President Liebowitz Delivers Address on the Future of the College
President Liebowitz outlined a sober vision of the future of the College in a speech delivered in Mead Chapel today, assessing how the College cannot continue to operate as it did during better economic times, while maintaining that the College’s most important priorities will not change.
The speech, which received a lengthy ovation after its conclusion, was also notable in that it offered solemn assessments of various issues in higher education. Liebowitz proposed lowering expectations for profits on the endowment, and also explained that families would stop investing in institutions like Middlebury if comprehensive fees continue to increase at present rates. Faculty, students and staff filled Mead Chapel for the speech, which had been publicized through campus-wide emails.
Stay tuned for more in-depth coverage from The Campus in the coming days, but here is an overview of the some of the policy proposals outlined by Liebowitz:
- There will be no staff layoffs barring a severe economic downturn. Liebowitz praised the early retirement program and staff restructuring as successful in averting the need for layoffs. Liebowitz’s announcement of this news was met by applause.
- The current financial aid policy will remain the same. Admission will continue to be need blind for domestic applicants and need aware for international applicants. The stated policy of meeting demonstrated need for admitted students will remain in effect.
- Enrollment will increase to 2,450. Liebowitz cited the financial advantages of increasing enrollment, and acknowledged that he had previously hoped to decrease the size of the student body.
- The student-faculty ratio will remain the same. Liebowitz also explained that plans to implement senior work for all students will continue.
- The Monterey Institute and Middlebury’s language programs will be developed to further their profit-making potential. Liebowitz outlined how both programs already make a profit. He also made an effort to present the decision to expand on these programs in terms of major decisions in the College’s history.
- The comprehensive fee will increase at a slower rate. The speech outlined how tuition has increased at a faster rate than the consumer price index, and how President Liebowitz sees this as an unsustainable practice.
- Expected revenue from the endowment and gifts will decrease. In planning future budgets, expected profits from the endowment will decrease to 5%. During better economic times, budgets functioned based on 9%-11% profit margins on the endowment.
- The freeze on faculty and staff salaries of over $50,000 will likely be lifted in the next fiscal year. Raises will first go to faculty who have been promoted.
The Campus also covered the event through its Twitter account, and I once again recommend staying tuned to the paper’s coverage in the coming days for more analysis.
UPDATE: Read a transcript of the speech HERE.
Campus News Editor Anthony Adragna contributed reporting to this post, and for full disclosure, I am also on The Campus Editorial Board.
Trackbacks & Pingbacks
- President Liebowitz’s Tuition Proposal Gets Press « MiddBlog
- The Dining Hall Question « MiddBlog
- President Liebowitz Gives “State of the College” Address « MiddBlog
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[quote]What in the past was accepted as decisions made appropriately within academic departments, will now be considered in terms of their institutional implications as well. Decisions on the number of courses required in a major, the number of tracks offered within a major, the flexibility surrounding requirements for the major, and other issues like these need to be considered within the overall allocation of resources across the faculty. While I am not advocating in any way a “one size fits all” model when it comes to providing teaching resources to our vibrant and diverse curriculum, I do believe the EAC, the provost, and the president need to take a more active role in the allocation of teaching resources so as to ensure a more equitable and efficient use of our limited resources.[/quote]
Can someone put this into English for me? Or at least give an example as to how this may play out in practice?
re: Middparent
Should students be able to double major? Should majors involve 12-15 courses, or 10-12?
If a student double majors, (s)he must take a certain list of classes, which the department is then required to offer multiple sections for [esp. if it's a popular major.] This necessitates more professors, or diminishes the departments’ ability to support senior work. It all boils down to the faculty-student ratio and how much students must take for their majors.
His disclaimer, then, was to accomodate for different majors/departments – especially the language depts. that depend on double majors to fill their ranks…
The most comforting part of reading the transcript of this speech is that nothing seems that extraordinarily new. Nothing too groundbreaking, revolutionary, or surprising — a testament to the openness and inclusiveness of the decision-making of the past year and a half.
I’ll even admit, I never made it to one of the open meetings (partially due to being abroad for the past 6 months), but I took the surveys and read the email, blog, and Web updates carefully. Being included in big decisions (as in, really, REALLY big and expensive decisions) and not necessarily having to be an econ major, finance committee member, or someone in the inner circle of college admin details, and subsequently still feeling like my own ideas and beliefs are reflected in an address like this is also testament to solid leadership on this front.
So kudos to the president in coordination of communicating between the involved bodies, in my book. And, of course, to the people that worked it all out.
