UNLV Faculty Alliance

I am stepping aside as NFA state board president

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 08:05:00 +0000

Dear colleagues and readers,

Later this month, I will assume administrative duties in the office of the Provost at UNLV, as Vice-Provost for Faculty, Policy and Institutional Research. In accordance with NFA state bylaws, I will become an associate member and step aside as board president. As of that date, Angela Brommel, our elected vice-president, will become NFA state board president. Angela and I have been working on a transition plan that will make her NFA president effective upon my resignation and culminate in the regularly scheduled state board meeting on September 14th. Those aspects of UNLV-NFA and NFA communications that have been my endeavor, including this blog, will be turned over to other officers or will cease to publish.

While logistically I will withdraw from the role of the president (and chair of the southern endorsement committee) at that time, and step aside from the state board after more than 5 years of service, my interest in and commitment to faculty advocacy and the work of NFA -- as well as my personal commitment to all of you, especially those I have worked so closely with for the past few years -- will not cease.

I remain available, at the request of NFA officers at the chapter or state board level, to provide any sort of guidance, information, or support that I can provide to the board -- especially for the important period of the 2013 legislature when we will be actively advocating for restoration of faculty compensation.

(Naturally any discussion of legal defense issues, especially concerning UNLV, must take place outside of my knowledge to avoid any conflict of interest.)

Upon the start of the university academic year, the NFA will communicate to its members and readers important developments over the summer in the governance of the organization and important steps the executive committee have taken to put the NFA on a sound financial and organizational footing, which has been our primary governance goal for several years. It is therefore a propitious moment for me to step aside, as well as a necessary one given my new position, which will still be one primarily of service to UNLV and NSHE faculty but which of course is incompatible with a formal leadership role in the NFA.

As I prepare to step aside, please allow me to close by thanking you -- colleagues, members, fellow officers, general readers, and especially those of you with whom I have worked closely for several years -- to express my heartfelt thanks, my respect and affection, and my continuing commitment to our shared values.

In solidarity,

Gregory Brown

President, Nevada Faculty Alliance, 2011-2012
Vice-President, Nevada Faculty Alliance, 2009-2011
President, UNLV Faculty Alliance, 2009-2011
Secretary, Nevada Faculty Alliance, 2007-2009
Co-Chair, NFA PAC Endorsement Committee, 2006-2012

Important part of ACA ruling for 2013 state budget

noreply@blogger.com (NFA-UNLV) — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 16:58:00 +0000

There's an important, and unexpected, component of the ACA ruling that is significant for our state's budget. Previously the Governor has said that while he supports a budget that would not cut higher education, or K-12, and would like to restore public service worker compensation, including faculty and staff pay, and even restore merit pay in the 2013-2015 budget, those priorities would be threatened by prospect of a rapid expansion in the Medicaid caseload as a result of the Affordable Care Act. Indeed, he repeated this concern this morning but noted that the consequences of the decision are "unclear."

He said Nevada "will prepare to meet the serious financial implication of this decision.
An analysis by the state in 2010 found that the law would cost the state $574 million between 2014 and 2019, mostly through increased Medicaid costs.
"The implications for Medicaid costs are still unclear, but Nevada will prepare to meet the serious financial implications of this decision," Sandoval said.

According to UNLV Boyd School of Law professor Stacey Tovino, the one part of the law that the Court struck down was the provision penalizing states if they did not increase their Medicaid caseload by withdrawing all Medicaid funding. Instead, the Court made explicit that States may choose whether or not to expand Medicaid eligibility (and thus Medicaid caseload and budget obligations). From the decision

As a practical matter, that means States may now choose to reject the expansion; that is the whole point.... Some States may indeed decline to participate, either because they are unsure they will be able to afford their share of the new funding obligations, or because they are unwilling to commit the administrative resources necessary to support the expansion. Other States, however, may voluntarily sign up, finding the idea of expanding Medicaid coverage attractive, particularly given the level of federal funding the Act offers at the outset.

Now, to be clear, this is not to say that we in Nevada should not be concerned with the vexing issue of how to make health care affordable especially for those of the least means. It does not mean that the longstanding Sophie's Choice for states between human services for those in need and public investment in higher education is any less acute. Nor does it diminish the corresponding need for a broad-based source of adequate revenue for the state.

But the decision does give states like Nevada more short-term discretion in how to avoid further cuts to education and to restore competaitve compensation in highly competitive labor markets like academia and does lift what had been presented as an insurmountable burden for the 2013 legislature.

NSHE faculty (still) have 401-K style retirement plan, not PERS

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 11:15:00 +0000

The Sun writes up some of the funny math in a so-called "study" of state retirement costs but fails to mention the most embarrassing howler in this out-of-state group's under-researched blog post: that since 1970, higher education faculty do not participate in PERS (except those who were enrolled in PERS prior to their employment in NSHE). Although part of the "report" is a list of 200 faculty at UNR and UNLV who will supposedly be paid a total of several hundred million dollars over the next 30 years, in fact over 93% of faculty (including non-instructional academic faculty) at the two universities (and nearly 90% of faculty across NSHE) are in precisely the sort of 401-K style, defined-contribution plan that the sponsors of the "study" recommend because it carries 0 liability for the state after retirement.

For this reason, the Nevada News Bureau covered the NSHE retirement plan as a "model pension" program over a year ago .

For those interested in some actual, empirically sound comparisons, we can turn to data from the 2011-2012 American Association of University Professors report on faculty compensation and benefits:

The national average for public 4-year universities is that retirement benefits cost the institution $10252 per faculty member, which amounts to 10.8% of total compensation. (And most universities also pay into social security, which on average costs the institution another $5383 per faculty member and another 6.2% of total compensation. Nevada state employees, including NSHE faculty, are not enrolled in social security, so the state does not bear this cost at all, nor are these benefits available to most NSHE faculty -- even though the authors of this "libertarian" study actually recommend social security enrollment as a way to cut costs for states and local governments!

(See Tables 10A and 10B for national averages of higher ed retirement programs.)

Testimony to Committee on Funding of Higher Education

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Tue, 22 May 2012 21:22:00 +0000

Remarks for Committee on the Funding of Higher Education, May 23, 2012

Gregory S Brown

Chair, Faculty Senate, UNLV (2011-2012)

President, Nevada Faculty Alliance (2011-2013)

Mr Chairman and members of the committee, thank you once again for the opportunity for faculty to address you on the funding formula. By way of introducing several of my UNLV colleagues and some of our students today, I’d like to report some of the reactions of the UNLV faculty expressed in several Faculty Senate discussions of this issue. Among the views that have been frequently expressed are three significant points we support in the proposal before you and two additional issues that we would urge the committee to consider:

1. We support that this process has generated enough public interest and new thinking that the Chancellor has pronounced the old formula “dead”. No one has felt more acutely than the faculty the loss of credibility that NSHE suffered from under the old formula, and we welcome a new formula, based upon outcomes, which rewards academic achievement.

2. We support the principle that has been frequently expressed as retention of student fees and tuition by the campus. While that formulation makes it sound as if the campuses would be retaining additional revenues, the real principle that has been proposed is that student fees and tuition should continue to be retained on campus but no longer figure in the formula and thereby offset state support. We believe the formula should distribute Nevada general fund dollars according to Nevada’s goals and respect student choice by allowing students to distribute fees and tuition through their enrollment choices.

3. We support the principle of allocating Nevada state dollars to support Nevada students, and keeping non-resident tuition outside the formula. Not only does this approach create an incentive for programs to achieve national and international prominence but it also clarifies the level of per student funding – Nevada allocation per Nevada student -- so that regional equity can be measured more clearly.

The two points that our faculty will urge the committee to address are adequacy of funding for the entire System and mission differentiation among campuses, based upon student learning outcomes.

1. The Chancellor’s proposal, as you know, adopts the current fiscal year as its baseline and proposes only to redistribute that fixed sum among our campuses.

a. We believe that the performance-based funding component, which you will discuss today, should provide a clear rationale for the state to restore some of the public support that has been cut in the past 4 years – by directing incremental investment to those campuses that have shown efficiency and productivity in generating degrees.

b. We also believe that the proposed discussion of local support for workforce development at community colleges, which is a part of how 29 of 51 states fund community colleges, is a necessary piece of the long-term solution.

c. Moreover, we believe that the proposed research factor for universities is an essential first step (if financially inadequate in the current proposal) towards providing a stronger platform for the generation of new revenue from grants and contracts.

d. In short, UNLV faculty believe that while the Chancellor has understandably (for political reasons) presented his alternative funding proposal as revenue-neutral, the committee should not overlook how the formula might establish an adequate level of funding. Even as faculty embrace a formula built upon principles of efficiency and productivity rather than merely cost, the view from the classroom is that adequacy of investment to fund the services our students need has not been sufficiently discussed to date.

