ABSTRACT
State university budgets are part of a very large and complicated political decision-making process. Many university trustee members know little about the operation and needs of the university they oversee, so imposing an austerity program seems perfectly logical to them. In academia students represent the financial base of the institution. From time to time, and most likely more often than truly necessary, university presidents and/or system chancellors will declare the need to reduce budgets in order to avoid a financial crisis. Separating programs from departments is a false economy and could lead to long-term morale and productivity problems. The departments that lose the most positions are going to make accusations of bias no matter what precautions are taken, but using only hard data from university records makes it more difficult for those accusations to have traction. Realize that faculty members typically have extraordinary intelligence and skill.
