Proposed Budget Reduction Plan

Keilexandra
Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:42:27 +0000

^ True. Amherst is probably going to go 8-9:1. But even with the difference in enrollment, the cost of actual operations is about the same–you can only save so much more money by replacing X amount more light bulbs with energy-efficient ones. And IIRC, Smith’s overall endowment is smaller than Amherst’s, for a much larger number of students (but I’m not sure about the numbers, so feel free to correct).

Anyway, I’m not interested in Amherst for other reasons. It just seems that increasing S:F ratio by adding enrollment = larger classes, while doing so by cutting faculty = less diversity in course offerings. This may be offset by an initial difference in number of courses offered, I don’t know–that’s why I’m asking. It is a concern for my secondary field of interest, computer science, which is a small department at pretty much any LAC. (Primary interest, English, is popular enough to maintain reasonable breadth/depth even with faculty cuts.)