Still, seeing new ideas in a speech like this are reassuring, too. Just a few of the things that I (in my described-above level of involvement) noticed in the transcript as new-sounding include:
1. The suggested attention to the CPI with regard to tuition increases. Seems good and populist, but is this actually new or groundbreaking, finance/policy wise? How much will this actually affect how much students feel they are paying?
2. Hiring freezes, I knew. But a stricter approach to new staffing requests caught my eye. Does this effect student workers? With an increased student body, does this mean jobs and hours at those jobs will be harder to get, or just more SEO “job shares”?
3. On a similar line, an unclear reference, to me: does “departmental consolidations” (5th point in “the policy front” section) mean continuing to streamline admin/bureaucratic structure, or merging academic and administrative departments?
» What was news to you? What are you tired of hearing? MiddBlog, and the president, at that, want to know.
To expand on the response to MiddParent – many departments have very regimented major requirements that makes their staffing inflexible. If a course is required of a major, then it needs to be offered every year, regardless of the number of majors. What Ron is suggesting is that there will be greater administrative pressure for departments to make their required curricula more flexible and leaner, thus reducing rigid faculty staffing demands within departments (not reducing the total number of faculty). This is not new, as such encouragement from Old Chapel has been present for years, but Ron’s comments suggests that pressures & oversight will increase.
@Casey: student workers are not part of the staffing allocation Ron is talking about, as such hiring is done directly through departments not approved by the SRC. If anything, student workers are part of the solution not the problem.
And to clarify in the original post: salaries above $50k were frozen for both faculty and staff, not just faculty.
@ Prof. Mittell and Middparent: I think making requirements more “flexible and leaner” sounds good in theory, but in practice I think it’s a really tricky issue.
I should begin by saying I’ve had some negative experiences with classes that have been required for my major: I’ve taken courses I wouldn’t have otherwise taken, and to be completely honesty, I think some of the Professors weren’t thrilled to teach these classes. So perhaps some change is needed.
And yet, I think having firm requirements for majors is incredibly important. As a senior American Studies major, I now have a survey of American culture and a theoretical understanding of American Studies under my belt–exactly because of major requirements.
Not having these firm major requirements would have detracted from my educational experience, and I think this would apply across all majors. Furthermore, isn’t gaining a general understanding of a field part of our Liberal Arts mission?
@ Casey: While I mostly agree with your statement that there is nothing “new, groundbreaking or surprising” in the speech in terms of policy changes, I maintain that the speech was significant in its overall message. President Liebowitz was effectively saying that Middlebury was previously living beyond its means and that it will be financially conservative even after the recession ends. Middlebury-lite is here to stay.
@ Prof. Mittell: I corrected my mistake about the pay freeze also applying to staff. Let me know if there are other corrections to be made.
@George: on the spectrum of majors, American Studies is on the lean/flexible side compared to many others. Nobody is suggesting to eliminate all requirements, but rather that majors that require 16 courses with little flexibility are probably going to be scrutinized more than ones with 10-12 courses & significant flexibility. Glad to hear that students can get a lot out of required courses, even if they are less enjoyable at first. (And for full disclosure – I’m George’s advisor in AMST!)
I think the call to engage the town in developing more businesses or organizations that are positioned to hire people with advanced education was a “new and groundbreaking” goal. I’m surprised that this didn’t come up as a goal at any of the previous meetings since it’s a fantastic idea.
Doing this means that the college can afford to hire faculty and staff to move to Middlebury without needing to provide employment for spouses in some cases. It also provides opportunities for staff who wish to leave Middlebury College, but not Middlebury, VT and still have employment – a concern of many of the people who took the ERP. And more business and employment in the town will also make Middlebury a better place to live. I wish the college the best of luck in this area.
Refreshing speech; glad I could be there. Sobering yes; solemn? I didn’t hear it that way.
George: can you define the “Midd Lite” that is here to stay? If you think President Liebowitz was saying we have been living beyond our means — and he is right, by the way, should we continue to live that way? It is refreshing to see someone step out and say the arms race in higher ed is not sustainable, or not try to hide such living through smoke and mirrors — taking more and more from the endowment than is prudent and thereby jeopardizing the College’s long-term well being, and denying future students the same luxury of having part of their tuition covered by the endowment.
I would like to know what the trustees were thinking when it approved the building of so much over such a short period of time. Adding the equivalent of more than 4 Bi-Halls between 1990 and 2005 (and I assume the president’s numbers are right) seems more than extreme and explains, at least partly, the drain on resources.
But what is the Midd lite that we will now see? Seems like the president was calling on a new source of revenue that might provide cover for the other sources and protect what is most valuable about Middlebury.
