance of mediocrity that comes from what culture or cultures I can’t say as I don’t know enough. It is bureaucratically so top heavy that it is now “upside down” in a sense that the institutional power is with the non-academics who perpetuate non-academic values. It should be in an “educational” receivership with outside management as the locals [who all, or almost all,] come from the local political power structure which, due to it’s distance from the center is evolving into exotic rather like the Darwin’s finches in the Galapagos adapted only to microenvironments. Couldn’t make it in a continental “real world”. It is a lack of competition that is common in Island economies. Most U.S. states of any size have two large state universities e.g. the Big Ten schools. They keep each other “honest” in a way that doesn’t occur here. the depths of dishonesty in the UH system are unfathomable.
Aloha,
(Feeling the need to chime in here. Please excuse the length and total lack of organization in what follows, it’s late and I have to get back to work quickly.)
I’m a student in the Arts and Sciences dept. and have to say that I couldn’t agree more with the excerpts of the report that you posted. At the same time I have to say that the quality of instruction that I have received has been nothing short of outstanding. My classes in the Speech department and in Peace Studies have been some of the most rewarding of my life. The professors are equal to the best I’ve had at other institutions, including one of my favorites, John Holdren.
It is almost insane that we are talking about losing parts of our institution while nobody but a small and committed group of students is even thinking about the profligate waste we see daily in our use of energy at UH. Though UH Manoa spends some 28 million dollars a year on energy, it is literally impossible to turn off the lights in parts of Hamilton Library. Not because the environment needs to be kept free of mold- the plastic tarps hanging from the ceilings are helping with that (I guess.) The workers want to be able to turn the lights out when the library is closed, but in many parts of the library, you just can’t turn them off. (learned this while doing an energy audit with the Sustainable Saunders group btw) This is only one example of hundreds. I would like to see local businesses hui up to sponsor green retrofitting of buildings at UH, as well as stimulus funds dedicated to that purpose.
I’m happy that there is analysis and review of the system, but concerned that student’s input is almost nowhere to be found in defining criteria, nor elsewhere in the process. The cuts that are coming, and those coming next year as well, will impact us profoundly, but as far as I am aware our input has not been considered. The students were almost uniformly unaware of the matter until it hit the papers. If our 4 year grad rate is now 7%, what will it be when so many of our profs are gone? Especially considering that our enrollment is growing so fast, how can it be an ethical choice to cut our roots? (Trim our dead branches, great. I’m willing to bet that the staffers who lost their jobs in your post were not dead branches, and I’m sure their salaries won’t make a bit of difference to the overall budget issues.)
I think UH is analogous to a rainforest ecosystem. The current breadth of departments and depth of their faculty has taken the institution’s lifetime to build. Though parts can be slashed and burned for short term economic savings, that decision may cause economic harm far out of proportion to the manini savings incurred. Not only that, but the existing web of talented competent educators and their support cannot easily be replaced. In fact, they may never be replaced.
Some brilliant person recently put forth this question- what if we rethought universities to include a problem solving synergistic focus? What if we brought departments together to come up with solutions to our biggest problems, housing, homelessness, lack of affordable health care, need for fast transition to renewable energy, etc. I have looked for that article for this post for a while now and having not found it, have to at least mention that it seems like a hell of a good idea. I bet it would do more for the overall economy in Hawaii than cutting people out.
Please recall the Honolulu Advertiser article of Feb 13, 2009,
“UH-Manoa more than justifies funding: Study shows it spawns many times over what it gets from state coffers”
“Every dollar of the General Fund spending on UHM translates into $6.34 of total business sales, $3.21 of employee earnings, and 35 cents of state taxes in Hawai’i,” said the report funded by the University of Hawai’i-Manoa’s Office of vice Chancellor for Administration, Finance & Operations.”
Best wishes to the staffers who lost their jobs. I sure hope they are going to be ok.
Thanks Ian, aloha,
Laurie Baron
ps my parents both graduated from UH in the 60′s. My son is at UH. My grandma even took classes at UH.
pps keep an eye out for next Spring’s dance concert. I catch the Spring Dance concerts at Kennedy faithfully and have been dazzled, uplifted, and touched every year not just by the brilliant performances and the art behind that, but how little they ask as a Department for how much they give. The dance studio is literally in the foul ball zone; the studio is pelted by balls during practice, often during class. The building is in semi-shambles. Dance an amazing and beautiful art form that I never fully appreciated until I started going to these concerts. If you catch it next Spring, I promise you’ll be glad you did.