Governance and Compensation Committee
In response to guidelines presented by outside counsel Ice Miller to the Inter-University Council of Ohio in October 2017, the Benefit Investment Committee was created by the Ohio University Board of Trustees to take action regarding retirement plans with some changes made in recent months.
The Benefit Investment Committee, or BIC, reduced the number of retirement plans to four vendors, which include AIG, AXA Equitable, TIAA and Voya.
Modernized investment options were presented by Joey Payne, vice president and senior consultant at Cammack Retirement.
“Investment options reduced from over 500 choices to 25 - 30 options with new fee structures,” according to the presentation.
Those options include Target Date Funds, a core investment lineup with passive and actively managed funds across all asset categories and a self-directed brokerage option for those who are more experienced with investing.
The fee structure was adjusted, making it more transparent for buyers.
“Most people are amazed that the fees are much lower than they were previously,” Andrew Fodor, professor and chair of finance and director of operations for the College of Business, said.
Available investment options from the four vendors were presented by Fodor.
The main complaints from the changes were a result of confusion on why the changes must occur and concerns with the particular vendors, Greg Fialko, director of benefits and human resources, and Payne said.
Academics and Student Success Committee
The Academic Student Success Committee discussed further reductions in academic spending and how OU ranks among other universities across the country.
Since 2015, OU’s national rank, determined by U.S. News education rankings, has dropped from 129 to 176. This rank is based on a university’s student retention rate, graduation rate and performance, faculty resources and academic reputation, among other categories.
Laura Hocter-Ousley, assistant clinical professor at OU, discussed the different impacts that may have caused the drop in OU’s ranking since 2015.
“The primary use case of the rankings are to rank perceived academic quality,” Hocter-Ousley said. “This includes our reputation with peer institutions, with Provost deans. And some (ranking) organizations also do direct student surveys or Facebook surveys (that) can also play a significant role depending on the organization.”
Over the past years, some ranking organizations have stopped determining ranking from student high school credentials, instead using measures of student success while at OU, Hocter-Ousley said.
“Over the years, there's been a shift away from placing most of the weight on student inputs such as test scores, high school class rank and selectivity in admission rates, to placing more weight on student outcome measures, retention and graduation rates, social mobility indexes, looking at the success of Pell (grants) and other low socioeconomic status students, graduate indebtedness and also affordability indexes,” Hocter-Ousley said.
In 2021, the ranking system changed to compile six categories into one overall rank.
The six categories that U.S. News ranks universities on includes outcome measures, faculty resources, academic reputation, financial resources, student selectivity and alumni giving rate, Hocter-Ousley said.
Executive Vice President and Provost Elizabeth Sayrs discussed the recent reduction in academic spending.
“We've already made significant reductions in academic spending, since fiscal year 17,” Sayrs said. “The Athens colleges have reduced spending (by) almost $31 million. And you can see when you include regional campuses and Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine or HCOM, we're looking at about a $47 million reduction in academic spending.”
This reduction has impacted staffing levels, including the number of tenured faculty members at OU, Sayrs said.
“Our tenure track faculty numbers on the Athens campuses are down 15.6%. Another way to contextualize that is that (we have) almost 100 fewer (tenured faculty members) than we had in the 2000 to 2001 academic year. So we have significantly reshaped our faculty and our administrative staff as well as our spending,” Sayrs said.
Despite the recent budget cuts and reduced faculty, Sayrs said that there is still more to be done in order to close the “budget gap.”
COVID-19 has impacted higher education, causing the decisions to reduce the budget and faculty numbers, Sayrs said.
“So in order to move toward a balanced budget while building our academic quality, our reputation and our students' experience, it's really critical that we make those strategic decisions, both academic and financial to build a long term sustainable institution that can really thrive,” Sayrs said.
Colleen McLafferty, Maya Morita, Molly Wilson and Claire Schiopota contributed to this report.