2. Finally and the topic that has generated the most intense discussion among my colleagues, and which several of them will address today, is how our policies differentiate among the different tiers of our System – especially at the level of instruction that is common to all our campuses, lower-division undergraduate courses.

a. To date, this discussion has been raised almost entirely about cost – whether or not lower-division courses are more costly at a university or college. However, as the Chancellor has repeatedly stated, Nevada (unlike other states) has neither the resources nor the time at this juncture to undertake a cost study to answer that question, so any answer is speculative. Moreover, to focus solely on cost does not, in any meaningful sense, lead us to a new approach to funding higher education based on educational attainment. To focus only on cost in a revenue-neutral environment necessarily pits one campus or tier against another, to the good of none.

b. If as Regent Wixom has stated, first at the Boards’ strategic planning retreat last fall and then at this committee’s most recent meeting, the purpose of this exercise is to move from a formula based on cost inputs to one based on the value-added of our outputs, then the real question the committee ought to ask is not if it is more or less expensive to offer lower-division instruction at a university or college – but, instead, what are the student learning outcomes of a lower-division course at a university or college? And, should we expect them to be the same?

c. Ms. Gansert noted, correctly, at the most recent meeting that “ENG 101” is the same on each campus. She was right to say so. Precisely because ENG 101 (and ENG 102) are the mandatory, introductory writing courses we offer on each campus for first-year students, and these courses do have identical learning objectives for the students in terms of what students should be able to do after they have completed the course. Consequently these courses have highly comparable syllabi, staffing, and student assignments. As a result, we would expect them to generate comparable learning outcomes were we to assess the results systematically. The same is true for the mandatory first-year Math courses (Math 120-131) and, by and large, for the mandatory first-year courses that fulfill Constitution requirements (HIST 100, PSCI 100, 101). All these courses should be expected to have comparable learning outcomes on any campus. However, these courses represent less than 6% of the student credit hours achieved at UNLV.

d. Nearly 50 % of the credit hours students earn at UNLV are in lower-division courses other than required composition, math or Constitution. Do we expect these lower-division first year courses in Sciences, or Business, or Urban Affairs, or Performing Arts, or History to have the same student learning outcomes at a university as at a college? Our faculty do not believe so.

i. We believe for instance that lower-division Science courses that offer opportunities for laboratory research have demonstrated outcomes, in terms of better preparing students for success in upper-division science courses and thus for completing degrees in STEM fields, especially for Latino and African-American students traditionally under-represented in the sciences. I have submitted a short article (“Learning by Doing”) supporting that thesis, based on a February 2012 report from the Presidents’ Council on Science and Technology, that undergraduates exposed to laboratory research in their first year of study at universities like UCLA and the University of Texas were more likely to major in a STEM field and more likely to achieve their degree in a timely manner. I have also submitted a short list of undergraduate summer research opportunities in the Sciences at UNLV that are available to students from their first year on campus. We will shortly hear from two scientists on this topic.

ii. We believe that lower-division courses which offer students the opportunity to conduct research in a research library result in specific and measurable learning outcomes, and we have many lower-division courses that for this reason build library research into the syllabus. I have submitted several examples of syllabi from different disciplines with the library research assignments highlighted, and we will hear more from a librarian shortly.

iii. We believe that lower-division learning communities, in which small groups of students enroll for first-year courses in a block schedule of university courses, have achieved measurable improvement in learning outcomes for first-year Greenspun Urban Affairs majors. We will hear from the director of this program shortly.

iv. We believe that the Lee School of Business Global Entrepreneurship Experience program, which offers students, from their first year, direct experiences in global entrepreneurship and in advanced economic research provides a learning outcome is distinct from lower-division courses in the same disciplines on other campuses.

v. These examples, we believe, suggest that at the level not of cost but of policy priorities, the state and the System ought – through the new funding formula – to continue to discuss the major philosophical principle that has been articulated in this process, of a focus on student educational attainment. The formula should address what student learning outcomes are achieved, should measure those outcomes in qualitative terms, and should in the end find a way to encourage and reward the distinct achievements rather than argue about cost inputs.

NSHE Council of Chairs statement on PEBP

noreply@blogger.com (NFA-UNLV) — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 17:17:00 +0000

This statement was delivered by Tracy Sherman (CSN) on behalf of the NSHE Council of Faculty Senate chairs to the Board of Regents on Friday April 20.

On PEBP, some small but significant steps have been taken in the last few weeks. The PEBP Board at its rescheduled meeting on March 29 did allocate – as NSHE and UNLV representatives had sought – all its projected excess reserve to reduce out-of-pocket costs for faculty and staff and their families in 2012-2013, primarily by enhancing HSA/HRA employer contributions for next year.

While this will bring some monetary benefit for most faculty and staff for next year (though not, unfortunately, those enrolled in the HMO plan), it is heartening as well that the public discussion of PEBP's excess reserves highlights the point that many faculty and staff believe – and which the NSHE Task Force continues to study – that competitive health coverage can be made available to NSHE faculty and staff without additional cost to the state.

The PEBP Board also, at the urging particularly of NSHE faculty and staff, approved state subsidies for domestic partners of state public service workers enrolled in PEBP, on the same basis as spouses.

The PEBP Board, however, chose not to alter the basic plan design, as we had sought, to offer participants a "middle tier" (between HMO and the current high-deductible option) that would offer predictable and clearly comprehensible costs for office visits and prescription drugs. All faculty and stuff should continue to advocate for such an alternative for NSHE in the 2013-2015 biennium, either from PEBP or from another insurance pool.

NSHE Council of Chairs statement to PEBP board

noreply@blogger.com (NFA-UNLV) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 22:39:00 +0000

On behalf of the over 3500 NSHE faculty and professional staff across the state, represented by the NSHE Council of Senate Chairs and by the Nevada Faculty Alliance, we urge the PEBP Board, as it sets rates and considers modifications to plan design for FY2012-2013, to devote all available resources, including excess reserves and the scheduled increase in employer premiums, to slow the skyrocketing increase in out-of-pocket costs for public service workers and their families. We urge specifically that you

1. Subsidize domestic partners, which we have supported for nearly 10 years.

2. Reduce premiums on all PEBP participants to reverse the alarming increase in the number of our colleagues declining coverage altogether.

3. Address the alarming increase in HMO premiums for southern Nevada.

4. Enhance contributions, at the beginning of the contract year, to the HSA/HRA accounts and clarify how this money can be used.

The faculty and staff of NSHE have expressed, in numerous public venues, our concern over the negative consequences to our System's competitiveness in an active market for skilled academic talent. Particularly in light of the diminution of salaries by 4.8%, in light of a national trend in which higher ed salaries increased by 1.9% last year, the state of Nevada and thus PEBP ought to be making its highest priority the shaping of a benefits plan that is as competitive as possible given available resources committed by the state and by PEBP participants, of which NSHE workers represent about one third.

Included in that one third are our colleagues among the classified state workforce on NSHE campuses. For these workers, a majority of whom earn less than $50,000 per year, the sharp increases in out of pocket up-front costs resulting from the conversion to a high deductible plan (an increase of several thousand dollars per year for some families) have forced a sharp increase in the number foregoing care, either by opting out of insurance altogether or by declining prescribed cure ,especially by reducing medical dosages below prescribed levels to cut costs.

The impact of the conversion of the PPO to a high-deductible plan, accompanied by a sharp increase in premiums and in co-insurance, and the sharp increase in premiums for HMO enrollees (especially in the south, where rates increased more sharply due to the blending of subsidies) has had a well-documented, negative effect on our workforce. The UNLV survey of faculty and staff conducted in November found that in addition to an unacceptably high 3.2% of workers who declined medical insurance entirely due to costs, over 60% of those who are covered reported either skipping prescribed medications or taking medications less frequently than doctor's orders to reduce out-of-pocket expense.

Lest one think this is merely a matter of faculty and staff cutting back on vanity care, our survey identified three instances of faculty or staff skipping prescribed insulin to control diabetes because they could not afford the cost of either the insulin pump or of the insulin itself at the end of the pay period.

We have therefore urged -- and continue to urge the Board -- to consider a "middle tier" plan, if not for FY13 than for the next biennium, that would allow participants to better anticipate (and budget for) the out-of-pocket cost of medical care through a separate prescription drug deductible and fixed co-pays for doctor's visits.

When an enhancement of coverage options was first suggested to the Board last fall, the response was that modifications to plan design would not be financially feasible or would come at such a high rate of participant premium as to be unviable. However, it appears from the program's last two quarterly financial reports that in actual cash terms, the program is accruing money to its reserve rapidly. Whereas last spring, during the 2011 legislative session, PEBP staff told a legislative committee that if the plan did not switch from a conventional PPO model to a high deductible plan, participant overutilization would drive the program to lose approximately $80m in the 2011-2013 biennium. However, it now appears that at the end of the 2010-2011 plan year, when we abandoned the conventional coverage paradigm, the plan had accrued between $20m and $43m in excess reserves -- above those necessary to meet the cost of care incumbered not but not yet claimed and of catastrophic claims. As of September 30, 2011, the plan had an excess reserve of $43, some $32m above that which PEBP had projected for the legislature in its work program.

