Welcome to UH Board of Regents Meeting
October 15, 2009
Mahalo to the Board for your service to the University of Hawaiʻi and e komo mai to UH Mānoa. Mahalo also to our faculty, staff and students for speaking today—I know we all respect their concerns and passion.
Later this morning, I will highlight the contributions of UH Mānoa to the Performance Measures for the System but a number of contributions by our faculty, staff and students are also on display in the hall outside, so I encourage you to take some time to examine those.
This morning I want to speak about realities.
First, the reality is that the whole world is caught in the grip of this current financial crisis, the worst any of us have seen during our lives. All of us see how each and every day this is impacting on the people of Hawaiʻi—adding 15,000 to the poverty rolls, increasing unemployment, and so many more.
The reality is that the folks at UH Mānoa, in this room and throughout Hawaiʻi know that education is the key to creating and maintaining a healthy, productive society. We are definitely among believers here today. Yet all of us have seen the investment in education decline dramatically, especially in the last decade, across the U.S. The wrong direction? Most definitely. Education is not the priority it should be—and that threatens the competitiveness of the U.S., including Hawaiʻi.
Another reality is that Hawaiʻi's competitiveness is dependent on the contributions of the University of Hawaiʻi system. Within that system, UH Mānoa serves as Hawaiʻi's only large public research 1 institution and therefore it has a major and unique role to fulfill for the benefit of the State. I came here to use my experience to help this campus realize its opportunities and master its challenges, knowing full well that there is no easy road for research institutions. But I have to be honest and say that UH Mānoa is, in my view, at a tipping point.
We all know that UH Mānoa is a major generator for this State—from creating an educated population essential to Hawaiʻi and also producing new advances through research—an enterprise which also serves as a major economic engine for Hawai‘i. My concern is that this Mānoa generator will fail, unless it is viewed as an investment much more than prior decades indicate. Some examples:
1. Faculty and staff salaries and support. Older public research universities often share similar problems, particularly related to salary and support for faculty and staff. So I always look for evidence of those. Salary compression is a common problem—this means those who have been here the longest are paid increasingly closer to the level of new hires. To check for that, you typically check the salaries for full professors—at UH Mānoa, full professors have only just recently reached the 50% level for competitive salaries, whereas assistant and associate professors are at a higher percentage. Our accomplished senior faculty are key to our success as a generator and deserve competitive salaries.
Also, for faculty to be most successful, they require staff support, and that includes administrators whether that is popular or not. The reason is that research institutions are messy and complex and the regulations and requirements for them have magnified greatly during my career. To facilitate the success of faculty, staff and students, highly qualified staff are needed—and the demands and skills needed for those jobs are constantly changing and increasing. Right now, faculty and staff positions are expected to remain focused in the same area and with the same skill sets for decades—how many businesses could thrive with that approach? We need control of our positions and our resources and the flexibility to use them in the most effective, efficient manner we can.
2. Facilities. The quality of our space is inadequate to support an appropriate learning and research environment for a major research university. Mānoa is the oldest campus and hasn’t been properly maintained for decades. I believe that this campus could conduct its business with less space but it must be of better quality—right now, even the poor space we have is diminishing as buildings fail. There has to be a plan with resources to rebuild our facilities.
3. Mānoa's priorities. The reality is that UH Mānoa must focus its efforts on what it can do well because, as a faculty member said, we cannot afford to be what we have become. We can’t keep doing more with less, rather we have to do better with the resources we have. That includes partnering effectively across the system to maximize what each of us can do and to avoid redundancy. There are changes Mānoa needs to make and changes we will have to make even if we don’t want to. Creative ideas for change abound on campus, but accomplishing those changes is difficult, but we surely can’t afford to continue in the same way.
4. Budget reductions. The reality is that the size and swiftness of this year’s budget reductions, especially for Mānoa, have magnified our long-term problems. Should Mānoa be exempt from budget reductions related to this challenge? Certainly not, but the role of Mānoa as an economic engine for Hawaiʻi will be endangered as Mānoa is called upon to serve as a source of funds to meet downturns in the economy. There seems to be a misperception about the flexibility of the funds generated by Mānoa—for example, resources generated through such activities as research, housing, athletics and private giving come with the responsibility to use them for their intended purposes, not simply redirect them to meet other needs as they arise.
So we are left with limited options to address such large cuts—we have to use any flexible money, such as tuition, and implement permissible personnel reductions, such as non-renewal of personnel with short term contracts. Such actions delay and compromise our plans to meet the priority of student success. Our students are our future—they and their families work hard to generate their tuition and they deserve improved services and facilities to support their learning experience.
Lastly, the reality is that the economy will recover but these next two-three years are going to be tough. Our focus going forward has to be on developing plans for an investment in UH Mānoa so it can continue to be a generator and a source of pride for Hawai‘i. Otherwise Hawaiʻi will lose the status and positive impact of its research 1 university.
As the Native Hawaiians say, “By working together, we make progress"—I believe that deeply and this is a time when we most need to pull together. I look forward to our working together on this worthy endeavor.
Mahalo and welcome.
Virginia S. Hinshaw
Chancellor
vhinshaw@hawaii.edu