Chafe calls faculty cuts overstated

Eliminating 50 faculty positions over the next five years is a worst-case scenario for dealing with a projected Arts and Sciences budget deficit, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences William Chafe stressed in a press conference Tuesday.

Chafe said he held the conference in response to media reports about the budget, which is projected to run a deficit beginning in 2005. Before the University cuts faculty, he said it will first consider other options, including raising tuition, limiting faculty searches and winning new external grants for faculty research in its new buildings.

"This story has taken on a life of its own," Chafe said. "I have and we have no intention of even thinking of a faculty reduction of that size."

In October, a budget task force headed by Philip Cook, professor of public policy studies, recommended to the Arts and Sciences Council numerous possible solutions to the budget woes and noted that if nothing else worked, "we could solve it all by cutting 50 faculty," Chafe said.

The budget shortfall projected for the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 academic years is mostly a result of new operating funds that will be required for the new French Science Center and the Nasher Museum of Art, as well as additions to Perkins Library and to the Sanford Institute for Public Policy, Chafe said.

New technological initiatives and classroom renovations will also contribute to the possible $4 million to $6 million shortfall.

Chafe said that Provost Peter Lange, himself and others are still discussing whether to recommend to the Board of Trustees in February a tuition increase of 5 percent instead of the anticipated 4 percent. The move would bring Duke closer to its competitors' forecasted tuition hikes and would bring in an additional $1.4 million to Arts and Sciences. Two-hundred students could also be added to the Pratt School of Engineering, generating an additional $2 million for the Arts and Sciences budget.

Further, the five new buildings and additions that have either broken ground or are still in the planning stages could be spread over a longer period of time-holding off for a year or more the management and operations costs.