And the most recent financial report reports that while the projected end-of-year excess reserve is down to $29.8m (due to the loss of an anticipated $12.5 in federal grants, not due to any increase in claims or coverage), the actual available reserve is up to $55 -- some $44m above what was projected in the budget submitted to the legislature. That is quite far to miss the mark and participants really do deserve an explanation.

Even more so, we deserve health coverage, which is the primary mission of the program, not the controlling of costs or the accrual of reserves. The state has allocated money for health coverage, participants have dutifully paid their premiums and deductibles, and the program appears to have netted at least $10m last quarter. Moreover, next year the program will receive a sharp increase in employer-side contributions, representing an increase in revenue of over 10% (over $30m statewide).

So between this excess reserve of over $40m currently and an increase in revenue of over $30m for FY13, we are urging the Board to lower premiums for all participants and enhance HSA contributions.

A final thought. We are aware that the staff is disposed not to alter the current plan design in order to see how it works out over the course of the 2 year biennium. From a scholarly standpoint, we understand this interest in carrying an experiment through to its conclusion. However, the mission of PEBP is not to show how to get us to use less care; it is to provide to the best of its ability and resources the care we actually do need.

That need is clear, the resources are available, and the time is now. We urge the board to commit to reducing out of pocket costs and enhancing coverage options for next year.

PEBP Board to consider how to spend down massive excess reserve

noreply@blogger.com (NFA-UNLV) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 23:15:00 +0000

The PEPB Board meets this Wednesday, March 14, at 9am and its agenda includes an item to discuss premiums, plan design changes and other measures that might be taken in the coming plan year (2012-2013).

On page 2 of the PDF is the info for agenda item VII which is about setting rates for 2012-2013 including use of "excess reserves". These are the choices they will be presented

a. Options for utilizing Excess Reserves:
i. Amend the base subsidy allocation percentages paid by participants in the Consumer Driven PPO High Deductible Health Plan, the Southern HMO Plan and the Northern HMO Plan as provided in Appendix A of the Duties, Policies and Procedures and/or

ii. Modify the Health Savings Account and Health Reimbursement Arrangement contributions

b. Providing the same subsidy for domestic partners as is provided for spouses

c. Approving the rates, State subsidies and participant contributions to utilize Excess
Reserves

Page 4-5 states that they now estimate "excess reserves" (above the amount they need to keep on hand for unfiled claims, catastrophic claims and payments into HSA) at $29.8m for the end of this plan year that they could apply to next year as above.

However, note that on page 26 of the PDF is the quarterly financial report for the quarter ending Dec 31, 2011 which shows an actual cash-on-hand above necessary reserves of $55.8m which is a whopping $44m above what they told the legislature they would have on hand at this point in the year.

Faculty and staff wishing to express their views might consider submitting email or calling (800) 326-5496 or contacting the individual PEBP Board members including NSHE representative Jacque Ewing-Taylor before Wednesday morning.

NSHE Faculty seek clarity, credibility from new Higher Ed funding formula

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 07:06:00 +0000

Statement made on behalf of the NSHE Council of Chairs and NFA state board to the Committee on the Funding of Higher Education during its meeting Feb. 29, 2012.

I am Gregory Brown, chair of the UNLV Faculty Senate, and I am pleased to welcome the committee to UNLV and grateful for this opportunity to address you today. I speak today on behalf of the NSHE Council of Faculty Senate chairs and by extension the faculties of all 8 NSHE campuses.

I’m particularly honored to be able to speak to you in this role, in conjunction with my colleagues, Professor Tracy Sherman of the College of Southern Nevada and Joanna Shearer of Nevada State College, because it allows me to make a point that is essential for all involved in this process : NSHE faculty do not see this committee’s important work -- nor do we want others to see it -- as an expression of regional rivalry or political score-settling.

Indeed, after decades of working within the constraints of a structurally flawed formula, and in the aftermath of the past four years of unprecedented cuts in public support, we faculty cannot afford to withstand further the cost to our collective credibility and to our academic mission that would result from any attempt to “deliver” for one region or institution over another.

The existing formula has become a labrynthine black box widely perceived to be politicized and which has cost us, as faculty, dearly in terms of our System’s credibility with our students, with the state, with local governments, and with the community. Faculty have seen our programs and students bear the burden of the credibility crisis brought on by the old formula, and we urge you to seek as the highest priority for a new formula to restore to the System of Higher Education the credibility that our collective academic achievement deserves.

We as academics deal with each other by making our evidence known and subjecting our work to rigorous peer review; we believe the formula should be approached in the same way -- with transparency, clarity, comprehensibility as credibility as the utmost goals.

Credibility means in the first instance dealing honestly with our students – and their parents – when it comes time to pay tuition and fees. Considering money paid by students as “state support” for purposes of formula accounting has led to significant confusion. This can be ended by letting the formula distribute state dollars in support of only Nevada students – letting campuses determine how many non-residents should pay their full fare and how many should be on scholarship without impact on formula funding -- and then, letting all students from in-state as well as out of state distribute their share of the cost of the education by their choice of campus and program.

Credibility also means prioritizing academic issues over the political. And indeed, the faculties of NSHE do not oppose, indeed we welcome, a formula that promotes educational attainment and degree completion. Despite what is often presumed, faculty do not fear these goals will create irresistible pressure to inflate grades (though such a fear, if it exists, is likely to be felt among contingent faculty on part-time or non-continuing contracts). We take seriously – every week of every semester – our responsibility and our ability to be the guarantors of academic rigor and degree quality and of precise and nuanced assessment of student learning outcomes. (Indeed, at the suggestion of our UNR colleague David Ryfe, the Council of Senate Chairs have formed a faculty task force to advice the Chancellor on ways to measure degree quality for purposes of the formula and beyond.)

Above all, we welcome these new principles precisely because the perverse consequences of the old formula were so deleterious to our work as faculty. The old formula led campuses to push to grow enrollment above all goals; there were no incentives towards or safeguards of degree quality built into that formula whatsoever. So a new formula that encourages degree completion also represents an opportunity to improve our focus on rigor and quality -- rather than diminish it.

Another way in which the formula can restore credibility is to address, reasonably and realistically, but empirically, the cost of degree programs to determine adequate levels of funding. The purpose for which funding formulae were introduced in other states that have multi-tiered systems of higher education, beginning in Texas which remains the model nationally, was to determine the real cost or at least the ratio of costs among different degree programs on different campuses.

The flaws of our old formula are evident in that even in the best of years, Nevada provided only about 85% of what the formula calculated to be the cost of our programs. A credible new formula would not be one that simply presented a bill to the state for the costs of our programs. But a process that finds a way to begin studying real costs on an empirical basis, or at least builds the study of cost into how the formula will operate once in place, is a crucial step towards long-term credibility. Only in that way can the state, can local governments, can students and can the community understand what the faculty know – that we are operating highly efficiently, at lower cost than comparable institutions in many other states. We know that because our course loads and advising and research work loads are higher than national averages, at costs (primarily faculty compensation and infrastructure) that are slightly lower.

Determining empirically the cost ratios of our programs is essential to achieving another cardinal goal of the faculty for the new formula – ensuring each of our campuses can pursue and fulfill its distinct mission within the System’s strategic plans, both current and future. The actual costs of research universities, of an urban access college that serves largely high-risk students, of one of the nation’s largest community colleges that stretches across three campuses, and of two institutions that serve large rural regions, all have distinct costs associated with those missions.

Finally, a formula that respects and reflects mission differentiation is also crucial, because it is essential to our work together as a coherent System. We faculty do not fear or recoil from competition and indeed, a formula that allows each campus and program to retain student tuition and fees would reward excellence and prominence, by allowing programs that attract regionally, nationally and internationally to thrive and serve more students, both Nevadans and non-residents.

But as we compete among programs, we do not want performance-based funding to undermine the work we do together across campuses. We work on curricular issues such as course catalog articulation; we collaborate across campuses on research grants and contracts; we support joint efforts to facilitate faster degree completion; and we do not want the current process to become a competition among campuses. We believe that performance-based funding need not and should not pit campuses against each other in a fight to divvy up a smaller pie, but rather encourage collaboration and strategic partnership through additional investment, as reward for achieving an individual campus’ mission.

A new formula cannot do everything to address the challenges facing higher education in our state, but a new formula can and, faculty believe, should be a platform from which a future blueprint for higher education in Nevada can emerge. The current strategic plan, suited to the current environment, is entirely about increasing the number of degrees conferred in Nevada; however, the are other imperatives for the state in higher education including research, including personal development opportunities, including rural and urban access.

The new formula can, and we hope, will allow future NSHE strategic planning to be based not upon one-sized-fits-all goals but to be based upon our multi-tiered, differentiated missions. Investment in higher education can, and we hope will, come to be seen not as a burden to be avoided or as political patronage; with a new formula, it will come to be seen for what faculty know it is: an investment in student learning, in innovative research that leads to economic development, and in an enhanced quality of life and a stronger civic engagement for our state.

UNLV NFA president John Farley on the importance of research funding for higher education

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Remarks delivered by UNLV NFA president John Farley to the Committee on the Funding of Higher Education; Febraury 29, 2012.

