Brandeis budget crunch

bonanza
Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:21:21 +0000

It’s a problem but one shared by virtually every school out there. Harvard, which obviously has a much larger endowment, has instituted a hiring freeze, has accepted fewer graduate students with funding and and has frozen much of its expansion plans into Allston. Every university that I know of has taken similar actions. Actually, a 25% decrease in endowment is better than what a lot of other institutions have experienced.

Brandeis’ problems are not unusual but are exacerbated by the fact that it is a young institution in Massachusetts, which has a law which prohibits using income from an endowment when the current value of the gift is less than its original value. Because a significant portion of Brandeis’ endowment is relatively recent in origin, the law affects Brandeis disproportionately compared to Harvard or MIT. Brandeis also depended more on current philanthropy to balance its budget each year than other institutions, and many of those donors are not in a position to help like they ordinarily would.

But the Administration is acutely aware of these issues and is being proactive to address them. That’s why, for example, they wanted the flexibility to sell some art from the Rose Museum if necessary to prevent draconian cuts in the academic arena. But rather than portraying these measures as prudent precautions, the media choose to to portray them either as panic mode or anti-art. They were neither.

Brandeis (and the rest of us) will survive these difficult times. One could argue that Brandeis is simply being more honest and transparent about the financial issues than many other school. I wouldn’t base a choice of undergraduate schools open this openness.