Proposed Budget Reduction Plan

Corbett
Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:59:14 +0000

The point is that the absolute value of the cuts is only meaningful relative to total operating expenses. Smith’s annual budget is probably much larger than Amherst’s, for the simple reason that it is a much larger school. So $30M of cuts at Smith, while undoubtedly hard and painful, is not necessarily harder or more painful than $18M of cuts at Amherst.

It’s true that Amherst is better endowed than Smith, on a per-student basis. However, that was the case before the current market problems as well, so nothing has really changed in that regard.

Realistically, you should expect painful cuts at every LAC that you are applying to, including Amherst and Smith.