I’m John Farley, president of the UNLV chapter of Nevada Faculty Alliance. I’m also Professor of Physics.

I urge the committee to throw out the old funding formula. The old funding formula does not fund either UNLV or UNR as research institutions.

At a research institution, faculty in the sciences have to write proposals to funding agencies, secure funding, administer grants and contracts, perform experiments and calculations, and write up manuscripts for publication in the scientific literature. That’s a lot of work, and it’s not reflected in the current funding formula.

The old funding formula came from a bygone era when neither UNLV nor UNR did as much research as they do today. The old funding formula didn’t really promote the interests of UNLV or UNR as research institutions.

The expectations placed on the research universities are high these days, as state leaders look to research to help lead the way to economic diversification and economic recovery.

One additional point is that research is a part of education. Not just graduate education, but undergraduate education also.

In my physics department, it’s a requirement to get a bachelor’s degree that the student has to complete a research project. Two undergraduate students did research in my lab last summer.

At UNLV in a typical summer, about 50 undergraduate students participate in research in the sciences (not just physics). And there are more undergraduate student researchers in engineering. And there are similar numbers at UNR.

UNLV and UNR cooperate on a Nevada Undergraduate Research Symposium, which alternates between north and south. About 40 undergraduate students statewide participate.

The money spent on research produces a return for students who work in the laboratories at all levels, for the regional economy, for the quality of life which benefits from innovation, for the system of higher education and the university - which gets a significant return on its investment in money invested in scientific research.

I’d like to ask the committee members to consider not just - is there a research component AT ALL, but is it sufficient to create incentive for our university to fulfill that part of its mission?

For all these reasons, I urge you to throw out the old funding formula, and get a new funding formula that reflects the research mission of the research universities.

Further on the $43m PEBP excess reserve

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:06:00 +0000

Since our last comment on the revelation of the $43 million excess reserve reported by PEBP in January, the program's executive director told the Rebel Yell that in fact this excess reserve had been accrued entirely prior to the start of the current plan year

The reserve is not a result of plan design changes and premium rate increases effective July 1, 2011. Instead, it accumulated due to premium rate estimates that were higher than the amount of claims PEBP had paid leading up to June 30, 2011.

This is difficult to understand, as it appears to contradict the program's own CFO's report of December 2011, which reports a positive "change in cash" figure of over $10m for the first quarter of fiscal year 2011-2012 (against a budgeted figure of negative $22m.) The same chart shows an "actual" figure for "net realized funds available" (ie above the budgeted reserve) of $45.2m, versus an anticipated figure of $11.8m. Thus, PEBP appears to have expected to have $32m more in cash on hand by September 20, 2011, than it actually expected to at that point in the year.

But whats more egregious, and seems to compound the problem, is that, according to Wells, "PEBP knew during the 2011 legislative session that there was going to be a reserve of approximately $35 million," because, as he told the Rebel Yell, claims increased by only 1% during fiscal year 2010-2011. (Again, this $35m actually refers to excess reserve, over the amount set aside for claims that have yet to be filed and the amount set aside for potentially costly catastrophic claims.)

So "PEBP knew ...that there was going to be a reserve" because of lower-than-expected claims during the 2011 legislature, at the same time he and PEBP staff were presenting the new plan design to the legislature as necessary “to urge on participants to regard more critically about the need for medical treatment". Indeed, Wells himself told the legislature in early 2011 that without the plan switch, the program would run deeply into the red.

Jim Wells, executive director of the Public Employees' Benefits Program, said maintaining the status quo and subsidies paid by the state would have left an $85 million shortfall.

Yet even after all this, he told the Rebel Yell that while he will recommend no increase in participant premiums for the next year, the Board may still want to increase premiums at its March meeting to avoid steeper increases in future years. (Of course, PEBPs' own January 2012 fiscal report says just the opposite, that "reserves in excess of the required reserve levels will be used to reduce premiums and contributions during future plan years" (p. 3)).

This same report, on the next page, shows PEBP's history of carrying excess reserves; in every year since 2004, the plan has carried excess reserves of at least $20m per year with excess reserves over $40m per year in six of those years. And the projected reserve for the current fiscal year is even larger than the actual reserve for 2010-2011.

Yet, without explanation, PEBP reports it intends to hold $0 excess reserve in the coming year, 2012-2013, even though it will get a big jump of 14% in the employer's share (the larger share) of premiums for that year. That increase, by the way, which will represent a hit of over $3m for UNLV and at least $7m for NSHE, is money that will have to come from our operating budgets and be diverted from academic uses. So this is an issue that impacts the students quite directly, too.

PEBP has, in the words of a great American economist, "some splainin' to do " at its next board meeting, Wednesday March 14 at 9am, about how it intends to spend that reserve down to 0. One obvious solution is to restore an option for the status quo ante by putting in place for 2012-2013 an affordable "middle-tier" option, between the HMO and the catastrophic-only coverage model, which the Board rejected at its last meeting.

Another is to refund that money by instituting a premium holiday for both employer and employee, as it has done in the past, which would help cushion the blow for faculty and staff and help NSHE (and all other state agencies) both pay for gap coverage for its staff and restore services to the public that have been cut so deeply.

UNLV NFA chapter president calls for Board of Regents to consider gap coverage for NSHE staff

noreply@blogger.com (NFA-UNLV) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 04:28:00 +0000

This post by UNLV NFA chapter president John Farley is cross-posted on the Nevada Faculty Alliance news blog:

http://nevadafacultyalliance.org/LatestNews?mode=PostView&bmi=814872

PEBP has generated a $43 million reserve by restricting coverage and increasing premiums

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:27:00 +0000

At almost the same time that UNLV faculty and staff were asking, repeatedly, at today's town hall if the Board of Regents would be taking up the prospect of a supplemental benefit for NSHE faculty and staff to offset the woefully inadequate coverage offered under the current PEBP offerings, the executive director of PEBP was telling an interim legislative committee that it has accrued a breathtaking $43 million reserve.

This is deeply distressing news, particularly in light of the impacts that the shift to a choice of either high-deductible catastrophic-only coverage or high-premium HMO coverage have had on NSHE faculty and staff. A survey conducted of UNLV faculty and staff in November found which have led to a marked increase in UNLV staff either declining coverage outright, delaying care or skipping needed medications (especially those making less than $50,000 per year, which is over half the campus workforce).

What is particularly galling about this news is that the PEBP staff's own report to the Board prepared for the most recent Board meeting in January, attributed over half of the reserve ($23.5 million) to "[d]ecreased self-funded claims expenses" (p. 109) -- this despite repeated claims made by the Board and staff back in 2010 when proposing the conversion of the PPO to a high-deductible/ catastrophic-only model of "participant over-utilization". Equally galling is that most of the rest of the reserve is attributed to a claim of $20.5 million in "[h]igher beginning cash" at the start of the plan year, last July 1. (Another $5.3 m of the surplus is attributed to "[i]ncreases to HMO premiums.")

This means, of course, that the overcharging of participants clearly pre-dated the beginning of the new plan design, since PEBP was already running a hefty reserve back in fiscal year 2011 precisely at the time the claims of "participant over-utilization" were being repeatedly raised at Board meetings.

PEBP is now sitting on a reserve that has accrued almost $1200 per insured state worker in the last six months at the same time as treatments are being skipped, and a record number of employees are dropping off the plan. (This of course puts the state in jeopardy of running afoul of new federal requirements to take effect in 2014 that all individuals must be insured.) Keep in mind that the employer contribution for each employee will actually increase in fiscal year 2013 so that the supposed good news of stable premiums for participants that the PEBP board will consider at its March meeting means PEBP would still be increasing its revenue next year while continuing to offer sub-standard health coverage.

Finally, as for the claims of the PEBP staff at the hearing that the reduction in benefits paid is a consequence of "sheer luck" and that claims in the latter part of the current plan year will reduce reserves, this raises a puzzling question -- who does the actuarial work there? After all, PEBP and PEBP alone has the full data on its participants' past utilization experience, and PEBP and PEBP alone designed the current plan. If their economic models in fact expected that claims would be lower in the first 6 months of plan year 2012, then why did they not project this hefty surplus? And if they are in fact running significantly ahead of their own expectations for cash on hand, then why in the world does a non-profit self-insured plan not adjust the rates accordingly and give not only participants but the state a break on premiums for next year?

Nevada college expense in perspective

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:51:00 +0000

President Obama in his State of the Union tonight "put colleges and universities on notice" about rising tuition, proposing to cap federal financial aid eligibility for students at institutions which increase tuition. While this sort of cost control measure clearly has populist appeal, keep in mind that the same approach to capping Medicare reimbursement rates, which is part of federal budget law, is annually circumvented through the so-called "doc fix" precisely because medical providers are in a position to decline Medicare patients if the reimbursement rates are below the cost of providing care.

It would appear from the President's rhetoric tonight that he does not believe the actual cost of providing education at many institutions is rising, only the price charged students. If there are institutions where that is the case, his approach seems sound and salutory.

