[CAUT] University Budgets and Payroll

[Susan Kline]

>But remember, it could be worse. You could be self employed and rely 
>only on private customers for all your income. My business wasn't 
>all that great to begin with, but now it's really hard to get customers.


Hi, Wim

You haven't been in Hawaii all that long, and these things take time, 
so don't lose heart. I've found (in several locations, starting from 
scratch each time) that if you just do one good job after another, in 
a confident spirit, it all comes right. A few years may go by, and 
then someone tells you, "I asked three friends whom I should have 
tune my piano, and they all said you."

Corvallis, Oregon (and the Arts Center in Newport, Oregon) are doing 
okay so far. What discussions are going on privately at OSU I'm not 
sure, but so far all as usual. Luckily OSU and Newport both bought 
new Steinways recently (a D and a B at OSU, a D at Newport) so they 
can keep going for quite awhile with the performance grands they've 
got, given decent maintenance, which I fully intend to provide come 
hell or high water. The kids and visiting artists deserve no less. (I 
don't do the rest of the department, just the concert stuff, so the 
bulk of my [modest] personal income is not "joined at the hip" with 
the music dept. budget, which I think is fortunate.)

I think that there are good and bad points of being either a 
full-time university employee or of depending on private work. The 
private work may come and go a little depending on the economic 
stress felt by the general musical community, but it's unlikely to 
dry up completely. On the other hand, there are no "benefits" -- but 
some of them I'd just as lief do without anyway. For instance, a 
pension -- but would it really be there? Or would it just have given 
me a false sense of security and then failed when inflation shrank it 
to nothing, or the whole institution went bankrupt, or its endowment 
got clobbered by the market? Even medical coverage can be argued 
either way. Either it can save your bank account if you get very sick 
-- medical never makes you well, it just pays you money for 
treatments, good or bad, -- or it might send you to doctors who make 
mistakes (why it's called a "practice", and a customer is called a 
"patient"?) When doctors make mistakes, they aren't pikers -- they 
often make BIG ones!

Anyway, there is a certain simplicity to "I tune the piano, you write 
me a check" which makes it a pretty rugged system, less likely to be 
messed up by decisions of people miles away in state capitols or 
nearby in university offices.

Susan Kline, RPT (carrying on as usual ...)
OSU, Newport Arts Center, Linfield College