Crisis raises questions on Brandeis campus

At issue are speed of cuts, other changes

For Brandeis University, the financial damage came fast, and the fallout has cut deep.

This fall, the private liberal arts college watched its endowment plummet and its fund-raising drop off sharply, as many of the school's most reliable and deep-pocketed donors suffered heavy losses in the Bernard Madoff investment scandal.

The combination delivered a heavy blow that culminated in Monday's stunning announcement that Brandeis would close its renowned Rose Art Museum and sell off the 6,000-piece collection. More radical steps are on the table: eliminating staff and faculty positions, expanding enrollment to boost tuition revenue, and overhauling the entire undergraduate curriculum to cut costs and attract prospective applicants.

The scope and speed of the turmoil buffeting the Waltham campus have left many students and faculty members reeling, with many questioning the administration's decisions to deal with the financial crisis.

"There was a ripple throughout the entire faculty of feeling hoodwinked," Andreas Teuber, chairman of the philosophy department, said yesterday. Other professors said they were furious about the museum decision, coming only days after administrators promised to consult them on major decisions related to the financial crunch.

Alumni launched an online petition yesterday against the museum's closure, and students plan to hold a sit-in at the museum tomorrow to protest the move and what they described as a lack of student involvement in the decision.

"We were left in the dark," said Carrie Mills, a freshman from Connecticut. "We certainly feel marginalized as a whole. It feels like there's a brick wall between us and the administration, and nothing is getting through."

News about the furor at Brandeis reverberated through higher education circles yesterday, providing perhaps the starkest symbol to date of the recession's impact on universities, which have responded to steep endowment declines by imposing hiring freezes, shelving construction projects, and scaling back administrative costs.

"It's an unexpected and in some ways unprecedented step to deal with the economic downturn," said Tony Pals, director of public information for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Washington, D.C.

At Brandeis, the response has been particularly urgent and wide ranging. Facing a budget deficit estimated at $10 million, administrators have banned the use of merit scholarships for study abroad programs, angering students, and limited study-abroad eligibility to students with a 3.0 grade-point average. The university plans to lay off about 70 staff members, faculty members said, and reduce other workers' hours.

Administrators and faculty have discussed reducing graduate programs, requiring students to take one summer semester, and adding a business program.

"Everything is being looked at," said university spokesman Dennis Nealon. "It's all about streamlining the university in light of the economic crisis, with the main focus on the academic mission of the university and the students."

Brandeis was hit harder than other colleges by the Madoff scandal. While it had not invested funds with the accused swindler, many of its top donors had. The school, founded in 1948, is the country's only nonsectarian, Jewish-sponsored university. Many of Madoff's investors, like Brandeis donors, are Jewish.

However, Nealon said that Brandeis has not been disproportionately affected by the recession and that many other universities are taking similarly aggressive measures to rein in their budget.

"The situation is serious, but not catastrophic," he said. "We're struggling in a similar fashion, but there is this idea that we take this opportunity to look at the big picture."

William Flesch, an English professor who chairs the university's faculty senate, said the endowment, which in June had topped $700 million, will probably take years to rebound, forcing a broad reassessment of how the university operates.

"The real financial crunch isn't in the next 18 months; it's the two or three years after," he said. "They are looking at a much bigger deficit in four years from now than over the next two years."

Some faculty are questioning why such sweeping changes, particularly those involving the curriculum that some say would not yield major savings, are needed right away. They said the university hopes to make changes this semester, in time to market the overhauled system to current high school juniors.

"People were surprised everything had to be done quickly" regarding the curriculum overhaul, Teuber said. "The idea of having to revamp the curriculum in five to seven weeks seemed awfully quick, hard to imagine it could be done, let alone done well."

Last week, the Brandeis faculty agreed to review the curriculum, including a proposal to eliminate individual academic programs in favor of larger, interdisciplinary divisions. Some professors said they worry that the discussed changes were driven more by marketing concerns than a desire to strengthen teaching and research, and several said the actions seemed to be motivated by panic.

Yet others see the financial crisis as a rare chance to reshape the university.

"Academia is notorious for being difficult to change," said Timothy J. Hickey, chairman of the computer science department. "This is a great opportunity for innovating."

As a liberal arts college and research university with far less money than many of its peers, Brandeis is accustomed to making hard financial decisions, Hickey added.

Many students, however, are nervous about the changes, particularly the idea of expanding enrollment beyond the current 3,200 undergraduates, which they say could threaten the school's close-knit feel.

And many lamented that the museum's closing as a short-sighted move that would harm the Brandeis's reputation.

"To close the Rose is a terrible loss to the university, and to auction off its collection as a cost-saving measure is tragic," said sophomore Alex Melman, a student government leader.