UI accepts vast majority of buyout offers; some jobs to be refilled at lower wages
URBANA – Steve Helle admits he's a little bit frightened by all the freedom he's about to have on his hands, taking a buyout from the University of Illinois – and possibly saving a colleague's job.
"I feel like I am jumping out of an airplane and I'm not sure if I have a parachute," said the veteran journalism professor and legal expert.
The Urbana campus expects to save about $25 million with the more than 600 buyouts, which were first offered this spring.
"The goal of the program was to approve as many agreements as possible to mitigate the number of potential layoffs," said Urbana campus spokeswoman Robin Kaler, adding that $25 million is a significant savings.
Academic professionals, civil service employees and faculty had until April to decide if they are willing to accept a check as high as $75,000 to resign or retire.
In the voluntary separation program for academic professionals and civil service workers, of 624 eligible applications, 483 were approved and 141 denied, Kaler said.
Of the 483 approved, 211 positions will be refilled, but at lower salaries, she said, while 272 positions were eliminated.
That amounts to a total savings of $15,130,838.
In the voluntary retirement program for faculty, there were 164 eligible applications and 153 were approved, Kaler said.
Some 78 faculty positions are being refilled at lower salaries, with 75 positions eliminated, Kaler said, for a savings of $10,764,078.
The trade-off – the UI loses valuable, experienced workers, like Helle, a journalism professor with a law degrees, who was named the Freedom Forum National Journalism Teacher of the Year and twice has received the campuswide award as outstanding undergraduate teacher at the University of Illinois.
Helle, 55, said he expects to do some teaching in the near future.
"But if so and for how much are all up in the air," he said via e-mail.
He noted that as far as research or adventures, he'll be living with limits.
"I can't do anything that costs money because, not only will I be retired, but I have one daughter in college and another getting married," Helle said.
The professor said making the decision was daunting.
"I think of myself as a rational person, but what rational person would exchange a good-paying job that is about as secure as things get in these troubled times for an unfunded pension system in which anything can change and there is no going back?"
Helle said he had been considering retirement, "but it was always with the idea that I might be moving on to some other position, perhaps even vesting in a pension system that was solvent."
He said he has enjoyed his UI experience, "talking about a subject I enjoy with really intelligent people every day – and if that just-right other position never came along, I rather saw myself continuing to do what I have always done."
It's difficult for me to see how the university is saving any money with this buyout plan. In the building in which I work, seven people will be leaving. All seven were planning to retire this year before the buyout was announced. A friend in another campus unit has a similar experience. All the people in her department who are leaving planned to resign their positions or retire this summer. All were approved for the buyout. The UI's buyout payment to them, as far as they are concerned, is free money. How does that save the university any money?
And, most of these positions are going to be filled. Even if people are hired in at a lower salary, there really will not be that much of a savings -- look at the cost of employee benefits. Again, where are the savings??
Only one of the best prof's in the department. What a bummer. Who will bellow "ACTUAL MALICE" out the window now? Helle pushed his students and accepted nothing less than complete comprehension of his subject matter. The College of Media and journalism curriculum will slink even further into LAS. I expect the curricula will fall (even moreso) by the wayside, leaving graduates unprepared for the depleted journalism job market ahead. Their degrees will be useless without substantive teachers like Helle backing them up. A shame for Helle, a shame for the school, but mostly a shame for the students who will never know the frustration and intimidation of one of the most knowledgeable men in the department. Adios, Helle. It was a pleasure to be your student.
"Their degrees will be useless" -- that's the important phrase.
The paper hosting this Web site is a prime example. The focus now is on witless, frivolous Twitter posts. Meanwhile, details about changes to the city's recycling plan are botched, and the appointment of a total buffoon to the city council gets merely a blink.
There could be people out there with the skills to get the tough stories and to develop them accurately, but today's newspapers want nothing to do with that kind of thing. They want young, cheap workers who won't question the fast-food, drive-by, shallow approach of today's newsrooms.
The University could save a good deal of money by dropping the entire journalism program, and it should think very, very hard about doing so. The numbers alone ensure that many, if not most, graduates will have a degree that will not help them, especially if they want to do the solid work that people need a newspaper to do.
The value of the University isn't in the Land, isn't in the Buildings, isn't in the Chemicals, Machines.
The value of the University is in the faculty, staff (civil and ap).
As you lose the people, the University is worth less. Lose enough, and it's worthless. I'm just waiting for the day when the University decides to furlough over the summer and pink slip everybody like the rest of the public schools do in town...
Thanks for your service Professor Helle.
The intelligence and enthusiasm you brought to the classroom is irreplaceable, and it's sad that future journalism students will not be able to experience it. The University was fortunate to have you teaching such an integral part of journalism.
Hopefully future endeavors will still allow you to open up a window and yell to the people down below "Do you know what actual malice is?" just to prove a point to your students.
--Matt Stensland
They are again hitting the problem with a feather pillow; private business in such a pinch wields a bloody ax, and solves the problem or closes. Another feather pillow was swatted at the pension system, but private business would have, at best, limited funding of a 401K. There is no way that 8 percent or so of income over 30 years can hope to fund retirement at 55 and provide health care. Taxpayers are wise to ask why they should pay additional tax so state employees can retire early while they work until they drop.
The initial assumption, that public universities should somehow be run like a private business, is fundamentally flawed. Private businesses do not have to report to the legislature, can operate on a payola basis, and oh yes, they pay into social security.
The state does not pay into social security for its employees, and 8% is what the employees have mandatory taken from their pay, whether they want it or not -- the State is supposed to fill in (much as employers put up matching funds), however a private employer gets tax breaks to provide incentive for the matching; the state does not, ergo the holidays.
Were that the University of Illinois WAS a private University without answering to the legislature who refuses to pay, yet also caps the one source of income that it can rely on (tuition)...
Most taxpayers have social security; we do not... and lest you forget, University employees are taxpayers too!
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