The Faculty of Arts & Science budget will decrease by 4 per cent this year, making 2008 the tenth consecutive year of cuts. The faculty’s base budget has been slashed by an average of 3.3 per cent annually since the academic year 1999-2000, and a total of $41.8 million has been removed.
Rather than cutting costs centrally, as has been the norm over the past seven years, costs are being handed over to individual units under the faculty. Each department, college, center, and institute will lose 4 per cent of its budget, except for the smallest.
“Despite making cuts we are doing everything in our power to ensure that we continue to offer the courses students need to fulfill their degree program requirements,” said interim Arts & Science dean Meric Gertler, “and we have succeeded in doing that.” Gertler said that the faculty had increased the number of total spaces offered in courses year after year despite the loss in budgets.
Many departments have been forced to cancel courses to negotiate the cuts. While the “Dean’s Promise” ensures that course cancellations don’t keep students from graduating in their last year, removed courses mean students have to go out of their way to cover requirements.
Danielle Sandhu of Woodworth College, who is finishing her Peace and Conflict Studies program this year, was disappointed when she found that a course she needed to compete her program was not being offered this year. Having declared POL 417 as a requirement for her program at the end of her first year, Sandhu had to request for a substitute course, and wait to have it approved by the program director.
“It was not a difficult process, but I was disappointed because I had been waiting three years to take that course, due to all the pre-requisites” said Sandhu.
“The support for undergraduate education is not what we would like it to be,” said Alex Bewell, chair of the Department of English. Bewell said it is the responsibility of Queen’s Park to increase funding.
Chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Christina Kramer, said that her department had to resort to external funding to stay afloat. “We are very fortunate that we have successfully raised external funds from many communities, funds which help support language study in Polish, Ukrainian, Macedonian, and Croatian as well as Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian.”
“The cuts force us to concentrate on our core mission, which is providing language, literature, and culture classes in ten different languages,” she said. “Other activities have already been diminished and we had to cancel a very popular second year course.”
“It speaks to U of T not seeing a priority in liberal arts education, humanities, and social sciences,” said UTSU VP external Dave Scrivener. “The University can make more money and get private funding from sciences, engineering and other professional faculties.”
U of T has increased revenue by raising tuition fees and international student enrolment. Tuition fees increases this year averaged 4.26 per cent across all programs and departments for domestic students.
However, according to Gertler costs have risen faster than tuition fees. He also pointed out that tuition fees account for only about one third of the faculty’s revenue.
Gertler and Scrivener agreed that the provincial government needs to increase funding. Currently, the provincial government is responsible for 40 percent of the operating budget.
“I think the most important thing is to make the case as clearly as we can to Queen’s Park that the grant revenues have to increase. It’s just impossible to continue to offer a high quality education so long as our grant revenue is declining,” said Gertler.
With files from Naushad Ali Husein
