Staff cuts aim to reverse '90s trend

Author: Adam Schaffer

Since 1996, nonteaching staff positions have nearly doubled at Middlebury College in order to accomodate expansions in other areas of campus life. This trend, however, may end with the significant budget cuts Old Chapel has made in the past six months as Middlebury plans to cut 10 percent, or 100 positions, from the staff through attrition.

The cuts are a means to preserve the College's core academic mission, Chief Financial Officer Patrick Norton wrote in an e-mail.

A "financial downturn in the order of magnitude the College is facing [has] challenge[d] basic financial assumptions" as to where the College can afford to spend money, explained Norton. For this reason, The College does "not anticipate rehiring the eliminated positions if and when the economy rebounds."

The staffing reductions will occur across all areas of employment on campus: academic support, student services, dining and facilities, and institutional support, and will be enacted by the College's new early retirement program, as well as the hiring freeze that began last summer.

In a memo to staff and faculty on March 26, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz outlined how the budget cutting process has proceeded thus far, and assured that "we will pursue staff layoffs only as a matter of last resort."

"We are fortunate that we began the budget cutting process relatively early with the freezing of open staff positions last summer, and have made what amounts to about $10 million in budget cuts from next year's budget," Liebowitz wrote in the memo. "We have at least $10 million more to go based on economic projections from the late fall."

The increase in staffing at the College over the past 12 years has been dramatic - in 1996, there were 584 staff positions on campus, while in 2008 there were 1,008 positions. Nearly 60 percent of the $75 million increase in College expenses since 1996 has been due to the increase in staffing. Overall compensation for all employees of the College - which includes salaries and benefits - in 1996 was $62 million in 2008 dollars, while in 2008 compensation cost the College $107 million, nearly half of Middlebury's total expenditures.

In a forum with the College community on November 2008, Norton explained that the increase in staffing was to be expected as the College expanded in other ways.

"When you increase the number of faculty, you increase the number of staff," Norton said during the presentation. "When you increase the number of students, you increase the number of staff. When you increase the number of dining halls, you increase the number of staff. When you increase the amount of square footage, you increase the number of staff. That's all been planned to increase over time."

With the closing of Atwater Dining Hall in 2010 and the immediate closure or contraction of many of Middlebury's auxiliary operations, this increase will not continue in the upcoming years.

This permanent cut in staff positions worries some, including Zach Fenster '12.

"I think there a lot of people whose work we don't see but without whom the College would not run nearly as smoothly," wrote Fenster in an e-mail. "I don't see why after economic rebound we don't hire more people, unless it's clear the funds would be better used elsewhere."

Others, such as Mac Staben '11, are more skeptical about the benefits of an enlarged staff, and see this reduction as a long time coming.

"The number of staff, when compared to the Middlebury student population, seems excessive to me," Staben wrote in an e-mail. "The administration should do all it can to reduce staff nonessential to the core, liberal-arts mission of the College. Middlebury is an educational institution and if the staff infrastructure hurts that mission, then we should reduce staff and suffer the consequences of having exceeded reasonable limits in good economic times."

Regardless, Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science Murray Dry is confident that the cuts will not impact the academic mission of the College.

"My guess is that since academic departments have individual coordinators (a fancy term for secretaries) and these positions are not, as far as I know, being reduced, the staff reductions will not directly affect the academic program," Dry wrote in an e-mail.

The only cut that will affect faculty, according to Dry, is the postponement of the planned annual addition of the new faculty positions for the next eight years. This cut will also affect students, as it will make the new senior independent work requirement harder to implement. Dry does not see the deferral of this proposal to be detrimental to the College's core mission.

"I do not think this can be described as a serious blow to our academic programs," wrote Dry.

Additional reporting by Jaime Fuller.