serious proposal

I think this would be a harder sell to faculty, if you expect them to do just as much teaching. Some staff are hourly, and it's easier to pull off something like this when it's clear that the workload will be proportionately reduced. Salaried staff will be in the same position as faculty; they won't want to do the same amount of work for 4/5 as much pay.

You would certainly know better than I, but....

I can't see how this would work. I mean, you could eliminate classes and meetings, but stuff from writing up reports from meetings to grading papers gets done when it has to get done, not only during the 9-5 work hours.

For salaried non-faculty, these furloughs do not have a lot of appeal either. I have already heard griping about well paid faculty versus long suffering staff who support them.

The idea of going to a model where 1/3 of my yearly salary is dependent on the highly variable outcomes of the research funding process would have me unhappy.

Postdocs ought to be immune, since their contracts are almost all externally funded. Staff, not so much.

Many places are facing the reality of 5-15% furloughs, no matter what - and, no, the teaching and committee load will not be reduced in proportion.

So, one way to save our sorry paychecks is to formally cut the work week, but then that provides the opportunity in principle to have the 20% time be covered for explicit research.

That would actually be very attractive to a lot of faculty if structure right, but the funding agencies would have to agree also, and we're talking about a lot of money.
Probably about a grad RA per year per faculty.

I just had a conversation with a faculty member (with tenure) who said, if the UC furlough happens, he will look for another job.

Interestingly, he thought that the faculty furloughs will save no money, and this is what he heard from the chair of his department.

Everyone I talk with says that their fraction of the salary is a drop in the bucket (faculty, staff, etc.) All I can say is that the high level administrators need to really get on top of communication about this.

I agree..if the teaching load is not going down as well, then this will be a very tough pill to swallow. But if the teaching load were drop, then are people willing to do (say) 12 week semesters instead of 15, or would that mean longer semesters to get the right amount of material? That in itself would be very problematic.
I will second that having an even larger fraction of my salary based on the external funding `situation' will not be pleasant.

Oh sure, it's fine. Higher education is just like building cars, you know. Shut down the assembly line one day a week. I think most legislators think higher education is a luxury. Something to fully fund in flush times, but to squeeze when times are tough.

Which is to say, a big part of the problem is at the state funding level.

I definitely think a bit of 'research' is in order: additions to state buildings, helicopter use by state officials (especially here in Illinois), travel junkets, unnecessary signage (this highway authorized by so-and-so, soon to run for governor), funding incentives for driving ranges, and so forth. Creative embarrassment can work wonders.

Teaching loads can't drop, the whole point is to save money and there is not going to be hiring of new faculty lines.
We'll be lucky if most places don't increase faculty loads as there is attrition.

At a lot of the state universities there will be furloughs, unpaid leaves; only question is whether some of that salary can be clawed back through research lines since our time will nominally be free, right.

If the agencies agree, those with enough funding, which will be a lucky fraction, can top their salaries back up.
Cost will be fewer student and postdoc lines of course.
Unless the agencies pony up additional funding, hee hee.

More points on the graph:

if research universities moved to a 3 day week, and cut salaries 40%, would this be acceptable?

if research universities moved to a 2 day week, and cut salaries 60%, would this be acceptable?

if research universities moved to a 1 day week, and cut salaries 80%, would this be acceptable?

if research universities moved to a 0 day week, and cut salaries 100%, would this be acceptable? Lear: "Nothing will come of nothing."

if research universities moved to a 1 day week, and cut salaries 120%, so the researcher pays 20% of former salary for the glory of being in the lab, would this be acceptable?

Let the market find its own equilibrium. That worked so well with financial derivatives.

Ah, the dangers of linear extrapolation...

There are actually situations within universities where academic units are making net payments to the university for the privilege of existing.

However, a number of universities are facing immediate large cuts - large enough that trimming costs will not cover the cut and the time scale is too short for attrition or suspension or projects.
Some universities will close departments, revoking the tenure and firing the associated faculty.
Some universities will cut salaries unilaterally, under the disguise of furloughs - unpaid involuntary leave.

Research faculty do not generally work 40 hours weeks, and in many cases already pay part of their salary through grants.
The magnitude of the cuts needed is of order 20%, or one day per week.
Should research faculty be permitted to dedicate their "day off" to doing research, and pay themselves additional pro rated salary out of grants?

This is both an issue of university policy, and of grant agency policies.
Indpendent of the actual possibility of getting enough grants.
A consideration is that if grant amounts are zero sum games, then the money means fewer positions for students or postdocs.

What do you protect?
All options are bad.