But as is abundantly clear from the recently published 2011 College Board report on Trends in College Pricing especially the section on "Institutional Revenues -- Public Appropriations", the most significant driver for increases in student tuition at public colleges and universities, not just since 2007 but going back to at least 1998, is declining public support, while the cost of delivering education has risen below the rate of inflation. (Since 2004, the report shows, 4-year public colleges and universities have seem a reduction nationally of about 5% in state and local support, while the national average for increases in student fees over that same period is only 4%).

Thus, the increases in student tuition are not a reason, as the President proposed, for reducing the amount of "public taxpayer dollars" invested in higher education -- but the result of already reduced public investment.

The case of Nevada is telling. According to the same College Board report, as reported in the SF Chronicle and elsewhere, NSHE institutions charged as of 2010-2011 the lowest tuition in the country in their categories, with University of Nevada, Reno, identified as the least expensive public 4-year university in the nation (for in-state fees). The cost of a 4-year degree at UNR, with UNLV only marginally higher, is only a fraction -- as little as 1/10th of some private institutions that were singled out for praise for cutting tuition and about 1/4th of the amounts charged by the University of California system.

The significant increases in-state fees imposed at UNLV, UNR and other NSHE campuses over the past four years have been entirely in response to the over $200 million in state support cut from higher education in Nevada in that period.

So while the President's proposal to cap financial aid in response to tuition increases may have merit, keep in mind that it will apply primarily to those colleges and universities whose high costs result in their students becoming eligible for federal aid, either in Pell Grants or subsidized loans. Nevada's in-state students qualify in much lower numbers than students in other states for Pell Grants and incur significantly less indebtedness due primarily to our low in-state tuition (even after the sharp increases of the past few years). So that this proposed cap would not actually apply to most Nevada students, because students at Nevada's public colleges and universities generally qualify in lesser numbers and for lesser amounts of federal aid due to our comparatively low in-state fees.

The more direct way to keep college affordable is, as he put it in the prior line of his speech, for states to restore the massive amount cut from public higher education allocations in the past few years.

Another would be to revive an idea that only four years ago was supported by most Democratic candidates for President and a majority of 2008 primary voters, making community colleges and public colleges cost-free for all qualified students. Long before he became a national laughingstock for his personal failures, John Edwards proposed a policy of "College for Everyone" that would have given every qualified student aid for full in-state tuition through a combination of direct aid, work-study and direct loans repaid based upon a proportion of future income. While that proposal did nothing to address costs, it did not need to -- because the cost of delivering education is not what is making college unaffordable, especially in Nevada. Declining public support for our colleges and universities is.

(As for the case made by Richard Vetter that colleges and universities spend far too much on non-educational expenses (a case he will make this morning on KNPR), he may or may not be right depending on whether students consider those expenses necessary for their college experience. But either way, as Professor Vetter has acknowleged, those costs are borne on most campuses -- and certainly at UNLV this is true -- by student fees and are funded neither by instructional fees (commonly referred to as "in-state tuition") or by state general fund appropriations. Effectively, students make -- individually and collectively through their student government -- market decisions to pay for those services, and while students could reduce their cost by not paying those fees, those fees have nothing to do with the cost of delivering education and therefore do not reflect any sort of inflation. They simply reflect rising student expectations for services, just as most of us expect more health care services than our parents or their parents did.)

Another way the state of Nevada could cut in-state fees is to reduce state subsidy for out-of-state students who attend NSHE institutions on exchange scholarships, which allow students from California and other neighboring states to enroll for 150% of in-state fees, less than half of regular non-resident tuition. Currently there are more than 1800 such students enrolled at UNR (about 1/8th of their undergraduate student body) and another few hundred at UNLV (about 2% of UNLV's student body). The current discussion concerning a new funding formula for higher education in Nevada is a good occasion to address this problem.

So yes college is getting more and more expensive in Nevada, and that is something the President and our state government ought to stop and reverse. But blaming colleges and universities that have done more with less for years is neither economically sound nor going to solve the problem.

Faculty Alliance member update confirming affiliation with AAUP

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:30:00 +0000

On behalf of the NFA state board, this statement is to clarify some of the confusion arising from AAUP president Cary Nelson's email sent Tuesday.

Wednesday morning, the state board has confirmed, unequivocally, that the NFA remains the Nevada affiliate of the AAUP and its members remain AAUP members. The NFA is indeed engaged, as you know, in discussions about restructuring our affiliation with the AAUP to ensure NFA members get the services they need and deserve -- rather than having more than half our dues used to subsidize AAUP activities in other states. This negotiation was begun with the national officers and staff in the fall of 2010 and is currently being pursued with the AAUP's governing board, its National Council. NFA has indeed, as we have reported to members repeated, withheld dues to AAUP but there has been no action by either party taken to end the NFA affiliation with the AAUP or to expel NFA members from the AAUP.

Let us offer a few additional points of clarification :

1. Nelson's letter is inaccurate in that the NFA's affiliation agreement with the AAUP remains in place until one side or the other withdraws. NFA certainly has not done that and taken no steps towards that, nor have we even discussed that formally on the board. AAUP is governed by its elected National Council, not by one individual. Nevada's representative on the National Council, Candace Kant of CSN, has confirmed that there has been no discussion of ending the affiliation there either. Both legally and morally, NFA members remain AAUP members, and it is incorrect and even irresponsible to suggest otherwise. Our dues backlog is not either out of the ordinary for the AAUP in dealing with its state affiliates nor is it in any way a secret.

2. We have discussed the situation openly with our members repeatedly, including on the front page of the September Alliance and in a letter last month to the statewide membership, also posted on the NFA blog. Here at UNLV it was also covered in the UNLV Rebel Yell.

3. The letter from Cary Nelson is mistaken in several other ways, most notably in the discussion of what services the AAUP have offered to NFA and when. Indeed, he presents the situation as if it were a matter primarily of proposed program terminations at UNLV with no mention of the proposed layoffs of tenured faculty at Western Nevada (which have been successfully rebuffed by their faculty with support from the NFA) and of the actual layoffs of tenured faculty at UNR (which are being challenged currently by lawsuits in federal court against UNR and the System, supported by the NFA).

4. Most especially, his claim that there is no increase in dues for NFA members is belied by the invoices we have received from AAUP, which place all our members in their highest income band and assess all members the collective bargaining dues rate. This only makes sense if one presumes that NFA would absorb the increase in AAUP dues out of its own operating budget. (NFA leaders made this point at the June 2010 national meeting when the dues increase was approved and Nelson himself agreed at that time that Nevada constituted a "special case".)

5. Perhaps most importantly, NFA has set aside and is all holding our back dues in hope of an agreement with AAUP, although no serious offer of additional services or restructured affiliation has been forthcoming for more than a year.

6. On behalf of the NFA state board, this statement is to clarify some of the confusion created by AAUP president Cary Nelson's email sent Tuesday.

Wednesday morning, the state board has confirmed, unequivocally, that the NFA remains the Nevada affiliate of the AAUP and its members remain AAUP members. The NFA is indeed engaged, as you know, in discussions about restructuring our affiliation with the AAUP to ensure NFA members get the services they need and deserve -- rather than having more than half our dues used to subsidize AAUP activities in other states. This negotiation was begun with the national officers and staff in the fall of 2010 and is currently being pursued with the AAUP's governing board, its National Council. NFA has indeed, as we have reported to members repeated, withheld dues to AAUP but there has been no action by either party taken to end the NFA affiliation with the AAUP or to expel NFA members from the AAUP.

Let us offer a few additional points of clarification :

6. The problems in the AAUP are by no means limited to Nevada. For the past several years, academic publications such as the Chronicle of Higher Education have reported on areas in which the organization has become less effective than it once was. The AAUP has worked hard to address some of these issues, but the issue of excessive focus on the national office at the expense of state and campus chapters was brought to light recently by Gary Rhoades, former AAUP general-secretary, who just this week published an op-ed in the Chronicle of Higher Education denouncing the AAUP's "inward-looking perspective that detracts from the mission of serving members" and calling for more focus on cultivating chapters and state- and local-level leadership. The AAUP has announced that it is working to resolve this problematic issue, with state organizations believing that they could work harder. We support any progress that they make in this area.

Any comments, concerns or questions may be addressed to the NFA state board directly at info@nevadafacultyalliance.org. Additional updates will be emailed to members directly and posted on http://nevadafacultyalliance.org/News.

Faculty seek to restore adequate health care coverage

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 15:13:00 +0000

This post is reproduced, with permission, from the Nevada Faculty Alliance news blog :

In response to the very high concerns voiced by faculty and staff across the Nevada System of Higher Education, NFA remains actively involved in the System's efforts to restore adequate health coverage as quickly as possible. In this story, we report on two, related developments: 1. the work of the NSHE Task Force on Health Coverage seeking alternatives to current PEBP coverage through a short-term supplemental benefit for NSHE employees (possibly as early as next year) and considering a longer-term alternative outside of the Public Employees’ Benefits Program (which raises some legal and financial challenges to achieve), and 2. this Thursday's PEBP board meeting, where an alternative to current coverage will be considered for next year.

