The media and many politicians thought the sky was falling when the federal sequester loomed in legislation. The federal sequester — for those of you that had your head under a rock — was a result of the Budget Control Act that set a series of automatic spending cuts evenly spread between various federal agencies to take place in 2013 and 2021.
In March, due to the federal sequester, many operating budgets of federal agencies were cut by $55 billion dollars or approximately five percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And yet the sky has yet to hit the ground.
In fact, government has even benefitted from the budget cuts. According to Forbes, so far in 2013 the U.S has seen .3 percent of economic growth and 800,000 jobs created, which is a faster job creation rate than was seen in 2012.
Blindly cutting the budget across the board for the government may have seemed silly, but oddly enough it appears to be working. When departments are forced to make budget cuts, they get rid of unnecessary spending. This approach would work wonders for the University of Idaho.
UI works surprisingly similar to the federal government. In order to raise the cost of tuition by six percent last year the university had to ask permission from the State Board of Education — much like the executive branch asking Congress to raise the debt ceiling limit.
And much like the government, UI would benefit from a five percent universal budget cut. Student tuition and costs have been increasing at an exponential rate for colleges across the U.S. According to a College Board survey, tuition and costs for public four-year colleges have risen 27 percent more than the rate of monetary inflation over the past five years.
This stems from the general culture at a university that often seems unable and unwilling to cut the fat. Instead of trimming expenses –like many other universities — UI simply keeps raising students costs.
Part of the cause of this is how universities operate. Only at universities is a person granted tenure and guaranteed a job that prohibits them from being fired without great cause. Only at universities does one not know if the university’s product –an education– been successfully given to students. No college tests students to measure if they learned anything. Thus ensuring that the college is not held responsible which is found only at universities.
At a business, not being able to easily fire employees, not being able to monitor success of sales and not being able to hold the business accountable for its product would be a pretty poor business model.
A universal budget cut would change this culture. A universal budget cut would affect all departments equally and departments would have to finally consider what they are spending money on.
The poster child for this is Matthew Sowder, a former instructor for the College of Education and Project Director of Northwest Nations Upward Bound. Just last year at UI, Sowder was charged with spending over $1,000 on a university credit card for personal purposes. Some of the things he bought with UI funds included: food, pornographic magazines, a painting of Lady Liberty and a tattoo of Lady Liberty.
Sowder got away with spending this money by filing reports claiming he lost receipts for purchases, and claiming the purchases were being used for NNUB, when they were not. One has to suspect if UI was more careful with funds they would monitor credit card purchases more carefully. After all, since UI banks with U.S. Bank, all credit card purchases can be seen online, why wasn’t the Accounting Department able to catch him sooner since Sowder claimed to have lost the paper receipts?
Tighter budgets means smarter decisions when it comes to university spending. If the government can survive with five percent less, UI can as well.
Aleya Ericson can be reached at arg-opinion@uidaho.edu