Big Chill on Campus

By Richard N. Ostling

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 mediocritizing 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.

With reporting by Ann Blackman/Washington and Jeanne Reid/Boston, with other bureaus