Hi Fred, We're about in the very same situation. Tuition up, enrollement up, salaries are stagnant this year, and the recital halls are already filling up for the fall semester. UNL just got voted one of the top 50 state universities in the country with an even higher interest and application record. That's a good thing, so I can keep my job! I've actually not seen a busier recital September in my short 4 years (this being my 5th fall) more work and same pay...which, sadly means, more work with less pay. Also, with more students, of course, means less opportunities to tune in practice rooms, more abuse of classroom pianos, more frequent repairs to practice rooms, faculty rooms and concert instruments. Fortunately, I can lock practice rooms with a "piano repairs under way" sign on them when I really need to fix something. I come in at 7am so I can have minimal disturbances in classrooms and practice rooms, but by 10:30am, it's packed, noisy, and I find something else to do for the rest of the day, like shop work, faculty piano work, and scheduling. Or...just deal with the chaos and get lesser qualities of tunings. Recital halls are a bit different except for one which doubles as a huge classroom for giant classes like History of Rock, History of Jazz and the like which are extremely popular as you can imagine. And, you guessed it, is the most used recital hall in the school!! I have great advantage to have first dibs on concert tuning work times even above faculty/student rehearsal requests!! Yay! I haven't analyzed the numbers, but they're probably close to yours, Fred. I feel, though locked to a 40 hour/week schedule, that the pianos will suffer, now, a bit more as I have to spread myself even thinner across the board keeping to a strict 40 hours. Also our Lied Center has an extremely busy season scheduled with nearly twice as much piano needs as last year's season. A good line up to be sure, but that again, takes my time away from the 110 SOM pianos. I'm interested to hear from other CAUTS if you're in the same soup. Best, PAUL From: Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu> To: College & University Technicians <caut at ptg.org> Date: 08/19/2010 03:39 PM Subject: [CAUT] bursting at the seams I am curious whether other institutions are experiencing significant rises in enrollment. We have been heading steadily up over the past decade, with a faster increase the last couple years, and it seems to be accelerating. 160 freshman enrolling in theory this fall, which is double what it was five years ago. Classes are full to bursting, rooms are in short supply. Meanwhile, we face a 3.2% budget adjustment (cut) this fall semester, and a projected additional 5% in the spring. And are told both cuts are likely to be "permanent." On top of two years of 5-10% cuts each year (this being a cut in the money allocated by the state). Well, I guess that is the same story everywhere, pretty much. We tighten our belts and move on. We are insulated to some extent, because 50% or so of our budget comes from various class fees, and that income is rising with the additional enrollment. Regards, Fred Sturm fssturm at unm.edu http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/FredSturm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100819/3f1c836d/attachment.htm>
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