<p>Reviving this thread in response to the recent article in Vanity Fair regarding Harvard. See CC’s thread here: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/743711-harvard-had-no-idea-things-were-bad.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/743711-harvard-had-no-idea-things-were-bad.html</a></p>
<p>So just for S**** and giggles, I looked at what was new on Midd’s website and came up with this:</p>
<p>Total Operating Budget
Fiscal Year 2005: $163 million
Fiscal Year 2006: $173 million
Fiscal Year 2007: $183 million
Fiscal Year 2008: $207 million
Fiscal Year 2009: $220 million
Fiscal Year 2010: $223 million</p>
<p>How does a school needing to cut $20 million (I think that’s what the number was) increase their operating budget by $3 million? While it’s clearly not the kind of increases experienced previously, it’s not a decrease either. Plus, I thought it was said somewhere that they didn’t want to use more than 5% of the endowment towards operating expenses, but according to the pie chart about revenue, 22% comes from the endowment. Am I missing something?</p>
<p>Also… in the VF article, there was quite a bit of info on Harvard’s financing new building projects through debt. I am just wanting to clarify that although MIddlebury did do a lot of building in the last decade, is there a lot of outstanding debt needing to be paid on these projects or was their financing in place prior to their construction?</p>
<p>Basically, if there is a mere finger in the dike this year, are there fissures we are about to see spring to life? There hasn’t been much in the way of new news on the website and seems there’s more news on implementations on already agreed upon cuts. But hey… at least Middlebury uses the word “cuts” vs Harvard who seems to love a thesareus when it comes to these things.</p>