@ Long time employee
Thanks for your response. As it sounds like you would agree, I was very pleased to hear President Liebowitz call out the “arms race” at Middlebury and peer colleges. Also, I was really impressed by the extent to which President Liebowitz values Middlebury’s core mission–providing a leading Liberal Arts education. So perhaps “Midd lite,” a Middlebury with only two dining halls, for example, isn’t a bad thing. As President Liebowitz said, we had been living beyond our means.
And yet I can’t help but wonder about whether all this math will add up. As you say, President Liebowitz was calling on new sources to cover our lost revenue. But can increased revenue from our auxiliary programs really cover relative lost revenue from the endowment, large gifts, and slower increases in the comprehensive fee over a long period of time? I honestly don’t know the answer to this question, but my initial reaction is to be skeptical.
The short answer to your question is thus that I can’t define what “Midd lite” will look like. But I don’t think President Liebowitz has defined it yet. While I was really impressed with the speech in its ability to set a new tone, there are still questions that remain open. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more cuts in the future, perhaps even involving swiping into dining halls (not that this would be a bad thing…).
Well, I think President Liebowitz hinted or stated some of what the new Middlebury will need to look like — the core things protected (Fin Aid, student-faculty ratio, program), but even within that, majors that are not supported as they have been that require, as Professor Mittell wrote, 15-16 courses to complete (use up many more faculty resources than majors that require 10 — and ours IS a liberal arts education, not pre-professional school, where one focuses on only a few areas of study), a staff that looks 150 smaller than before (apparently already achieved), which means faculty and students do more of what they have come to expect others to do for them; cookies back, and even more, perhaps, at important events, but not a return to food, like lunches, at regular lectures, etc. Cuts of 5-10% have already taken some extras out of the budget, so maybe Midd is already Midd Lite, and I am sure George is right: some more cuts/trimming is likely, but the bulk of savings will come from a leaner staff and better allocation of faculty resources.
I would not be surprised if fundraising/giving to the college is UP as a result of alumni and othres appreciating Middlebury’s approach.
George: I think you and I agree in spirit; however, I think if President Liebowitz is submitting a financial mode to the board of trustees that he claims shows balanced budgets to 2015 WITH the conservative revenue projections, then I believe much has already been reduced from college budgets.
Hey — go visit the president during his office hours and get some answers.
@ Long Time Employee
I hope you’re right about donations going up after these proposals go into effect. I know I would rather give money to a leaner school!
Thanks for the insights and additional opinion. I too agree that I am much more likely to give money to a fiscally responsible institution than one that seems to not “get it.” While I am concerned about continued growth to financial aid (especially in light of the reference to contingency fund coverage), I DO like the commitment to not just throwing out larger and larger tuition increases.
Where Midd sits above it’s peer schools is exactly what has it in a little bit of snug constraints now. However, the campus is stellar and feels much larger and at the same time much more intimate than some others.
But here’s when you know you’re on the right path. Last summer, the landscape dept cut a lot of man hours and machine costs to create those no-mow zones. Some people didn’t like it much. But then here it comes that the landscaping department at Middlebury won the Grand Honor Award for 2009 for Landscape and Garden Commercial Maintenance! So there ya go!! And many congrats to them!
Midd Parent speaks of Tim Parson and his team winning: http://blogs.middlebury.edu/middland/2010/02/11/landscape-department-wins-award/
Enrollment up to 2450…
Where have we heard this before? Over the past 15 years, Middlebury has had a serious issue in right-sizing enrollment. There was a decision to get smaller. Then there was talk of getting bigger, to 2450. Then there was a realization that the infrastructure needs didn’t align with available resources (who doesn’t remember students living in tons of lounges back around the year 2000). Smaller and bigger, every year since then.
This is perhaps the most bizarre issue I’ve seen. No other college like Middlebury goes thru this bipolar approach. Our competitors may get smaller or bigger, but they make a decision and do it strategically and manage the process properly. It just doesn’t make sense.
Mike: I have been here 33 years, and only once, in 1992, did the College ever say it was getting smaller. That was the John McCardell strategic plan, and it called on the College to “right size” down to 1800. Before we got to 1800, he then proposed we grow to 2350. That was 1995 and the College got to 2350 sometime 5-6 years later. Since then, there has never been any policy announced to shrink, though there was a lot of discussion during the last strategic planning process of maybe returning to 1900 or so. But the infrastructural growth that President Liebowitz mentioned in his speech (68% growth from 1990 to 2005) made it impossible to reduce the size of the student body: the cost of the physical plant could not be covered with any fewer students.
So what part of the process was not “managed?” Seems it was: despite investigating whether the College could shrink again in 2005-06, and concluding it could not, it didn’t. It is now growing marginally from 2350 to 2450. Surely you are not referring to the zig-zag of 1992 and then 1995, for if you are, that was a long time ago.