Proposed Budget Reduction Plan

SmithieandProud
Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:46:10 +0000

Corbett is right, comparing this isn’t comparing apples to apples here. Smith has significant operating costs (and I wouldn’t knock lightbulbs. More than half of the budget is swallowed up by energy costs) that are not neccessarily the same as Amherst’s.

It’s important to remember too that this is and remains the “proposed” budget plan. None of these decisions have been finalized and not all of them will end up making it into the final plan nor will they make it into the final plan necessarily in their current form.

And I doubt very much that they’ll look to make cuts in computer science, considering a new expensive computer science lab was just built in Ford Hall and considering Smith’s committment to the sciences. It’s actually much more likely that they’ll reduce faculty in the English department since their faculty is larger and every college in the valley has a great English department (this is speculation though, as far as I know there are no plans to cut the English faculty).

What usually happens is not in fact that the course offerings become less diverse, but that the professors have to teach more courses. For example, making professors teach three courses a semester instead of two has been a popular model lately.

One thing that’s nice about Smith is that they are very open with students about what is needed and why and how exactly the sacrifices are going to be made. They don’t just spring things on people. So as a student it’s important to just participate in that conversation and remember that none of this is enjoyable for anyone. We just have to hang tough and get through it. Smith survived the Great Depression with much less, certainly it can weather this recession.