CU backpedals on fringe benefits cuts

In response to backlash from faculty and staff, the University has made significant changes to the employee benefits cuts it announced in April.

Columbia will continue to pay 100 percent of the tuition for officers’ children attending the university and roughly 50 percent for children at other colleges. Additionally, employees will also have the option of choosing an “80 percent” health care plan to replace the more costly 90 and 100 percent plans, which are being phased out.

Employees still have some concerns, including more costly health care plans and cuts that will make it more difficult for staff to pursue degrees and take classes at Columbia. Cuts to retirement benefits have not yet been finalized.

But overall, faculty members said they are happy with the concessions made by the University. Philosophy professor Christia Mercer, the chair of Literature Humanities, called the changes critical for both faculty and students.

“The recommended changes in April were a disaster. Columbia would have become a second-rate university,” Mercer said. “The health and the retirement cuts were simply unacceptable.”

The recommendations released last semester were meant to eliminate the $25 to $35 million yearly deficit in the University’s “fringe pool,” to which departments and schools contribute, and which pays for officers’ benefits. But after many faculty members responded to the cuts with outrage—especially members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, who tend to have lower salaries than faculty at the University’s professional schools—administrators backpedaled.

The Policy and Planning Committee—the group of nine faculty members chosen to represent the interests of FAS—has worked to moderate the fringe benefits cuts, meeting with University President Lee Bollinger on the topic. Italian professor Teodolinda Barolini, a PPC member and chair emeritus, said that Bollinger “reacted in a way that I’m extremely impressed by.”

Mercer, who is not a member of the PPC, said PPC members worked hard to come up with “a realistic and practical way of responding to the original package.”

“Columbia students are not going to be well-educated unless we have top faculty,” Mercer said.

TUITION ADJUSTMENTS
After many faculty members objected to a reduction in tuition benefits for children of employees, the University decided to continue offering those benefits at the same level.

Columbia plans to cover 100 percent of the undergraduate degree tuition at Columbia or Barnard for up to eight terms for the children of newly-hired full-time officers. In April, the task force on fringe benefits—a 27-member body made up of faculty and administrators—had recommended reducing this benefit to 80 percent for current employees, while grandfathering the 100 percent benefits for current employees.

For children of employees attending college elsewhere, Columbia will continue to cover either 50 percent of that school’s tuition or 50 percent of the Columbia College tuition, whichever is less. The task force had recommended reducing this benefit to 40 percent for new hires.

But in a change that remains from the April recommendations, new hires will have to work at Columbia for four years before becoming eligible for the child tuition benefits.

“We understood there would have to be some trade-offs,” Barolini said.

Employees were notified of the modifications to the tuition cuts in late June.

Barolini said that overall, Columbia did a great job of restoring these original benefits but added that there are some others that she would still like to see restored.

For instance, Barolini noted, employees who were not seeking degrees could previously take one free course per term—in other words, up to three courses per year. But with the cuts, they will be limited to one course per year.

The benefit cuts for degree-seeking employees have drawn even more criticism. Under the new policy, officers admitted to a degree program that starts after this term will be limited to one free course per term. Previously, professors and research officers were eligible for one course per term, and all other officers were eligible for up to 15 credits per term.

Additionally, new hires will need to wait two years before becoming eligible for these benefits.

Lani Muller, CC ’93 and the academic administrator for the Italian department, said that this change will be particularly problematic for her. Muller has taken Hungarian and Russian language classes at Columbia but she will now be limited to one class per year, as opposed to one per term, as an officer not seeking a degree. Muller took beginning Russian last year but will now have to wait several terms before she can resume her studies because she cannot afford $8,000 for a 6-credit Russian course. This wait will make it harder for her to learn the language, she said.

“I understand the idea of needing to cut funds, but it needs to be done with more sense and sensitivity,” Muller said.

Muller added that the cuts are unduly penalizing people without families, who will not take advantage of the restored child-related tuition benefits.

Daniel Savin, chair of the University Senate’s Research Officers Committee, echoed Muller’s concerns, saying that the cuts will make it much harder for degree-seeking employees to obtain their degrees and for non-degree-seeking employees to learn subjects that require continuity.

Because of these concerns, Savin said, research officers would prefer degree-seeking students to be allowed two courses per term, and non-degree-seeking students one per term.

Savin questioned the rationale behind the University’s decision to limit classes taken by employees because they should come at no extra cost—the University already offers the courses the officers wish to take. He added that these changes could decrease the University’s ability to hire highly-motivated people who would like to take courses while working.

