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                                                                                EDUCATION, Page 61

Big Chill on Campus


After decades of growth, U.S. colleges are facing a financial
squeeze that threatens the quality and breadth of higher
education

By RICHARD N. OSTLING -- Reported by Ann Blackman/Washington and
Jeanne Reid/Boston, with other bureaus


    For a half-century, expansion has been the byword of
American higher education. More course offerings, bigger and
better-paid faculties, new graduate schools and elaborately
equipped laboratories, more diverse student bodies. The emphasis
on bigger and better helped make American universities the envy
of the world and their degrees one of the nation's hottest
exports.

    But suddenly, with a shifting of economic winds,
contraction is the order of the day. As state, federal and
private sources of funds dry up and bills from the fast-spending
'80s come due, even the most elite colleges find themselves
facing a financial crunch that promises to reshape the contours
of higher education. "Now they have to pay for their
prosperity," says Robert Rosenzweig, president of the
Association of American Universities in Washington. "It is the
morning after."

    Colleges of all stripes -- public and private, princely
and proletarian -- are retrenching in an effort to stay afloat.
Meanwhile, expenses are rising. A declining pool of
18-year-olds has forced schools into a pricey competition for
students. The cost of high-tech equipment and high-profile
professors continues to grow, along with such expenses as
medical insurance. The cutbacks are causing alarm among faculty
members and a furor among students, who are worried that schools
will be unable to deliver on the educational promises made in
their glossy catalogs.

    At Yale University, administrators see the current $8.8
million operating deficit ballooning to a staggering $50 million
within a few years, and contemplate deep cuts in faculty and
programs. Having already trimmed nearly 10% in administrative
costs and 5% in academic expenses last year, along with such
marginal items as the water-polo team, the New Haven institution
is proposing to eliminate two departments -- linguistics and
operations research. It hopes to consolidate three engineering
departments into one, with a 23% loss of faculty. And it
anticipates a 10.7% overall reduction in its professorial ranks.

    Similar cuts are looming at Stanford, which is planning to
slash $43 million over the next two years. And Columbia
University, which faces a $50 million deficit, will probably
follow suit, although the heads of 26 arts-and-sciences
departments have threatened to quit if the cutbacks are too
harsh. Adding to the woes of such elite and venerable
universities are harrowing upkeep costs for aging buildings: at
Yale the tab for deferred maintenance is said to be $1 billion.

    While the pinch at private schools has been tightening for
some time, troubles cascaded rather suddenly upon the public
campuses. State governments, having lavished funds on their
colleges in the '80s, are grappling with large budget deficits,
declining tax revenues and increased outlays as a result of the
recession.

    California epitomizes the problems. The celebrated Master
Plan of 1960 calls for the top high school graduates in the
state to have access to the world-class University of California
system, which has nine campuses. Somewhat less accomplished
students -- those in the top third of their classes -- can enter
20 California State University campuses, while everyone else is
eligible for the 107 community colleges. Then came last year's
crushing state deficit and a $369 million cut in
higher-education spending. Barry Munitz, chancellor of the Cal
State system, says his domain "is so dangerously underfunded"
that the Master Plan "becomes more of a myth every day."

    To make ends meet, the University of California, Berkeley,
has cut 163 full- and part-time faculty and increased fees 40%
this year. Governor Pete Wilson wants a new 22% hike for next
year. (Even then, residents would pay only $3,036, a big bargain
compared with the tab at private campuses of similar
excellence.) Hundreds of infuriated students at the university
campus in Davis conducted a 1960s-style sit-in for four days
after U.C. regents approved the latest increase.

    California is hardly alone in ordering steep tuition
hikes. Charges for many State University of New York students
will double in two years if a budget unveiled last week is
approved. This year, fees jumped 36% at Oregon State University.
The University of Maine administered a rare midyear tuition hike
of 15.6%. Mississippi's public-university students may face a
25% jump next year.