NSHE Task Force update: Legal and Financial issues related to seeking improved coverage

At last week's Board of Regents meeting, the NSHE Task Force on Health Coverage presented an update on its work, which included the following:

data from research (with the help of an external consultant) on current costs, coverage and insurance utilization of NSHE employees within PEBP
discussions with the PEBP board of improvements that we hope to see in both customer service and coverage
an exploration of longer-term alternatives to current coverage for NSHE employees through a self-funded insurance program outside of PEBP

The report did not discuss another aspect of the task force's charge and earlier report, the exploration of an NSHE-funded supplemental benefit for faculty and staff for next fiscal year, as a stopgap measure. The board discussion showed a great deal of concern among regents about the current state of affairs and longer-term solutions, but no formal action was taken.

In light of this discussion, and the high priority that faculty and staff place on this issue, it is worth explaining some of the legal and financial issues involved in this discussion.

First, neither the board of regents, the chancellor nor the campus presidents have the authority to seek insurance for their employees outside of PEPB. That would require approval of the PEBP board and/or legislative action. That approval is not assured and would require a careful effort by the System as a whole to educate the legislature and the governor, and to convince them that this would lead not only to better coverage for us but be cost-effective for the entire state.

Under current PEBP board policy, any group of employees that leaves the program must demonstrate that the withdrawal of those participants would not have a negative financial impact on the overall program of greater than 5 percent. If PEBP determines that the withdrawal would have an adverse impact of greater than 5 percent, the group withdrawing is responsible to cover all costs of its departure on the remaining participants.

One question the NSHE consultant will study is whether the withdrawl of NSHE participants as a group would have a negative financial impact on PEBP of greater than 5 percent of its total program budget. If that were the case, then we would need legislative action to change that rule before we could pursue alternative insurance. (It would also mean, of course, that NSHE participants had paid significantly more over the recent past than we have received in benefits. If that is the case, it would mean that the reserve funds held by PEBP came disproportionately from NSHE participants – and this would be an argument for letting NSHE withdraw without having to pay for the cost to remaining PEBP participants.)

At the November PEBP board meeting, NSHE leadership (namely, then vice-chancellor Bart Patterson, and now Renee Yackira, director of government relations for NSHE) testified to the PEBP board to express our concerns. They urged PEBP to consider, as early as next year, a "middle tier" of coverage between the current high-premium, fee-for-service HMO and the much-derided high deductible "consumer-driven" plan that replaced the old PPO.

However, such a "middle tier" may not be financially feasible for PEBP to offer, because the costs to the program have increased at a rate of roughly 10 percent per year for each of the past several years. These rising costs are the main issue in the question of whether NSHE – and the state – could get better coverage for the same money than PEBP currently offers. The question of whether PEBP reimburses health care providers at higher rates than other insurance plans has been posed going back to the 2009 legislature, but has not been fully answered. (The PEBP board and staff have stated publicly that rising costs are due to over-utilization of service by participants and that the "consumer-driven" high-deductible plan will curb that over-utilization and cut costs. Critics of PEBP's coverage have maintained that the roughly 10-percent annual increase in the cost of the program has been passed along almost entirely to state public service workers, rather than reducing the rates it pays providers. This claim is hard to verify, however, because reimbursement rates to providers are considered proprietary information and are not publicly available to participants.)

There is then the separate issue of supplemental benefits within NSHE. The task force was charged to consider this possibility and recommended consideration in its report of last January and has continued to discuss this in meetings this fall. This issue was not explicitly presented in the task force's report to the board on Dec. 2, but several regents did ask about whether immediate action would be possible.

A supplemental benefit for NSHE employees would not require legislative approval or, based on what the task force has researched, PEBP approval. It would, however, require NSHE to spend its own money on supplemental benefits. The issue then becomes whether 1. NSHE wants to spend between $5 million and $15 million of its aggregate $1.2 billion budget on a supplement to bring health coverage for faculty and staff up to a minimally acceptable standard, and 2. there would be negative political consequences for the System for doing so that might outweigh the negative consequences for its staff of not doing so.

PEBP board update: Middle tier of coverage to be considered this Thursday

This Thursday, December 15, the Public Employees Benefit Program governing board, composed of gubernatorial appointees, will hold its regular monthly meeting (for agenda, backup information and links to view or listen to the meeting, click here). As part of this meeting, the PEBP board will consider adopting a "middle tier" of coverage option for next year. Such a "middle tier" would be more comprehensive than both the new (and much-maligned) "consumer-driven" plan – which offers choice of doctors but limited coverage until a high deductible has been met – and the health maintenance organization – which charges lower fees for each service, but charges higher premiums and offers limited choices. The proposed "middle tier" would restore deductibles to near-2009-2010 levels ($500 per year for individuals and $1,000 per year for families) and fixed-cost co-payments for office visits ($15 for a primary care visit, $25 for a specialist, $45 for urgent care). It also would restore low, set-priced fees for generic drugs ($4 for 30 days supply) and reduce co-insurance costs to 10 percent for many services. On the other hand, participants in this plan would not be eligible to contribute to a Health Savings Account, so they would receive no "seed money" to offset costs incurred during the year. Moreover, the premiums are likely to be much higher – and will not be known until February 2012.

As a different alternative for creating a "middle tier," PEBP will also consider offering three plan choices: two CDH plans and an HMO plan. Under this scenario, participants could choose the HMO or one of two CDH plans with differing deductible, coinsurance, maximum out-of-pocket and HSA seed money amounts. One option would offer a lower deductible option ($1,200 per individual, $2,400 per family) that would also have a lower out-of-pocket maximum ($3,000 and $6,000) and a lower co-insurance (20 percent), but would offer only $400 (individual) or up to $700 (family) in seed money to the Health Savings Account. The other, higher-deductible option would require individuals to pay $3,000 ($6,000 for families) before receiving coverage, and insureds could incur higher out-of-pocket maximums ($4,500 for individuals, $6,000 for families) and would pay a higher co-insurace rate (25 percent). However, participants would receive a higher amount of seed money ($1,100 per individual, up to $2,000 per family) and, presumably, pay a lower monthly premium.

In all cases, premium rates will not be determined until February so it is very hard to know how costly each option might be for an individual or family.

Membership update on NFA and AAUP

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:03:00 +0000

Dear NFA members,

I am writing you to update you on the status of our negotiations with the AAUP, which have been on-going for more than a year.

In late January 2010, when we first learned that the System of Higher Education would have a second round of cuts in state support, of 7% - beyond the first 25% reduction in state support passed by the 2009 legislature, it was clear immediately that this would lead to program eliminations and terminations of faculty. With the authorization of the NFA state board, I contacted the AAUP's Department of Organizing and Member Services and requested AAUP support in three areas: legal support for the defense of faculty contract rights, membership recruitment and chapter development, and communications.

And that's where it has stood to this day - NFA requesting support from AAUP whose response has been to propose actions that we did not ask for and which we doubted would help our situation. Of course, the AAUP did impose a new dues policy in July 2010 which would increase the total NFA dues bill by at least 15% and require more than half of our members' annual NFA dues to be sent to Washington. Paying such a dues bill would leave the NFA in the red -- even after having reduced our annual overall expenditures by nearly 20% in the past few years, while enhancing services in communications, legal defense, and government relations,

Clearly the AAUP's demand that we pay such a level of dues is not viable. Is there an alternative? We believe so, but the AAUP has yet to agree to a serious discussion that recognizes the NFA's unique organization and set of member service we think are needed in Nevada higher education.

NFA members are asking, rightly, are we still AAUP members? To be clear, yes you are. No change in membership status with respect to the AAUP has been or will be initiated by NFA.

I think the more pressing question is what it means to be an AAUP member when the Association staff has been unresponsive to our needs, since January 2010, during the gravest threat to quality affordable higher education and to faculty employment rights in our organization's history?

On legal defense, the AAUP has never contributed any funds or legal research to the NFA's legal defense program. Our legal defense efforts are entire the work of our members and, when outside counsel is retained, paid for by our members' dues. There is simply no AAUP support there.

The AAUP's investigative authority of potential violations of academic freedom and tenure is supposed to be its most valuable service to members, but even as we've worked hard, and with some success, to fend off or reduce layoffs of tenured faculty on two NSHE campuses in the past two years, we've received little follow-up from the AAUP aside from letters sent to the president on one institution.

On membership recruitment and chapter development, the NFA needs help, because our campus chapter presidents have been unable to undertake sustainable membership drives in recent years. We asked the AAUP staff organizer who came in 2010 - for all of two days - for ideas on how restructure and re-energize our campus chapters to be more effective but received no follow-up. (Indeed, our longstanding concern with the AAUP over its acceptance of Nevada members who enroll directly in any campus chapter -- and who do not pay dues to the NFA -- has never been addressed.)

Most frustratingly, the AAUP seems to prefer to focus its communications efforts on causes that generate national headlines but are not in service of our members. It took the AAUP only days to issue a statement of support for "Occupy Wall Street protestors" but despite repeated requests, not any public statement or public communication has ever been made about the steep budget cuts or their impact on faculty in Nevada.