I think the proposal is very reasonable, as long as the goal is to solve an immediate and somewhat temporary (1-2 years?) problem of 10% or 20% or whatever budget cuts.

There will be a lot of resistance from faculty who have little or no research support. But as Greenspan put it, only when the tide goes out can you see who is wearing no bathing suit.

Support staff and administration will have to live with 20% furlough, since I can't see faculty with grants ponying up not only additional summer salaries, but also additional overhead to pay for various services. There may be a lot of resistance from them as well.

I find it somewhat ironic that postdocs and research assistants (soft money researchers) seem to be the most protected in this situation, since it would be plain stupid and counterproductive to reduce their salaries. If anything, pay raises all around (for soft money people) may help fix the problem.

I don't see that allowing tenure-track faculty in science and engineering departments to be partially soft money supported is a stumbling block in general (though it may be for the UC system specifically), since I know of several universities with funding arrangements of this type. Whether you can get the funding agencies to sign off on it is another matter, as they are suddenly paying for services they used to get for free. Contra Incoherent Ponderer, I think that pure soft money researchers are very vulnerable here if this scheme is implemented: it takes a few years for a change in policy of this magnitude to be reflected in requested external funding profiles, and meanwhile postdocs and graduate students will not be hired/renewed because suddenly the Big Boss needs that pile of money to pay himself.

Also keep in mind that whatever cost cutting measures get implemented have to satisfy the arts and humanities types, many of whom do not have the option of replacing from research grants salary lost to furloughs. The UC system will ultimately have to either decide not to maintain certain departments, or successfully use this threat to achieve the cuts by other means.

To touch on Eric Lund's last point, in the UC system most of the decisions for what cuts are made is done at a pretty local level. The UC Office of the President decides funding levels for institutions, which in turn allocate money to divisions, and so on. Locally (for me), Social Sciences has been hit harder than most and a department is on the block. I gather no tenured faculty are getting the boot, but lecturers and staff are being eliminated or absorbed into other departments in the division.

The furlough decision appears to be being made at a system level, and the rumor is 10% across the board for campuses. I actually think that Steinn's idea is an interesting one, if the agencies will go for it, but as Eric Lund says, the folks with much less grant support oppurtunities will be harder hit. And locally, at least, they seem to be being hit pretty hard already. Things that look equitable are easier to get people to swallow. So what will look as an exception for the scientists might not be workable for a political reasons even if it can be made workable with the agencies and with the current university culture. Fortunately, I am not paid to make these decisions.

perhaps i am misunderstanding the premise. Is the premise:

a) should faculty salaries, in general, go to a model of a 4d week, with a 20% pay cut, and the opportunity to make it up in grants?

or

b) You just got 20% furlough cut. Now, given that, should you be given the opportunity to make that up via grants, until next year when the furlough goes away?

if a), I say no. if b), I say yes.

The cuts are coming, already baked in, and not just for UC.

Some universities are going to amputate, but many do not want to tackle revocation of tenure, so will furlough.
The scale of the cuts is of order 20% furloughs, which will absolutely destroy discretionary spending in university towns and crash their economy in a way that is somewhat unprecedented.

So, there are really several questions: the first of which is whether given the coming furloughs, faculty at research universities ought to be permitted to try to cover their idle time out of research funds?

Second question is whether this is anything more than an emergency measure - since once such precedent is set, it may easily become permanent.
How does "Research Friday" sound?
Developed world may well adopt a 32 hour working week anyway to address the problem of high productivity and systemic underemployment.

Interestingly, with furlough, some junior faculty may suddenly find themselves earning less than their postdocs, at least if they can't make summer salary.
Talk about compression...

So, been reading about Wyoming's geology department then?

As a research professor raising his own salary, I fully support spreading the joy of raising more of your salary from research grants :)

Theorists would probably have a harder time making ends meet under this system. One would have to allow for faculty to share their grants amongst themselves, which might in turn increase internal collaboration. But limit the pursuit of new, unfunded ideas.

I am sorry, but tough luck to Humanities and Arts faculty. There is nothing fundamentally unfair about Steinn's proposal. University is facing cuts and EVERYONE's salary is being cut 10% or whatever. The fact that some professors are able to supplement furloughed time and others are not should not be a valid reason to not accept this proposal. This situation already exists with regards to summer salary. People without support - being in sciences or not, are effectively taking a pay cut for those months. Now we are talking about an additional month.

I would then like to see Humanities and Arts people propose an alternative idea on how to save 10% of total budget.

I think the idea should be presented as this:
1. Everyone gets 10% cut (through furlough)
2. Everyone gets 10% cut but allowed to make up for via grants.

