200 more students - impact on housing and dining?

interesteddad
Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:08:19 +0000

Will it really be any different anywhere else?



Yes. It’s quite different depending on the circumstances of the particular school. For example, a school that was already spending from the endowment at too high a rate (like Middlebury, Vassar, Smith) will have to make heavy cuts quickly to bring their endowment spending rates down. Smith, for example, is cutting 30 tenure-track faculty slots and 50% of their visiting professor slots over the next 3 years. Vassar is budgeted to spend 7.6% of its endowment this fiscal year (starting July 2009). That’s a very high, very scary number and you can expect severe cuts.

That problem does not apply to the very tippy-top endowment schools (in the LAC world: Pomona, Grinnell, Amherst, Swarthmore, Williams). As far as I know, they were all spending at low percentages during the boom years. Swarthmore was at 4.1% last year, 3.7% the year before. I can’t remember Amherst’s numbers, but they were similarly low. Williams was a bit higher, but still low. That gives these schools a bit of cushion, because they can increase their endowment spending by 25% (say from 4% to 5%) and offset a signficant decline in endowment. They still have to make some cuts, but they have the luxury of time. Back in March, when things looked really bleak, all of these schools made the easy cuts for the year staring July 2009 – salary freeze, restrictions on hiring, big cuts in capital matainence budgets (but all had such big reserve accounts and so little defered maintenance that this is not a big deal), and incremental budget cuts. Mostly low hanging fruit.

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