August 19, 2010

 

Dear Colleagues:

 

            Higher Education across the country is facing a storm of unprecedented magnitude. State and Federal support is being slashed, faculty are seeing furloughs, layoffs and salary and benefit cuts, while cuts in support for student aid is limiting access particularly to lower income students. This is all happening at a time when many families are facing loss of employment, wage cuts, and the disappearance of equity in homes, making it that much harder for them to pay for college.   In New Jersey, Governor Christie has ruthlessly slashed support for Higher Education, cutting both direct aid as well as student financial assistance.

 

            While Rider, as a private independent institution, is less dependent than public institutions upon state aid and is therefore somewhat sheltered from this storm, it has not completely avoided the impact of these state cuts. Governor Christie’s budget ended all direct aid to independent colleges, cutting two million dollars from Rider’s budget. Further, across the state, over fifteen million dollars was cut from the student financial assistance program, and almost four million was cut from the Educational Opportunity Fund. These programs are absolutely essential in making higher education accessible to low income students and are particularly key for many of our students. As you may know, the University has decided to make up this lost aid to incoming students. In fact, the University’s financial aid budget has grown over the last two years from 38 million to 42 million dollars. The AAUP Executive Committee applauds the University’s continuing commitment to supporting access to Rider to a diverse student body, including students from low-income families. It is in that spirit the AAUP Executive Committee, after conversations with the University, has proposed to provide some additional help for our students.

 

            Our Agreement with the University calls for a 3.4% raise beginning in September; this raise is a product of the floor placed on the size of our raise generated by a formula tied to average faculty raises across the country. Without that agreed upon floor, the formula would have produced a raise of 1.5%. In light of this, the AAUP has offered to allow the University to phase in our raise in the following manner: salaries would increase by 2.4% in September and increase by another 1% in January .The University has agreed that all of the savings realized by this phase-in will go to meeting student financial need. Since many other elements of our Agreement are tied to the percentage increase (travel fund

and overload rates for example) we have made clear that all of those items would increase by the negotiated amount on September 1^st.

 

            It should be understood that the University did not approach us, but rather we approached them with this proposal; further, our motivation for doing so was not due to concerns about the overall financial health of the institution (which is sound), but rather it was in the spirit of providing additional help for our most needy students.

 

                                                                       

 Elizabeth Scheiber

 President, Rider University Chapter AAUP

 

 

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