Academic departments at U of T could see up to five per cent of their budgets cut for the coming year, Provost Shirley Neuman announced recently. The cash shortage, announced at a meeting of the academic board of the Governing Council on Nov. 14, is blamed on sluggish investments and an absence of provincial funding.
“I started laughing when I read it,” said Ranjini Ghosh, president of the Arts and Sciences Students’ Union (ASSU). “I think it’s deplorable that the university’s budget is based on something as flimsy as the stock market. They have to rethink their investment policies.”
Minutes from the Nov. 14 meeting show the university’s administration expected to make a nine per cent return on its investments last year, which would have cushioned the blow for the 2003-2004 academic budget. The investments, however, lost money.
Carl Amrhein, Dean of Arts and Science, said while the underperforming stock market “exacerbated things,” provincial funding was the real problem.
“I don’t think we should hide from the core issue here—that’s government funding,” Amrhein said yesterday. “The…funding from the provincial government has not gone up since 1980. In terms of purchasing power, [that funding] has fallen about 20 per cent.”
A press release sent out Wednesday said the university assumed funding from Queen’s Park would increase by one per cent this year and two per cent for 2003-2004 to offset inflation. That money has not materialized.
The resulting budget cut, which various sources have estimated will be between three and five per cent, will amount to “several millions of dollars,” Amrhein said.
“We know there will be an effect, but we don’t know where yet,” he added. “There’s no doubt that there will be a negative impact on the educational spending.”
John Lea, vice-president of operations for the Students Administrative Council (SAC), agrees the university will be tightening its belt. “It’s unfortunate that budget cuts are necessary. There’s only such much money to go around and we have to make choices. All too often those choices involve cuts to the classroom.”
Amrhein noted the cuts arrive just as the double cohort of high-school students enters university. For the 2003-2004 academic year, the Faculty of Arts and Science will be accepting about 1,100 more students than it did this year, and will have less to spend on them.
The precise amount of the budget cut is still unknown, so it’s impossible to know exactly where the squeeze will be felt yet. Once the numbers have firmed up, Amrhein says, a committee of faculty, administration, and students will begin meeting to decide where the cuts will be made.
The budget must be finalized by May 2003. ASSU and the Assocation of Part-Time Undergraduate Students (APUS) will be included on this committee, Amrhein said.
“It’s hard for a faculty whose budget is 90 per cent salary to make budget cuts fast,” he said.
“We do better work when we have longer to make our decisions.”
