By Monir Khilla –

The Gothic Lounge was filled to capacity on March 5 for the New Jersey City University (NJCU) Senate Meeting. Packets were handed out, projectors were setup, and anticipation was high. On this day Dr. Alberto Pinkas, Chair of the Physics Department, gave what seemed to be a State of the School presentation.

The analysis was tasked to the Planning, Development, and Budget (PD&B) Committee and the findings were summarized in a 68 page report.

The Physics professor came up to the podium and put both administrators and faculty on notice. For many in the room, the news seemed troubling.

“The largest amount of money in this institution goes to salaries,” said Pinkas. However, the increasing salary costs have gone mainly to administrators. NJCU seems to be the only state school to increase the number of administrators and also decrease the number of faculty. In 2010, the number of administrators increased by almost 12%, costing the school $9 million. There was a 2.4 percent decrease in faculty, saving the school $577,000. The number of administrators also increased six times faster than students, according to the report.

NJCU is the only institution to do this, the only other institution that decreased both faculty and administrators is Kean. .”..I don’t want to be [in the same category] with Kean,” said Pinkas.

Kean University is fighting to keep its accreditation from being taken away by the Middle States Commission of Higher Education.

“It was claimed that we are very unique in the fact that we are the ones who have the fastest growing adjuncts,” said Pinkas. “We are actually the third lowest in the state among our sister institutions.”

What is also unique to NJCU is that while every other sister institution grew in full-time students, NJCU lost full-time students.

“We are the only ones who lost 4% of the full-time students, we lost part-time students, too. We are the only institution who lost about 5% of all students. We have the lowest four year graduation rate, we have the lowest six year graduation rate, we have the largest transfer out rate,” said Pinkas.

Pinkas noted that the students who transferred didn’t necessarily drop out, because they can be traced to other institutions.

Recommendations:

• The PD&B committee recommended that NJCU should begin by hiring a Provost who can be an arbitrator who can work with both administration and faculty on where the university should distribute its resources.
• Poor data and record keeping has made the budgetary process harder to analyze. NJCU needs to enforce a better policy of keeping track of information.
• Departments need to be involved in the budgetary process, department chairs also need better training to manage their budgets on Gothicnet.
• A review of the general studies program and the budgetary impact it has on the school.

There was also a hint of some discord inside the university when it comes to budgeting.

“We should all have a better sense that we are all on the same page,” commented Pinkas. “We also shouldn’t be going with the budget we get in June, we should be working on contingency plans.”

Scheduling has always been a pet peeve for students. Class cancellations, waiting for upper level major classes, and the dreaded general studies classes.

“Some departments do this and we should start doing this, that is posting schedules up two or three semesters upfront,” recommended Pinkas. “Putting the schedule up two to three semesters ahead will better help students plan better and will probably help with the issue of conflicts.”

Dr. Pinkas has seen the State of the School and though there are troubling signs ahead, there are reasons to be optimistic.

The report detailed a vast number of solutions that the administration could take in order to help remedy and solve the growing problems.