Then it will be interesting to see what humanities, arts and people with no funding have to say.

As to postdocs and soft money people - under this proposal there will be less positions available in the long term, since PIs have to now pay some additional "summer" salary to themselves, but the existing (and future) postdocs will have the same salary. There is a big difference to postdocs and soft money people, I think. In my case, 1 month of my salary is about 10% of year of support for a postdoc. So it's basically in the noise. It's not like we are talking about canceling an entire position to pay for one month of PI salary. And postdoc market is still relatively good. Most people can easily get multiple offers if they are reasonably good. Reducing the number of future positions by some small percentage is not all that bad. Especially considering the outlook for post-postdoc, permanent job market (faculty and such). Reducing number of grad student enrollment across the board is not bad either.

In my case, 1 month of my salary is about 10% of year of support for a postdoc.

Your situation is not typical of my experience. Depending on seniority and applicable fringe benefit rate(s), tenure track salaries at the research university where I work are typically two to four times the salary of a beginning postdoc. So if Prof. Bigshot decides to pay 20% of his AY salary out of his grants, that's close to a full postdoc (or grad student) he either can't hire or can't retain. Remember that continuations on any postdoctoral fellowship are always contingent on availability of funding.

Reducing grad school enrollment, while probably a net benefit to the field in the long run, is politically infeasible for at least two reasons. First, there is the danger that declining enrollment will provide the excuse for a university to axe its physics department (IIRC this happened at James Madison University in the mid 1990s). Second, it's a tragedy of the commons scenario, since any given department that cuts its grad student enrollment will lose influence compared to departments that don't.

Eric, a few points, postdoc salary (+ benefits) include overhead. Recovering your own salary supposedly won't have overhead, because you are compensating for what university would normally pay you. Postdoc positions have a lot of other "built in" expenses such as computer, travel, supplies, etc. So a postdoc with a nominal salary of, say, $40K, could easily end up costing $100K. Most asst. professors don't make 100K a year.

Recovering your own salary supposedly won't have overhead, because you are compensating for what university would normally pay you.

Again, not at my university. Here, the following items are exempt from overhead: (1) tuition and fees for grad student RAs; (2) subcontracts after the first $X. Everything else incurs overhead, including faculty summer salaries. Point taken about computer and travel expenses, but at $2-3k for a typical work computer and $2k for a typical domestic trip, it's a small correction. (Also, IME each trip is budgeted separately, so if a particular postdoc doesn't take it somebody else in the lab will. Foreign travel requires extra approvals, so more often than not that would be Prof. Bigshot's trip anyway.) And yes, many tenured professors at research universities have six-figure salaries.

Surely you are not serious about 32 hour work weeks! Some of the supposed productivity gain may be the purely illusory effects of creative accounting. With declining working age populations and increasing competition 32 hour work weeks is likely wishful thinking.

But what you are basically suggesting is that people at the top of the academic heap who have some of the most stable jobs around should also get a larger slice of the overall pie at the expense of the lower rungs. Isn't this exactly what got a lot of other industries in trouble? There are plenty of auto, mill and mining towns that have been devastated over the years. We've all been telling them that it is the Darwinian reality they have to deal with. What's so special about the economy of University towns?

Couple of comments. Maybe 15-20 years ago, the salaryed staff at my university went to a 35 hour work week. Faculty contracts included the right to work outside the university one day a week so long as it did not interfere with university duties. The outside work had to be approved by the university, and the time spent and money made reported. I had colleagues who made more from selling Amway than they did from the university. I did environmental consulting and worked part-time for the US Army Corps of Engineers while on full assignment. I also got research grants and contracts through the university which provided me with release time and summer salary

Ponderer,

Be careful what you wish for.

The point of a furlough, as opposed to a cut in base pay, is that the university is implying it will raise salary back to the previous level when it has the money again (1 year? 2? 5?) so that you don't wind up taking a permanent cut to base pay.

If a university cuts faculty salaries and the profs with grants all make up the missing pay by taking extra summer salary, when times get better and the money comes back to the university, some clever administrator will notice that the profs with grants are happy to pay themselves, and will ask "Why do we have to pay these people for a month to do research, when they are getting the Feds to pay them?"

On the other hand, if we furlough staff by 20% cuts, they'll just leave. Don't think that profs can solve this problem by dipping into grants while the rest of the university will muddle along suffering silently.

Re #22: if furloughed faculty get more grant money to cover missing salary, and the university gets overhead on these grants, then a perverse incentive would be created that encourages further shortfalls. So proposals to cover salary while furloughed should be submitted through an organization like Eureka Scientific.