Over 200 Mississippi State University employees retired in the last school year due to a voluntary retirement incentive program adopted by the university. Between July 1, 2001 and June 31, 2002, 221 employees retired, as compared to 105 the previous year. The majority of the retirees (186) left at the end of last June in order to gain the benefits offered by the program.
According to Joe Farris, Director of University Relations, the program, which was authorized by the state legislature and the Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning, offered a bonus to employees of retirement status who chose to retire at the end of June.
The program was designed to help deal with financial difficulties the university is facing due to three years of state budget cuts.
According to Farris, MSU currently receives $15 million a year less in state support than it did three years ago, but the program has helped to make up for some losses.
“The reason the voluntary incentive program saved us money is because the university does not plan to replace all of those who left,” he said. “I don’t have the exact statistics, but approximately one third of those who left will not be replaced. The positions we did replace are, on average, occupied by people earning less than those who retired.”
Farris said other positions have been combined to minimize the effects of the losses.
“We’re operating on less money than we have been, and this is one of the innovative ways that the university has been able to help cope with this problem,” Farris added. “It’s hard to get by on less state support, but we’re managing to have the classes, house students, and do the things that need to be done on less money.”
MSU Interim President Charles Lee said the budget cuts left the university with some “difficult choices,” but he felt the program was the best route.
“We could have had layoffs, which are always traumatic, often involve appeals and lawsuits, and would leave morale at a difficult level, or we could provide a way for some people, under the rules set by the legislature and the Board, to retire,” he said.
Lee said the program helped some faculty and staff members who had been considering retirement but were not in a circumstance to do so before the program was implemented.
He also said MSU received a very positive response for the program.
“People seem to be praising our willingness to realize the reality of our (budget) situation and find a way to face it, rather than ignoring it or complaining about it,” he said.
Clifford Ryan, a retired professor in the MSU history department who has come out of retirement to teach again this year, said the budget cuts are forcing the university to look at the bottom line, and the students are facing some of the consequences of that.
“I’m not that familiar with the attitudes and ideas of the administration, but it appears that they were just desperate to find some way to make ends meet and this was one way to do it,” he said. “I do think though that the students end up being hurt by it because, for one thing, the university is unable to replace everyone. For example, Dr. John Marszalek taught the history of the American Civil War, and he was not replaced. As a result, the coarse is simply not being taught.”
Although some classes have been cut due to loss of resources, Farris said only one-third of those who retired were teachers. The other two-thirds were administrators or support staff.
“The emphasis, from a savings standpoint, is on the other positions. Our priority will always be the teaching function,” he said.
Lee said the retirement program actually helped the university keep some classes.
“Had we not done it this way, we would have had to cut far more classes,” he said. “There’s no perfect solution to dealing with the university’s financial downturn, but we used varying tools in trying to minimize the effects on our education, research and our outreach service.