Students face larger class sizes

Students in the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Education are likely to see bigger class sizes, more graduate student-taught classes and smaller classes nixed altogether, said Neil Theobald, the vice chancellor for budgetary administration and planning.\nThe two schools cut 35 faculty positions to make up for a more than $11 million budget shortfall at the Bloomington campus. \n"Basically (the School of) Education and the College were in a position that the only way they could balance budgets was to not replace all of the faculty that left," Theobald said.\nTheobald said the deans and University administration tried to make the budget cuts as far away from students as possible so that a majority of them would not feel the affects of the crunch.\n"The questions of whether students were primary in the discussions -- absolutely. That's why financial aid wasn't cut, that's why summer school wasn't cut, that's why the student technology fee wasn't tapped," he said.\nNo faculty were forced to leave, but during the 2004-2005 academic year, 23 faculty members in COAS and 10 in the School of Education either retired or got jobs outside of IU. Facing the budget deficits, COAS Dean Kumble Subbaswamy and School of Education Dean Roberto Gonzales cut those positions rather than finding replacements for them. The decision saved the School of Education more than $1 million and COAS more than $2 million.\n"We are cutting out classes with low enrollment. We are going to rely more on adjunct and associate instructor positions," said Gonzales. "We'll have to economize wherever we can." \nIn an e-mail Subbaswamy cited similar solutions to the reduced faculty for COAS.\nThe financial woes that caused the faculty reduction came from a pair factors. The state of Indiana, which provides roughly one-quarter of IU's budget, gave IU-Bloomington $4.5 million less in appropriations than it received last year. \nAdditionally, problems with the PeopleSoft software prevented IU from sending out financial aid awards.\n"So we were 600 freshman short in last year's class," Theobald said.\nThat cost IU another $6.6 million because it was expecting tuition from those 600 students, he said. \n"Another problem with that is that it's not a one year problem because even though we've increased the number of transfers, this year we're a lot of sophomores short," he said. "This is a four year problem that's going to have to work its way through the system."\nBecause the low 2004 freshmen enrollment is a longer-term problem and because the state also cut IU-Bloomington's appropriations for the next year as well, Theobald said IU is likely to have tough economic times in the coming year, as well.\n"We're being very cautious," he said.\nGonzales said the budget forced the cuts.\n"We really don't have much flexibility," Gonzales said. "The amount of money that was cut from the budget could not be made up anywhere else but through personnel reduction."\nPayroll budget accounts for 80 percent of the School of Education Budget and 90 percent of the COAS budget. Sixty percent of the budget campus-wide goes toward paying faculty and staff salaries, Theobald said.