Proposed Budget Reduction Plan

Colleges and Universities A-Z Smith College
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<p>Read here: Smith</a> College: Responding to the Financial Environment</p>

<p>As a prospie, I am particularly concerned about the increase in student-faculty ratio; 9->10:1 doesn't sound so bad, but it involves eliminating 30 faculty positions in the next 2 years. I'm also sad about the elimination of Interterm, which was an interesting aspect of Smith not found at many other colleges.</p>

<p>How does Smith plan to cut $30 million from the budget, given the huge uproar over Amherst painfully cutting $18 million? Does anyone have information newer than the proposed plan?</p>

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<p>

$30M vs $18M sounds like a big difference, but it’s roughly proportional to the difference in school sizes. In the latest Common Data Sets, Smith reported total full-time enrollment of 3,014 (including grad students), plus another 87 part-time students. Amherst reported total full-time enrollment of only 1,697. </p>

<p>Amherst, just like Smith, plans an increase in student-faculty ratio; it’s just getting there in a different way. Smith is reducing faculty while keeping enrollment constant (which makes sense for a relatively large-enrollment LAC). Amherst is keeping faculty constant while increasing enrollment (which makes sense for a relatively small-enrollment LAC). But the student-faculty ratio is negatively affected either way.</p>

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<p>^ True. Amherst is probably going to go 8-9:1. But even with the difference in enrollment, the cost of actual operations is about the same–you can only save so much more money by replacing X amount more light bulbs with energy-efficient ones. And IIRC, Smith’s overall endowment is smaller than Amherst’s, for a much larger number of students (but I’m not sure about the numbers, so feel free to correct).</p>

<p>Anyway, I’m not interested in Amherst for other reasons. It just seems that increasing S:F ratio by adding enrollment = larger classes, while doing so by cutting faculty = less diversity in course offerings. This may be offset by an initial difference in number of courses offered, I don’t know–that’s why I’m asking. It is a concern for my secondary field of interest, computer science, which is a small department at pretty much any LAC. (Primary interest, English, is popular enough to maintain reasonable breadth/depth even with faculty cuts.)</p>

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<p>The point is that the absolute value of the cuts is only meaningful relative to total operating expenses. Smith’s annual budget is probably much larger than Amherst’s, for the simple reason that it is a much larger school. So $30M of cuts at Smith, while undoubtedly hard and painful, is not necessarily harder or more painful than $18M of cuts at Amherst. </p>

<p>It’s true that Amherst is better endowed than Smith, on a per-student basis. However, that was the case before the current market problems as well, so nothing has really changed in that regard. </p>

<p>Realistically, you should expect painful cuts at every LAC that you are applying to, including Amherst and Smith.</p>

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<p>Corbett is right, comparing this isn’t comparing apples to apples here. Smith has significant operating costs (and I wouldn’t knock lightbulbs. More than half of the budget is swallowed up by energy costs) that are not neccessarily the same as Amherst’s. </p>

<p>It’s important to remember too that this is and remains the “proposed” budget plan. None of these decisions have been finalized and not all of them will end up making it into the final plan nor will they make it into the final plan necessarily in their current form. </p>

<p>And I doubt very much that they’ll look to make cuts in computer science, considering a new expensive computer science lab was just built in Ford Hall and considering Smith’s committment to the sciences. It’s actually much more likely that they’ll reduce faculty in the English department since their faculty is larger and every college in the valley has a great English department (this is speculation though, as far as I know there are no plans to cut the English faculty). </p>

<p>What usually happens is not in fact that the course offerings become less diverse, but that the professors have to teach more courses. For example, making professors teach three courses a semester instead of two has been a popular model lately. </p>

<p>One thing that’s nice about Smith is that they are very open with students about what is needed and why and how exactly the sacrifices are going to be made. They don’t just spring things on people. So as a student it’s important to just participate in that conversation and remember that none of this is enjoyable for anyone. We just have to hang tough and get through it. Smith survived the Great Depression with much less, certainly it can weather this recession.</p>

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<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/education/09harvard.html?_r=1&emc=eta1[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/education/09harvard.html?_r=1&emc=eta1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>This is an issue everywhere and a number of schools have been very slow to get student input.</p>

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<p>I had not heard about Interterm being cut…can someone provide details? Thanks.</p>

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<p>I had not known about the new computer science lab–certainly a nice plus. What I’ve heard about Smith’s English department has actually not been positive–alum friend entered as an English major and switched to philosophy because she preferred the faculty and department… philosophy? I’m not exactly sure and haven’t been able to get back to her to clarify. But the department is big enough that I think I should do all right.</p>

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<p>They’re not cutting Inter-term. They’re thinking about possibly (remember this is only a proposed plan, emphasis on proposed) cutting the not-for-credit interterm program. During J-Term there are many classes offered, but few of them are actually offered for credit. And in the not-for-credit courses that require actual instructors, those instructors have to be compensated. So part of the proposal was a suggestion of no longer offering these not for credit courses. </p>

<p>This would not stop for-credit interterm courses, nor would it stop the courses that students can volunteer to teach themselves (anyone who has a skill or hobby they want to share can volunteer to teach a course on it during J-term). </p>

<p>So relax, J-term is not going anywhere. After all, the whole point of J-term originally was a cost-saving mechanism. THey used to send students home during January so they wouldn’t have to buy coal to heat the shcool.</p>

