Call To Cut Admin Pay

Lawmaker targets high salaries; Perdue weighs in

By Lee Shearer
The Athens Banner-Herald
March 5,2010

Buzz up!The battle over higher education funding escalated Thursday as a key legislator called for colleges to cut the pay of high-paid administrators and professors, while Gov. Sonny Perdue vowed to protect the state's public colleges from deep cuts proposed by legislators.

"It's not going to happen on my watch," Perdue said.

But state Sen. Seth Harp, R-Midland, dismissed speculation that legislators might back off a plan to cut as much as $300 million in funding to the 35 public colleges and universities in the University System of Georgia, in addition to the $265 million reduction colleges already faced this year.

Leaders of a joint House-Senate appropriations committee, including Harp, last week directed University System of Georgia Chancellor Erroll Davis to tell legislators how the university system would eliminate $300 million in spending, without raising tuition. Davis' response, released Monday, touched off protests.

The list included more than 4,000 layoffs, reduced enrollment at the University of Georgia and other colleges, and even closing some schools such as the Medical College of Georgia's School of Nursing at Athens.

"We certainly hope that the $300 million cuts may be less, but we do not know that. We are operating under the assumption that that is the number that we have to have," said Harp, chairman of the Senate's higher education committee.

Harp also suggested a way the university system might make up some of the budget shortfall: Cutting compensation for the highest paid administrators and faculty members.

"Some things that are not being used by the chancellor are things that are very, very strongly favored by the people of Georgia. I'm specifically referring to cutting income, cutting salaries of high-paid employees," Harp said.

Instead, University System administrators this week proposed a slate of program closings and layoffs they might adopt to meet that $300 million target.

In Athens, most of the financial pain would fall on the University of Georgia, which would slash $60 million in spending.

But deep cuts also could force administrators to close the Medical College of Georgia's School of Nursing at Athens and scuttle plans to begin graduate medical education programs at Athens-area hospitals in conjunction with Athens' new medical campus.

The state could save $1.7 million a year by closing the Athens nursing school and a smaller graduate nursing program in Columbus, according to Medical College of Georgia financial planners.

Ending plans for internships and residencies in Athens-area hospitals for new doctors trained at the new UGA-MCG medical campus in Athens could save more than $2.5million next year, said William Bowes, senior vice president for finance and administration at the medical college.

But the long-term costs would outweigh by far the short-term savings, said Bowes and other medical college administrators.

New doctors tend to stay in the area where they complete their post-graduate residencies, Bowes said. If medical college administrators have to cut back on residencies in Georgia, the young doctors will have to take residencies in other states, he said.

"We know that when that happens, many of those students never come back to Georgia," Bowes said.

Closing the nursing school in Athens - called SONAT for short - could have even more serious effects on area health care.

Georgia already has a shortage of nurses, said Christy Berding, co-director of the bachelor of science in nursing program at SONAT.

The shortage only would grow worse if the school stopped turning out about 60 new nurses a year, she said.

"One of the main reasons we're having this shortage is that there's a lack of education programs for nursing now," Berding said.

SONAT has trained about 2,000 nurses since it was founded here in 1974, and most of them find jobs in the Athens area, she said.

Students and alumni of the school have organized to fight the possible closure, said Lindsay McLear of Athens, a SONAT senior nursing student who will graduate later this year.

More than 700 people have joined a Facebook group aimed at saving the school and an online petition drive has garnered more than 1,000 signatures, she said.

• Morris News Service and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Friday, March 05, 2010


lee.shearer@onlineathens.com
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