The Vice President of Business and Finance, Ms. Rhonda Cartwright, has said repeatedlythat we “saved $11.5M” by making cuts.  She explains at least some of these “savings” in terms of costs that would have been incurred during the current 06-07 budget year but were charged instead to the 05-06 budget year.  This sort of “savings” includes $1.5M that was “saved” because 17 faculty members were terminated along with their academic programs as a result of the Pathways Plan.   The $1.5M figure represents their total salary plus benefits.  So, we have reduced costs in the current budget year by charging that $1.5M amount to last year’s books.  Note that this figure is a small fraction of the $11.5M.  But it will be “saved” in all subsequent years since those faculty members have been terminated.

However, no accounting has been given concerning the lost revenue, or increased costs, incurred by Pathways.  Academic majors that were cut have caused the university to lose students who would have paid tuition and to have a reduced number of freshmen in some areas.  How many were lost?  How much has tuition revenue been reduced by Pathways?

One way to get good estimates of these numbers by major for the 06-07 budget year is to examine the STAT screens that can be accessed by any member of the university community who has an SIS account.  Simply replace “zctl” with “stat” when you log in.

Upon examining the 06F semester information for full-time undergraduate headcount, which gives all registered students on a particular date, and comparing it to the same information from 04F and 05F, we find the following to be true.

Decrease in enrollment for the College of Arts&Sciences, or that collection of departments, post-Katrina:

~450 total students lost (down to ~1800 this year compared to ~2250)

Decreases by department:

Communications  ~150 students lost  (usually 500, currently 350 registered   ~30-35 of these would have been freshmen)

Computer Science 30 students lost (actual count confirmed by faculty)

Education ~30 students lost

Physics 20 students lost (actual count confirmed by faculty)

In other words about 230 of 450 total, roughly half, were lost from departments directly effected by Pathways.  Communications, Education, and Computer Science majors were terminated while Physics was suspended. 

If we use an average of $14k as the net amount of tuition revenue per student after scholarships and financial aid, 230 x $14k = $3.2M lost in tuition revenue.  Clearly, this amount is more than double what was “saved” by terminating the 17 faculty members.   In other words, Pathways actually cost the university about $1.7M for this year, and for every subsequent year in which we do not have those faculty and programs to attract and retain students in those majors.

In addition, numerous courses in these departments are currently being taught by part-time faculty.  Ten of the faculty members who were terminated were tenured.  They could be teaching those courses.  So it is costing the university some additional amount of money, something like $75k per semester or $150k per year, to offer those courses with part-time teachers.

While it may have been necessary, or at least prudent, to cut operating expenses, it was not wise to cut academic programs or faculty.  It was particularly imprudent to cut these assets from the most profitable of the colleges (2.93 ratio of net tuition revenue to faculty salary cost, compared to 2.28 for the whole university).