Budget Committee Reviews for Mandatory Early Start

A colleague from the math department here—Dr. Carol Shubin—pointed out that faculty curriculum committees aren’t the only ones charged to look carefully at Mandatory Early Start. Faculty budget committees have that right, too. Here’s one way to ask for a budgetary review of Mandatory Early Start proposals on your campus:

“I request that the Budget Committee* conduct a cost/benefit analysis of the Mandatory Early Start program, taking into account students, faculty, and administrators. What is the fiscal impact? Can we afford to implement this program at a time when resources are becoming more scarce?

“Shared governance works only if the faculty senate and its committees pay careful attention to added demands on our limited resources. The Mandatory Early Start courses should not be approved if the Budget Committee* finds that they are expensive, likely to fail, hard to implement, of uncertain value in terms of student learning, and at odds with disciplinary best practices and widely acknowledged faculty expertise.”

* Replace “Budget Committee” with the more specific name used on your campus. At Cal State Northridge, that’s the Educational Resources Committee.

UPDATE 1-ChinaEDU committee recommends adding board members