Certainly the AAUP publications, including Academe, are tangible benefits to members, but the total annual cost per member for an Academe subscription is $35. However, the dues assessments we have received from the AAUP - but which we have not paid - assess almost all our members at the highest of the AAUP's seven rates , an average of over $150 per member per year.

This situation is why the NFA state board voted last January to suspend dues payments to AAUP until a more reasonable balance could be struck between actual services rendered and the dues demanded. We have proposed, in writing and in face-to-face meetings with national representatives, that our dues be put into an escrow account to be used to pay for those services actually rendered to members in the state of Nevada - whether by AAUP or the NFA. The per capita cost of Academe and any actual leadership training by the AAUP would of course be paid out of this fund. But in the absence of an AAUP presence in the state, those funds would be used to continue to professionalize our operations, as we have done with communications very successfully in the past year.

To prove our seriousness of purpose in devoting 100% of dues money to member services, we have cut our expenditures significantly. For instance, we have in the past year reduced the cost for state board members to travel to meetings by over $5000 by opting for videoconferences and conference calls. Moreover, we have cut staff expenses by nearly $10,000. And we have cuts in our communications, while greatly expanding the scope and influence of our communications, by consolidating print and electronic publications into a single production process and by reducing the number of excess copies of the Alliance sent to each campus. Moreover, we continue to benefit from professional work provided by state board members without compensation above a stipend to cover modest expenses and release time.

But the AAUP's response has been, repeatedly, that "there is no alternative" to the exorbitant dues, and they have asked us to pass that cost along to our members through higher in-state dues. Our Board has refused to consider that option.

We are now applying for what the AAUP terms a "State Conference Grant" which would reduce our per capita assessment, so this application would seem the perfect opportunity for the AAUP to work with us to help refocus members' dues into badly needed improvements in services in the state. We must improve the available services in the state, because we cannot continue to function on a "kill the volunteer" model in which the highly demanding tasks of Legal Defense, Government Relations, operations and, most importantly member recruitment and chapter development, are borne entirely by our members who also have full-time jobs and lives to attend to. Certainly we need more of our members to become engaged. But even so, we cannot continue to rely on members to function as full-time volunteers for the NFA in capacities such as board president, legal defense chair, or government relations officer (as we have done for years).

To find that support and put the NFA on a sustainable footing for the future, we must have a response from the AAUP that addresses concretely our members' needs. We are hoping and expecting such a response during the first quarter of 2012. If it is not forthcoming, we will have to decide then on our next step. Should we seek another affiliation? Or should we set our own course and use the money that we have been holding effectively in escrow to hire a part-time or full-time executive director to oversee member services and chapter development? Other state conferences have field staff to assist their members and officers. I believe that in the next few months, the NFA ought to act definitively to plan for the future by budgeting for and contracting an organizing director.

Many NFA members, including myself, value greatly our AAUP affiliation, but the fact remains that the NFA provides all its own legal defense, government relations, communications, member services and chapter development work with no financial, logistical or even moral support from the AAUP. Certainly there is much we cannot do on our own - and especially without a more engaged and active membership. So there is a need for AAUP support to expand and energize our membership if they can do that. In the next few months we hope to hear from them a proposal to provide the support and services we need, at a dues price we can afford.

If such a proposal is not forthcoming, then we will consult the membership on the alternatives we as individuals and as a state conference have to achieve these goals, either in affiliation with or, if need be, separate from the AAUP.

In closing, please know that the spirit of the AAUP - the defense of faculty rights and the advocacy for quality, accessible higher education -- is not in Washington or in our state board or our chapter officers; it is in each and every one of you as members. Your actions, your energy and your involvement, more than ever, are needed for the future of higher education in Nevada.

In solidarity,

Gregory Brown
NFA President

What the funding formula committee can do for Nevada students and faculty

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 11:22:00 +0000

In the winter issue of The Alliance, we report on the most important development in Nevada higher education news this fall: the Interim Committee on the Funding of Higher Education. This is good news, especially for students, who have faced significant increases in fees and tuition due to reductions in state investment in NSHE. These students have a right to know that the money they pay stays on campus and is not funneled indirectly back to the General Fund or to another campus through a flawed formula that holds back state support as tuition revenue increases.

Beyond fairness to students, what does this mean for faculty?

First and foremost, we should support this effort. It is our best chance for the state to consider seriously how it can address the education deficit. Just as Nevada trails the nation in economic recovery, we lag behind in the proportion of our population that attends, and graduates from, institutions of higher education. We all know that the Nevada System of Higher Education cannot hope to improve on that score without a serious conversation about how to better allocate scarce resources. Because the challenge is so great, faculty ought to support a thoroughly new approach to higher education funding, not just a revision of a formula that has been in place, with only modest changes, since the 1980s.

We also ought to support a formula that better reflects the real cost and the real diversity of the work we do. The existing formulas are both too imprecise in their calculations of cost and too rigid in how they fund instruction. In current form, the formulas are supposed to allocate resources to match the type of instruction and the cost of the program. However, they are not based upon the actual cost of instruction of any program (in terms of either capital expenses or the actual market cost of hiring faculty in that discipline). Nor do they make any allowance for what we might call the "value added through instruction" -- that is, what students learn. So the formula ought to address the actual cost of instruction and the value added; because this will vary from campus to campus, introducing those factors will help support our differentiated missions. Our System is much too large – and more importantly our faculty is much too diverse in its training, its job responsibilities, and its performance – for a one-size-fits-all formula.

Although faculty-to-student ratio is a part of the current formula on paper, no campus currently actually targets its faculty size to the faculty-to-student ratio for which it is funded. This results in a negative incentive for a campus to under-staff and over-enroll programs designated as “high cost” – and more generally to achieve the highest enrollment with the fewest and cheapest faculty. That incentive to overburden faculty is no formula for student success, and the new formula must correct this.

Moreover, there is at present no component of the current formula for faculty work other than instruction, meaning the costs of a research infrastructure that supports economic development and technology transfer is not reflected. The lack of a research component to the formula burdens all faculty at all levels, and worse, it holds back Nevada’s economic recovery.

Finally, the Chancellor has made it clear that Nevada will move at least some of its formula to performance-based allocations, which reward campuses that produce more graduates. Faculty ought to support that goal, since graduating students is our vocation as well as our mandate.

But we ought to be cautious about performance-based allocation based not on total number of graduates but metrics that are believed to correlate with graduation rate. Such "progress measures" have not been studied sufficiently, in Nevada or nationally, for us to know which variables contribute most directly to degree completion. We need to study the data to know, for instance, if the ratio of students who complete their first year courses or who enroll on a full-time basis, actually correlates, on NSHE campuses, to more graduates.

Until we can study what the data concerning retention, first-year course completion and other progress measures actually tell us about how we help students succeed, faculty will rightly be wary of a performance-based formula with too many progress measures. Unintentionally, it could create administrative pressure to inflate grades and otherwise “water down the drinks,” in terms of student outcomes, in order to raise retention rates.

That said, NSHE faculty ought to embrace and support a data-driven overhaul of our funding formula that makes student success, rather than just enrollment, our priority.

NSHE Faculty Senate Chairs statement on system strategic planning

noreply@blogger.com (NFA-UNLV) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 17:15:00 +0000

On behalf of the NSHE Council of Faculty Senate Chairs, to the Board of Regents, October 21, 2011

Thank you for welcoming us, the faculty senate chairs, to today's meeting in which the important topic of strategic planning for state higher education will take place.

So far, the system and the institutions have developed a number of goals, including, for example, the goal of more degree holders across the state. Strategic planning, as you know, addresses the issue of prioritizing and achieving goals. No one in the system is better placed to understand how to achieve these goals than the experts, Nevada's capable and dedicated higher education faculty.

As chairs of the several institutions, we come before you today to say that we are here to be involved in the process of strategic planning. We are here to help. We might even go further and say that we are the only ones who can help in this situation. We are the people who will carry forward the vision of a better educated, more enlightened and more economically sound Nevada.

We might begin with differentiation. One cannot seriously hope to enhance the number of graduates or the quality and value of degrees without a serious look at how to differentiate our institutions' respective missions to better serve our respective student populations; we are not all the same and too much standardized and centralized policy making will not serve the system's or the citizens' best interests.

We must discuss allocation of resources as a strategic principle, especially what portion system-wide and on each campus is spent on instruction and research versus student services or academic support functions. Faculty/student ratio is another important consideration. Can we expect to increase the number of graduates with our current faculty size? How do we assure quality, transparency, productivity and accountability across the system as well as in individual academic units. System governance should be a central issue for strategic planning.

Finally if we are to improve student success we need to stabilize our situation with respect to employment rights of faculty in the context of program review and eliminations. Budget concerns and program review have taken and continue to take an inordinate amount of faculty time and energy. Faculty must drive this effort.

