Rosovsky Cleans House

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences is at the front line in Harvard's University wide battle against inflation and recession. It is Harvard's largest and most visible division and it is diversified enough to encompass all the financial does that the affecting universities actions America.

The battle has been in the making for a long time but it seemed to take shape fully this year in an interview in September. Dean Rosovsky said he would have two major concerns in this year undergraduate education and something else that not usually associated with deans budget cutting.

Rosovsky had run a $1.4 Million deficit in his first year in office and early in the first year he was protecting a deficit of $2 million for this year and more than $3 million for next year. The special fund that pays for the deficits was rapidly running out, and it appeared that at some point the Faculty might have to go begging to the Corporation for Dean.

The problems that cause the kinds of deficits the Faculty has been running are the same all over America. Inflation has driven salaries--the biggest chunk of the Faculty's expenses--and the prices of goods, especially oil, up. The recession has pushed the value of stocks and the availability of money down. The Faculty has to pay out more money without corresponding increases in income.

So Rosovsky started to trim. His assistant dean for financial affairs. Robert E. Kaufmann '62, met with department chairmen all fall and argued over budgets for next year in an attempt to effect a 2 to 3 per cent cut in teaching staff.

Kaufmann also tried to figure out ways to use previously restricted funds on things the Faculty was spending its sparse unrestricted money on. The Harvard College Fund was trying to collect on its pledges. Money for supplies and administrative costs was being cut back.

At the same time. Rosovsky, Kaufmann and other administrators were figuring out the crucial variable in the Faculty's income: tuition and other student fees. They started the year agreed on a total raise of about $600 in tuition, room and board, and then spent months trying to make tuition as big a part of that total as possible.

Tuition money is especially valuable to the Faculty because it is unrestricted; room and board income goes directly to the departments that feed and house students. By January, bargaining with various departments had produced a $340 tuition hike--$40 over last fall's forecast--and a total fees increase of $580.

Last month Rosovsky presented the Corporation with a budget for next year that projects a deficit of about $1 million, reduced substantially from his original estimates. The reduction came as a result of measures in areas that affect undergraduates: the tuition hike and staffing cuts.

This year, then, turned out fairly well for the dean, but tight finances in a university produce no-win situations. The more the Faculty raises tuition, the more middle-income students it is likely to lose. The more it cuts staff, the fewer teachers it has. But without cuts, the Faculty's financial situation becomes untenable.

It is, then, a careful line the Faculty has to tread through the crunc. The University cannot cut so much that it loses the things that make it attractive, and it cannot cut so little that it is forced into desperate moves.