    Tuition increases are a seemingly simple way for public
colleges to meet deficits, but if taken too far they undermine
the principle of state-supported education. A steep price means
that "education is no longer seen as a public good, but as a
private benefit," enriching the individual as opposed to
society, says University of Oregon provost Norman Wessells.
Joseph Duffey, president of American University in Washington,
shares that concern: "People think they don't have obligations
to any children but their own."

    While private campuses do not face such philosophical
scruples about raising fees, they seem to have reached a
practical limit. After rapid increases throughout the 1980s,
market resistance is forcing tuitions to level off. Thus schools
are compelled to reduce expenses. Just how intelligently this
is done will determine the future strength of each college.
"We're all going to have to do more with less," says James
Pickering, academic-affairs vice president at the University of
Houston.

    Unfortunately, it is already clear that many schools are
doing considerably less with less. The California State system,
which is distinct from the U.C. system, has laid off 3,000 full-
and part-time teachers and canceled 5,000 course sections. This
meant that last fall 1,162 hapless students at the San Diego
State campus were initially unable to find a spot in a single
course that they needed to meet their graduation requirements.
At Cal State Long Beach, president Curtis McCray described the
damage to a local reporter: "In chemistry, we have no
chemicals. In art, there is no paint. In other parts, it's
simply impossible to get paper. Hallways go uncleaned. Light
bulbs go unchanged. We can't offer classes because we've laid
off faculty."

    The consequences of some cutbacks are less obvious, more
insidious. The University of Maryland and the University of
Massachusetts have cut library expenses and subscriptions to
academic journals and postponed maintenance on buildings. They
have trimmed back on teaching assistants, shaved the overall
ratio of professors to students. "You can't see the damage now,"
says Sherry Penney, chancellor of U. Mass's Boston campus, "but
in five years there will be no journals in the library, the best
people will have left, the infrastructure will be falling
apart."

    Still, many educators believe that the contraction of the
1990s need not spell doom for U.S. universities. If major
institutions concentrate on what they do best and stop trying
to be all things to all students, they may actually emerge
stronger than ever. "What we are witnessing is the death of the
19th century research university," says David Scott Kastan,
chairman of Columbia's department of English and comparative
literature. Such institutions are enormously inefficient, but
there are good ways and bad ways to prune them. "There's the
democracy-of-pain option," he explains, "whereby you cut across
the board, which runs a terrible risk of medi ocritizing and
demoralizing the university. Or you can make more selective
cuts, which require real leadership."

    At Northwestern University, decisions to close the nursing
and dental-hygiene programs probably represent intelligent
pruning, as does Yale's decision to consolidate applied physics
with physics. Kastan and others point out that universities
within a given city or region could save money by sharing
resources. "It's odd that every university needs to have its own
molecular-biology course and pre-Tudor theater course," Kastan
says.

    Among the financially weakest colleges, however,
intelligent cutting will not suffice. "Some colleges will either
have to consolidate or shut down," says Sara Melendez, who until
recently served as vice provost and dean of arts and humanities
at Connecticut's University of Bridgeport. The school, hard hit
by the deterioration of its hometown, has been struggling to
stave off its own demise. Late last year it began negotiations
for an emergency loan of $2 million to $3 million in order to
keep operating. Administrators now believe that the school can
survive only by merging with nearby Sacred Heart University,
though the law school prefers another partner.

    Such decisions promise to make the coming decade the most
difficult ever faced by America's institutions of higher
learning. By the year 2000, many educators predict, the country
will have leaner universities and a smaller system of higher
education. But that may be appropriate. In the past 20 years,
too many colleges overbuilt, too many aspired to do too much,
and as a result, too many are competing frantically -- and
wastefully -- for the same students. "We need more community
colleges and fewer research universities," observes Duffey of
American University, "and there should be more liberal-arts
schools focusing on undergraduate education." A smaller system
might turn out to be a better system, particularly if colleges
concentrate on developing their unique strengths. But to do so
will require all the brainpower and ingenuity that American
educators can muster.