200 more students - impact on housing and dining?

interesteddad
Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:32:34 +0000

They are playing a little game of semantics. They are increasing tenure track hiring – by three slots. What you have to go to the financial plan to see is that this is three of the eightteen slot increase that had been approved two years ago and that the other fifteen slots have been cancelled.

The exact number of cuts for non-tenure faculty is not clear. That is semantically stated as something like, “the cuts in place for this year will be continued next year”, but I haven’t seen how big the cuts for this year were.

Bottom line: Amherst will have 168 tenure track slots for the next three years, up from 165 slots.

Everybody is playing semantics games with these budget cuts. It’s like trying to parse admissions deans talking SAT stats! I’m not singling out Amherst. If you read the endowment reports, it’s like every college is on the shores of Lake Woobegon, where all endowments performed above average in the biggest market declines of a generation!

Read this 18 page PDF for Amherst’s new cuts (on top of this year’s cuts) bringing the total to $48 million cumulative over three years or a one year slash of $16 million or so by year three.