Moreover, the state of Nevada must make a commitment to higher education. As senate chairs, we understand that the economic future of Nevada depends on the state's dedication to and develop of its higher education system. Further cuts to faculty pay and benefits run contrary to our mutual goals and to the best interests of the state. An energized faculty can carry forward your vision. A demoralized faculty will be unable to do so.

Census data: Sharp decline in Nevada higher education instructional staff

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:04:00 +0000

The Sun reports today on a recently published Census Bureau report on public service staffing, which finds -- unsurprisingly -- a sharp decline in all public service workforce in Nevada. Higher education faculty sustained the sharpest decline, of over 18% across the state.

Education represents the largest public employer at the local and state levels. The biggest hit was taken by higher education, whose ranks were trimmed to 10,128 positions last year, 1,174 less than in 2009 for an 11.4 percent decline. The sharpest decline was felt among professors and instructors, who went from 3,369 to 2,758, an 18.1 percent drop. Support staff fell from 8,067 to 7,370.

Note that this is based on 2010 census data, before the 2011 round of layoffs and cutbacks. As for 2011, recall that the Sun last June 30 that fewer than 40 state public sector workers had been laid off, but did not include the 161 NSHE layoffs. That is, higher education sustained more than 4 times more layoffs last year than all other state agencies combined -- after the 18% decline in full-time equivalent instructional workforce reported in the Census data!

Update: The NSHE audited financial reports for 2009 and 2010 show total state payroll and benefits actually went down $22.5 million from $950,335,000 to $927,755,000. It is unclear why the Census bureau found an $1.7 million increase in total state higher education payroll for that same period. Perhaps the payroll for Sierra Nevada College and the private, for-profit institutions grew by nearly $25 million in a year?

Western Nevada College faculty protest layoffs of tenured faculty

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 09:26:00 +0000

Inside Higher Ed reports on NSHE faculty response to announced layoffs of 5 tenured faculty (out of 62) at Western Nevada College.

Faculty leaders at Western Nevada College are hopeful they have found a new way to oppose layoffs of five tenured faculty members. The Faculty Senate has passed a resolution calling on colleagues not to participate in any new hire search committees until the tenured positions are restored. ....The eight Nevada state colleges and universities were facing a proposed 31 percent cut in appropriations this academic year. This is what kickstarted the curricular review process in March, said Mark Ghan, the college’s vice president for human resources and legal affairs. The curricular review committee recommended that seven faculty positions should be terminated. Two of the seven took a buyout from Western Nevada, while five await a termination notice, he said. ...
But it’s the final appropriation number that has faculty members at Western Nevada scratching their heads. The college ended up having about 18 percent cut from its state appropriations, instead of the potentially disastrous 31 percent reduction. So it is puzzling that the university is still laying off the same number of faculty members as officials said would be necessary when it appeared that there would be a 31 percent cut, Strange said.
The five tenured faculty members facing layoff have taught at the college anywhere from 12 to 30 years, Strange said. ...The senate also passed a resolution calling on the administration to restart the curricular review process now that the budget reductions are no longer up in the air.

Statement of NSHE Council of Faculty Senate chairs on health benefits

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 08:53:00 +0000

Today I delivered the following testimony to the Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents:

I am Gregory Brown, chair of the UNLV Senate and speaking for the Council of Chairs. We want to express the great importance that faculty and staff across the System place on the issue of health coverage. Specifically, we want to express our support for the efforts of the Chancellor and Vice-chancellor Patterson and of the Chancellor’s Task Force to address, immediately and for the longer term, the need for an alternative to the current coverage offered by the Public Employees Benefit Program.

To support the assertion that this is among the highest priorities for our faculty and staff – let me give just one data point. The letter sent by the Chancellor in December 2010 to the PEBP board posing a series of questions, to which I linked on my website, generated 300% more traffic in a 3-month period than any other item I have ever posted. We thank the Chancellor for writing that letter and would remind the Board that the questions he posed remain largely unanswered by the PEBP Board to date.

We urge the Board to support the efforts of the Task Force to explore more cost-effective and more market-competitive alternatives are readily available for the longer term. We also urge the Board to consider as soon as possible the prospect of a supplementary plan for NSHE faculty and staff. The substandard benefits and limited customer service available from PEBP not only creates additional work for our HR staff and for our faculty leadership who are being asked by faculty and staff to provide information on the new plan that they cannot obtain from PEBP – but also and more problematically are a consistent factor in efforts to retain and recruit faculty and staff.

In short, the priority that the Chancellor, vice-chancellor and presidents have given this issue is shared by the faculty and staff, and we urge the Board to consider this a topic for action in the very near term.

Statement of NSHE Council of Faculty Senate chairs on curricular review

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 05:41:00 +0000

The Nevada System of Higher Education Faculty Senate chairs delivered the following statement at the Board of Regents meeting Thursday, Sept. 8.

Dear Chancellor, Chairman, and Regents,

Over the past three years, we have all experienced great turmoil on our campuses as each institution sought mechanisms to deal with extreme budget cuts. Part of this process has been employment of Curricular Review.

The Curricular Review process within the code is not well-defined, leaving much to be determined at the institutional level, and thus it has been implemented differently by different institutions. For example, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, used a previously established institutional curricular review process, and tenure rights and contracts were protected. Faculty at Truckee Meadows Community College, who enjoy the protection of a collective bargaining agreement, were involved in the development of an institutional curricular review process, and tenure rights and contracts were protected. And at Western Nevada College faculty were not involved in the development of the curricular review process, and tenured faculty are slated to be terminated – despite adequate class loads to justify their positions and the filling of vacancies in other, administrative positions.

Such discrepancies have led to real apprehension on our campuses. The Nevada System of Higher Education Code sets forth just one set of contractual rights and due process to protect faculty, including tenured faculty. Any potential breach of those rights of tenured faculty on any campus is therefore a threat to the contractual rights of faculty across the system.

Actions of the faculty senates have already begun to take place on some of our campuses this year – such as resolutions passed at WNC demanding tenure contracts be honored and requesting a new curricular review process be jointly developed by senate and administration – and more faculty senates are expected to take action this fall.

We, the faculty senate chairs, request continued diligence in the repair of the code, Title 2 Chapter 5, section 4.6, such that explicit instructions can facilitate a more consistent process. We also once more urge the Board and System leadership to give the potential termination of tenured faculty without a declaration of financial exigency the full and careful scrutiny that such a grave development for higher education warrants.

Robin Herlands
Faculty Senate Chair, Nevada State College
On behalf of the NSHE Council of Faculty Senate Chairs

NFA Summer News Update for NSHE Faculty

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 20:22:00 +0000

Important news coverage since the end of the spring 2011 semester has focused on organizing and advocacy, and budget issues.

ORGANIZING & ADVOCACY

July-August issue of AAUP journal a must-read for faculty and staff seeking change (Academe)
Legal Defense procedures for NFA members (Faculty Alliance blog)

BUDGET & ECONOMY

NSHE funding formula out of step with national trends in higher education (UNLV Faculty Alliance)
Sun takes in-depth look at higher ed funding (Las Vegas Sun)
USTAR exec: 'You have to have a strong educational system' for economic growth (Vegas Inc.)
CSN closes Caliente extension (Las Vegas Review Journal)
UNLV abolishes rolling admissions, makes deadline a month earlier (Las Vegas Sun)
UNR Athletics expecting $1.5 million deficit (Reno Gazette Journal)

CAMPUS NEWS

CSN to offer solar training in Laughlin (Laughlin Times)
UNR gives 50 high schoolers entrepreneur lessons (Reno Gazette Journal)

LV Weekly: NSHE funding formula out of step with national trends in higher education

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 05:41:00 +0000

This week the Las Vegas Weekly takes an extended look at the issue of the NSHE funding formula, with particular attention to how the state of Nevada handles student fees and tuition.

Although the headline is a bit sensational, and some important lines of inquiry are left out entirely (such as the discussion of equity funding for CSN in the last legislative session), the story is really worth reading by anyone interested in the state's future.

My personal view is that the story doesn't consider as fully as it might have the need for mission differentiation and careful strategic planning by the System (nearly as much as it opts to play up perceived regional rivalries). But that it goes much farther into the details of higher education funding in Nevada than any other publication has been able to this year (or, perhaps, any year).

AAUP Summer Leadership Training Institute

noreply@blogger.com (gregory brown) — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 21:52:00 +0000

This is from the AAUP. NFA members who might be interested in attending should contact their campus chapter president.

Registration for this year's Summer Institute has been extended through July 9; visit http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/about/events/SI/SIReg.htm to sign up now!

This year's conference will take place at Suffolk University in Boston on July 21–24 and will feature workshops on bargaining, organizing, shared governance, communications, government relations, and advocacy, plus a four-part series on how to conduct a financial analysis of your institution. In addition, the Institute offers social events and the opportunity to network with other faculty activists from across the country.

If you have never attended a Summer Institute, now is your chance to experience one of the best events the AAUP has to offer. If you have attended before, then don't pass up the opportunity to come back for a refresher.

For a complete list of workshops, see: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/about/events/SI/SISched.htm