As the economic downturn forces the University to become “a smaller Duke,” administrators have tried to shield academics.
But the size of the shortfall has meant that academic departments have cut back—and more cuts may be coming.
Every department in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences has reduced its budget by 10 percent this Fall, George McLendon, dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences, confirmed.
This is the second cut academic departments in Trinity have made as the University works to reduce its spending—$2.12 billion last year—by $125 million over three years. In the Spring, the departments cut 5 percent of non-staff spending.
“You know, the truth is that the University like everybody else in the world has to live within its means, and the art of creativity is figuring out how to do everything that’s important with whatever resources you have available to you,” said President Richard Brodhead.
Department chairs said they were able to cut their budgets without affecting the student experience. Faculty and administrative retirements helped some departments balance their budgets and some have cut expenses such as faculty lunches, travel and printing costs.
A shortfall
The cuts, about $2 million in all, are in response to an unexpected budget deficit revealed in an October financial update, called the Fall Variance Report. That report showed a shortfall of about 0.7 percent in the Arts & Sciences budget, McLendon said.
In July, after tallying the results of non-staff departmental cuts and cost-saving measures made centrally in Trinity, administrators predicted that the Trinity budget would be balanced, McLendon said. By September, Trinity had already cut its $300 million budget by about $12 million.
Those cuts led to changes in Arts & Sciences administrative offices, rather than in academic departments, McLendon said. He added that about one-third of the staff in Arts & Sciences administration had voluntarily retired from Duke or been laid off.
He did not say how many people were fired, but noted in an e-mail that there were few layoffs because many of the employees who lost their jobs in Arts & Sciences were able to find work elsewhere in the University.
But because statistical projections for annual fund donations and the number of faculty that would leave Duke were slightly inaccurate, more cuts were needed.
Student financial aid, which makes up about 23 percent of the budget, and faculty salaries, which are about 26 percent of the budget, could not be cut, McLendon said.
So this time, the cuts had to be made in academic departments.
“We just said [to the departments], ‘Here’s what we need from you. Figure out how to do this,’” McLendon said.
The cuts
The biology department cut 10 percent, more than $200,000 in total, through “belt tightening,” department chair Dan Kiehart said.
“I think it’s safe to say that our interaction with students hasn’t been affected by this,” he said.
Biology invited professors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University to speak at its seminars, rather than pay for hotel and travel costs for professors from farther away.
The department also encouraged professors to print less by posting assignments for students on Blackboard. Biology has been able to save more than $1,000 on toner alone, Kiehart said.
He said grants, such as those from the federal stimulus, have also helped the department meet its budget goals. Two or three staff members have part of their salaries paid for by grants.
The political science department was able to balance its budget in large part because two staff members retired and only one person was hired to replace them, department chair Michael Munger said.
The department also eliminated lunch at faculty meetings and reduced the subsidy that it gives each faculty member for photocopying, fax, phone and travel costs from $600 to $250, Munger said. The department raised a few thousand dollars in donations from faculty to purchase toner for its printers.
The cultural anthropology department saved much of the $30,000 it had to cut through the retirement of a staff member, who was then rehired to work part time, department chair Orin Starn said.
“We have not had to cut, for example, any classes, or to break any commitments that we had made to advanced graduate students or visiting professors to teach in the Spring,” Starn said.
What’s next
More cuts may be necessary in the coming months. Several department chairs said another 10 percent cut is being considered for the next fiscal year, which starts in June.
McLendon said Trinity will know whether more cuts are necessary in the Spring because it will have a better idea of its income for the coming year and of expenses such as salaries.
One area of spending being examined is certificate programs, he said.
“No decision has been made to eliminate any certificates,” McLendon wrote in an e-mail. “We are looking at the cost-benefit trade-offs of all activities within the college, and certificate programs have been one area of rapid growth of expenses. Thus we have to make sure that our students are best served by the available resources, and a part of that is making sure that each certificate program uses resources effectively.”
Department chairs said that with another round of cuts, academic programs will likely be affected.
“We don’t spend money frivolously, and so cutting 10 percent of our expenses means pulling our belts in, in one way or another,” Kiehart said. “So it's hard, but at this point, it hasn’t been painful. Another round of cuts will be painful.”
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