Cuts to save IU money amid budget crunch

IU will cut 35 faculty positions over the next two years due to budgetary constraints. No professors will lose their jobs, but when faculty members leave, their jobs will not be filled.\nThe College of Arts and Science will take the largest cuts while IU tries to balance the budget for 2005-06. COAS will lose 23 positions and save IU $2 million, said Kumble Subbaswamy, dean of COAS. No faculty will be fired or laid off, but many of those who are retiring or leaving IU are not being replaced, leaving those departments shorthanded. \nThe cuts to COAS will be divided among the more than 50 departments in COAS, Subbaswamy said in an e-mail. \n"As might be expected, larger units like English suffer larger losses numerically, but the impact on smaller units (as a percentage of their total faculty) can be equally large," he said. \nSubbaswamy said he is concerned about IU's standing as an elite research University and how these cuts will affect that in the upcoming biennium, or two-year budget period. \n"Ninety percent of the College's budget is personnel," he said. "When the state budget is cut, and tuition increments don't keep up with increases in fixed costs, and faculty retention requires giving at least minimal salary increments, the only way to balance the budget is to cut personnel. This has now gone on for two biennia, and I am deeply concerned about IU's standing as a top tier public research university. Research universities are a critical investment for the State's future in a knowledge economy. I hope the political leadership reverses the negative trend in the next biennium."\nIU-Bloomington Chancellor Ken Gros Louis expressed concern at the state's lack of help for the University.\n"Obviously we need support from the state," he said. "It seems odd to me at a time when the state is looking for help from the universities that West Lafayette, the medical school and IU are in state appropriation, when these are the three major research sites in the state."\nFewer elective options, larger class sizes and classes taught by adjunct professors might be a result to these cuts, Subbaswamy said. But he said COAS will try to minimize the impact on students.\nThe School of Education will also face losses similar to the ones of COAS. Ten positions will not be filled.\nPete Kloosterman, executive associate dean of the School of Education, said the school's enrollment has been down and its budget is based on enrollment. \n"It's not so much that we've gotten more cuts, but we've run out of other ways to balance the budget," he said.\nTo combat the loss of positions, the School of Education will rely more on part-time associate instructors and visiting faculty, he said.\n"We've had to hire those people because our tenured faculty has been hired away by other universities," Kloosterman said. "We're very worried about our long-term budget right now. We're having a hard time keeping tenured faculty. We're not sure we have enough money to keep them."\nKloosterman said the school's main priority is to keep the high quality of education. Yet, it will be hard to maintain these quality without being about to replace existing faculty.\n"Our priority is to do everything possible to maintain high quality instruction," he said. "Some of the adjunct professors are excellent teachers, they just don't have the long-term view of our tenured faculty. It's very difficult to maintain high quality programs when you're not able to replace existing faculty who leave. At this point, we can't keep as many good people as we would like." \nIU's budgetary woes are in response to a reduction of state funding. Kloosterman said the school has known the state funding hasn't been strong for some time and that the budget cuts would be tough. \n"Costs are going up much more than tuition or funding," he said. "It's more acute than we had hoped. We were hoping to at least maintain stable funding from the state, but with cuts from the state, it makes it even worse."\nAlthough Gros Louis was disappointed, he said he would not blame IU lobbyists for the constraint.\n"There are 1800 faculty positions at IU," he said. "Ten percent being gone is a small percentage but still a strain"