“We have no understanding for the logic of their decision,” Savin said.

But changes could still be made. In an email sent in June, the University said it is still reviewing whether or not to allow employees seeking degrees to enroll for free in two classes that need to be taken concurrently. Interim Provost John Coatsworth said that a final decision on benefits for degree-seeking employees will be released in a few weeks.

TWO PLANS OUT, TWO PLANS IN
Administrators have also finalized changes to employee health insurance benefits. Columbia has decided to introduce two new health plans and phase out its two current plans for non-unionized employees.

Coatsworth told Spectator that over the next three to five years, Columbia will work to move employees off of the Point of Service 90 and POS 100 plans, which are very expensive for the University to maintain. Under these plans, the University pays 90 percent and 100 percent of health care costs, respectively, up to an out-of-pocket maximum.

But in a few years, these plans will become subject to a federal “Cadillac tax” created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health care reform legislation signed into law last year.

Monthly contributions for employees enrolled in these plans will start to rise, which Coatsworth said should encourage employee to switch to the new plans.

“Eventually, people will have to move out of them anyway, so we want to do it over time,” Coatsworth said. “But we want to offer these alternatives as rapidly as we can put them together.”

As announced in April, the University will begin offering a new High Deductible Plan paired with a Health Savings Account. But administrators announced earlier this month that the University will also start offering a POS 80 plan. This new plan will require a lower monthly contribution than the POS 90 and POS 100 plans, and coinsurance—the amount the plan pays—will be 80 percent.

Out of these four plans, the POS 100 will have the highest premiums, the POS 90 will have the second highest, and the POS 80 will have the third highest. The HDHP’s premium will be the lowest, but it will have higher deductibles than employees are used to, Coatsworth said, as will the POS 80 plan.

The University is also eliminating its high-cost Indemnity Plan, a decision announced in April.

It’s unclear so far how much each plan will cost—the University will release figures later this month, according to an email sent to employees just over two weeks ago. But Coatsworth noted that the University was able to moderate the monthly contribution increases for the POS 90 and 100 plans.

“What we discovered during the course of the year was that medical costs were rising more slowly than we had anticipated, and we found other places in the budget where there were savings that we could use to mitigate the problem of the debt overhang,” Coatsworth said.

“What Columbia employees will face this fall in terms of medical premiums will be rates of increase that they will find more or less consistent with rates of increase in medical premium costs in the next few years,” he added. “Nothing extraordinary.”

Savin, though, said research officers are still concerned because they don’t have all the details of the new plans yet.

“We are concerned that they will be dramatically reduced,” he said.

Several professors said they could not yet comment on the health insurance changes because the costs have not yet been announced. But Barolini said the University is moving in the right direction. She noted that faculty had received a questionnaire about health insurance, saying she hoped the final changes would reflect faculty sentiments.

“People said they would rather pay more up front, and have more protections,” Barolini said.

RETIREMENT CHANGES STILL A CONCERN
Finalized changes to the retirement savings plans have yet to be announced. According to College of Physicians and Surgeons professor Jessica Kandel, a member of the fringe benefits task force who is working on the retirement benefits, this is due to complexities in retirement planning that required more work after the task force finished the other projects.

Retirement benefits have been grandfathered, meaning that changes will only affect employees hired after they take effect. Coatsworth said that Columbia is working with an outside consultant to make sure its new plans conform to strict federal standards.

“Each time we’ve come up with a scheme, it’s turned out that we can’t do it that way, so we have to figure out another way to do it,” Coatsworth said. “So that’s a technical delay, more than anything else.”

Any changes to the retirement plans will not take effect until the 2012-2013 academic year, according to the email sent from the co-chairs of the task force in June. Coatsworth said he hopes the changes will be finalized this semester.

Barolini said retirement is an issue that the PPC remains concerned about, stating that it is a “matter of tremendous importance to this community.”

One of the main concerns for professors near retirement is their ability to retain their Columbia-provided New York City apartments after they retire. Faculty members are currently expected to leave their Columbia apartments three years after they retire, making some more likely to postpone retirement in order to maintain their housing.

Barolini said this issue of housing needs to be looked at with the retirement benefits by the task force. Coatsworth said he will soon appoint a committee to examine all retirement-related issues.

“We want to make sure that our tenured faculty feel comfortable retiring at the age that they’d like to retire,” Coatsworth said.

Sammy Roth contributed reporting.
amber.tunnell@columbiaspectator.com

An earlier version of this story said that changes will be grandfathered in for new hires, rather than for current employees. Spectator regrets the error.