Syndicate and Hague

For those of you who missed the rally, or want to forward this on, or use the arguments, I’m pasting the text of my speech from this afternoon’s rally below.

I want to start by saying that though the administration often frames dissent like this as us hating the University, they’re wrong. We love the University. I am a graduate of the English department, and when I moved back here from New York I made an effort to get a job at the University of Minnesota. Our faculty and students are wonderful, and it was actually my job here at the University that inspired me to go back to school and work on my PhD.

Everyone has made fantastic arguments about the encouraging the culture of learning at the University and this being a big part of who we are and why we are here, but I’m going to focus on those of us whose degrees or coursework directly pertain to our jobs.

First of all, I will hammer home the fact that this is a pay cut. Not only is it a pay cut, but it is one of the only cuts in our compensation that will almost exclusively affect low- and middle-wage employees.

Whether it’s the first degree or PhD, the people who take these courses are people for whom education will improve their professional lives. Senior-level employees and faculty members, who for the most part make much more than the rest of us, will not feel this cut personally. And I want to thank those faculty and senior employees who support us and know that cutting the Regents scholarship is the wrong thing to do.

Let’s talk about what kind of pay cut this is.

If you are working on your first bachelors degree, taking one four credit course at a time each spring, summer, and fall, you will be paying approximately $390 per year. An employee working towards their first degree makes less money, so based on a salary of $25,000 per year, that is a 1.5% pay cut.

Let’s say you have a Bachelor’s degree and let’s be generous and say you make $37,000 per year. At the 25% rate, taking a spring, summer and fall undergraduate course will cost you about $950 – about a 2.5% pay cut.

Taking a graduate course each semester at $37,000 per year will cost you about $1,900 – about a 5% pay cut.

Who is being asked to sacrifice? Who is taking the pay cut?

I am a technology professional in the civil service/bargaining unit here at the University. I am also a PhD student in Curriculum and Instruction. Part of my focus is on Learning Technologies. My PhD program directly benefits my boss and my department and my school. I am not unique. The University of Minnesota staff in my courses bring inspiration and new knowledge back to our departments so that we create improve the output of the University.

This pay cut effectively renders the education that is part of our compensation package unaffordable. It will lead to decreased inspiration, innovation, and that will affect the strategic positioning of the University and the quality we currently provide.

This pay cut will affect staff recruitment and retention. Once the economy recovers, the University of Minnesota’s ability to recruit talented staff will decrease, as will our ability to retain staff. Other schools offer dependent and spousal tuition support at varying levels, we offer none. Decreasing a part of our compensation that doesn’t stand up to what other schools currently offer is misguided.

This pay cut is not about the myth of 10% annual increase: the Regents Scholarship increases in cost on average 10% a year. So does tuition. The program itself isn’t getting too expensive, tuition is.

Using short-term tax incentives to market a pay cut that affects long-term policy decisions is fraudulent. Destroying the Regents Scholarship and justifying it with temporary tax incentives that only a small part of our population can even use is disingenuous at best.

The Regents Scholarship didn’t become a perk until the administration wanted to decimate it. Prior to that, it was part of the compensation package that HR reminds us of on an annual basis.

This is a pay cut.

We are better employees because of our classes. We have new ideas, fresh ideas, current ideas. We make the University a better place, we make the education better, and we keep morale strong.