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<p>The English dept. at Smith is excellent, but people’s interests change and things they thought they were passionate about when they entered college don’t always stick with them. Also, everyone’s reaction to each department/prof/class is different. Maybe she just liked the professors in the philosophy dpeartment better, or maybe she never really got enough exposure to philosophy before college to realize that was her passion. Happens all the time.</p>

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<p>So, if “few” J-Term courses are “actually offered for credit,” what percentage of the program will be cut by eliminating the “not-for-credit” courses? Part of the appeal for me is the chance to take crazy “fun” courses that wouldn’t otherwise fit in the curriculum or engage my interest for an entire semester. And now that Smith does have to heat the school during January, wouldn’t it save money to cut the program? I’m not really understanding how it was ever a cost-saving mechanism.</p>

<p>Regarding my friend: <em>shrug</em> She hinted that the English department was too traditional or close-minded for her taste, by saying that she grew to love philosophy because it was so much more “open.” But English is such a large department that you can’t characterize it so narrowly. Maybe she would have majored in English if she’d attended a different school and meshed with the professors better. --But that doesn’t mean Smith’s department is necessarily worse or even worse for me.</p>

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<p>I think the confusion here is a lack of understanding of how J-Term actually works. It’s much bigger than the not-for-credit or the for-credit classes, in fact, I would argue those are the smallest part of J-Term. Even if the not-for-credit classes were eliminated (and that’s a big if, again, I think we’re getting spun up over nothing here, folks), J-term itself would continue to exist. </p>

<p>First of all, J-term is a completely optional school period that fills the month of January. No one is required to be on campus and if they are on campus, they arent’ required to take classes of any kind. Houses are open and dining is offered, but in a limited way. People use J-term for a lot of different purposes: some do come back to take a class, but many more use the time to relax, prepare a thesis, train for a sport, work on or off campus, and the vast majority of students don’t come back at all or come back only for the last week when most of the classes have finished, preferring instead to stay home or travel or spend the time in their own way. </p>

<p>If the not-for-credit courses were eliminated, it would certainly be a blow to some students, but they would likely just increase the opportunities for courses that are taught by volunteers (which are also good and fun). But there are also a lot of other things to do during J-term that are not as expensive as the courses and still can engage students. There are trips to New York to see the opera, special movie screenings, trips with the outing club for winter hiking, for example. </p>

<p>The remark about not heating the school was in reference to the origins of J-Term. Many LACs on the East Coast have J-Term though they have adapted it to their own special style (Williams, for example, requires all students to return for J-Term). Back in the day (way, way back) it was cheaper to send students home for the month of January than to pay to heat the campus, since that was the coldest month of the year. So East Coast LACs developed an academic calendar that excludes the month of January. So the only way to get rid of J-term now, would be to lengthen the spring semester by a month, which would be vastly more expensive since instead of paying for food and lodging and activities for a few students, the school would have to fund classes, food, activities, housing etc. for every student. Which is why J-term will never, ever be eliminated, at least not for budgetary reasons. They may pare it down or change its shape (maybe, maybe, maybe but again, definitely not a for sure thing) but they won’t end it altogether.</p>

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<p>And it’s true, the Smith English department is extremely traditional. For that reason, many potential english majors end up in American studies or Comparative Lit (and some in philosophy). But you never know, it may suit you.</p>

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<p>MyD is thinking of doing and EMT training class on the Amherst campus over J-term (although it means we’ll see a lot less of her than we hoped over break) so it looks like there are off campus opportunities as well that would be unaffected.
A lot of colleges don’t even have this option, and like the article above about Harvard, are making cuts to student programs unilaterly so I think Smith is doing a pretty good job of being transparent about the process.</p>

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<p>Last year, my D returned to campus at the beginning of J-Term. She and her friends didn’t take classes but rather hung out. They wanted time to just be friends without the pressure of classes. Smith housed and fed them, free of charge, during this time. I was amazed. While this time was invaluable to them, I wouldn’t mind seeing this kind of cut – total elimination of campus activities until the first day of spring semester – if it meant that other amenities could be kept intact during the regular academic year.</p>

<p>As the NY Times articles points out, even the richest universities in the country are suffering. Imagine what it must be like behind the scenes at the smaller LACs. LACs use a proportionately higher percentage of their endowments every year compared to universities, and so, if the endowment shrinks, their available funds do as well. While I don’t understand why places like Harvard don’t temporarily change their policy to take a few more percentage points off the endowment, LACs like Smith and Amherst cannot afford to do that. They will quickly go bankrupt. I hope that all current Smithies remember this and give back to their alma mater when they are able. </p>

<p>No one dreamed that the economic downturn would affect higher education like this. But it is a reality everywhere. No institution is immune.</p>

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<p>That makes sense. I’ve always seen J-Term like Williams’s, where students are required to come back and the majority do some sort of academic project/class.</p>

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<p>Yeah, Smith J-term is pretty unique in its flexibility, which is great. I spent all of my first J-term at home, but that’s a five week break if you count winter break too, so that was a little much. Usually I’d stay at home through new years and head back the first week of J-term sometime to work and also to just relax and enjoy hanging out with my friends, on campus, without the craziness of school.</p>