Mariah Joyce
News Editor Over the next 3-6 months, The College of Wooster will be working to create a long-term sustainable budget model by reducing the budget for the next year and beyond. Professor of Religious Studies Charles Kammer, who teaches a course called Just Work that enrolls both students and hourly staff at the College, has raised concerns as to how this “strategic planning” approach to the College’s budget might affect hourly staff.
According to President Grant Cornwell, the motivation for this “long-range strategic planning initiative” is twofold: first, the College will reduce enrollment from over 2,000 to around 1,950, and second, the College would like to sustain a low annual increase in tuition. This slightly reduced student body coupled with lower annual increases necessitates adjusting the budget to match anticipated revenues, according to Cornwell.
An enrollment of 1,950 students “seems like a better number for our mission, our campus resources, housing and dining services and most of all for our course enrollments and faculty-student interaction,” said Cornwell.
These changes are being made in part to maintain enrollment. The College primarily enrolls middle-class students, but in the United States the middle class has been steadily shrinking. As the number of families able to keep up with increases in tuition grows smaller, the College would like to keep the annual increase as low as possible. According to Cornwell, last year’s increase of 3.9 percent was the lowest of any year in the recent past, and the College “would like to sustain increases at this level or even lower.”
Cornwell outlined this information at a community meeting held last week which was open to faculty and staff at the College, including hourly workers.
According to Kammer, directly after the community meeting there was general anxiety amongst hourly staff and even some salaried staff that they will be hit the hardest when it comes to scaling back the budget.
The President’s Cabinet has determined that the budget should be reduced by about $2,000,000 or more, though both Cornwell and Vice President of Finance Deanna McCormick stressed that it is much too early in the process to speculate as to where that money will come from.
While Kammer agreed that right now there is no information as to how this round of budgetary changes might impact staff at the College, he observed that “we do know something about historical precedent and the way the community meeting was received by staff at the College.”
“Seven or eight years ago, the College had a serious budget crisis and dealt with it by letting 30-40 hourly workers go,” said Kammer. “Some of them still remember that.”
Additionally, five or six years ago Kammer recalls faculty pushing for salaries higher than those of professors at other schools. The College complied, but compensated for the raises by flattening out the salaries of hourly workers for approximately three years.
Finally, Kammer stated that conversations with hourly workers had yielded concern about “a slight attrition of hourly workers in some areas” when replacements are not hired for people who leave the College. According to Kammer, the Office of the Registrar is one such example; the staff in that office went from five to three people and then increased to four, still one employee shy of its initial number.
McCormick and Cornwell both stated that this will be a year-long process that will be inclusive and transparent.
Currently, the plan is for the process to take place in four stages. The first will be to build a broad-based understanding of the situation, the second will be to brainstorm ways to reduce costs or increase revenue, the third will be to rank ideas based on their promise, feasibility and impact, and the fourth will be to implement the necessary changes.
“The basic idea is that every constituency group — students, faculty and staff from every department — will be involved in the process,” said Cornwell.
However, Kammer said, “Hourly workers have the perception that they’ll have no real voice in the process, because they haven’t had [one] in the past.”
While it is still very early in this process, Cornwell emphasized that “this is an undertaking which everyone will be involved in at every step.”
“We will undertake this strategic planning guided by two principles: one, we will protect the quality and integrity of Wooster’s core educational mission … two, we will seek to sustain and enhance Wooster’s quality of life and attractiveness to current and prospective students,” said Cornwell.