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I WAS asked to achieve two objectives in this paper: to summarize what had been said about financing programs at the 1995 ADFL Seminar East and to present some bold, new ideas. First, then, the summary.
In the seminar's several sessions on financing and in the casual conversations, we heard many sad tales of budget cuts, threatened budget cuts, and even possible college closings. Since we know that we can learn much from history, let me briefly go back over my career, which tracks very closely the critical malaise all us face in this era: neopoverty.
I entered graduate school in fall 1957. You may remember a major international event of that fall—the race between Sputnik and Vanguard. The Russian Sputnik went up, and our Vanguard went pfft! In despair (and in disgrace), the federal government literally threw money at, among other things, foreign languages, so that the nation would be competitive—or at least would understand what scientists and politicians of other countries were saying and writing.
By the time I finished my doctorate in 1961, languages were hot: money was pouring in. There were NDEA (National Defense [no less!] Education Act) Summer Language Institutes for high school teachers fighting to hire me—an historical linguist—to teach linguistics courses, because there were no people trained in the new linguistics (“the new key”).
I soon discovered, to my astonishment, that my real field, medieval Spanish, was also hot: all of a sudden, there was also NDEA money for academic-year institutes, and the guidelines required that a trained (and credentialed) medievalist be on the faculty. And there were few young medievalists coming out of graduate programs. Thus I was in even greater demand. In fact, two midwestern universities offered to share the expenses to fly me out for an interview, since there were so few candidates. When I mentioned the offer, with great pride, to my chair, he told me, “Mike, you're not that good.” He was right, I suspect, but there definitely was a shortage of medievalists. Me? I chose not even to go for the interview. That might tell you something about me, the pride of youth, or both.
After passing through the usual assistant and associate professor years, in 1969 I became a department chair. By then, the post-Sputnik educational reforms, such as the NDEA language institutes, had been so successful that language requirements were being dropped at colleges around the country. Maybe students were no longer enrolling in language courses, but money was still available, and language faculty members were quite spoiled and accustomed to receiving excellent financial support—which had come to be reviewed as a right rather than a benefit or honor (or wishful thinking).
Another look at the financial aspect: in 1961 salaries ranged from $5,000 (that was at Cornell, where I was told, “Well, you know, the view from Cornell is worth $1,000 per year”; I spent the remainder of the interview developing recipes that would make up the difference, such as “stewed view” and “Hungarian viewlasch”) to $6,200 to an astounding $7,200 at the new University of California campus (now Davis). I wound up pretty much in the middle, at $5,774—a nice starting salary at that time. By 1969, starting salaries were up to $11,000–12,000 at comparable institutions. Finally, the world was showing some respect for college faculty members. There was also support money, travel money, merit-raise money, all these moneys—and, as I look back on it, we all became comfortably used to them.
We really did: there was no problem getting funding to go to the MLA meetings. I had paid for trips to the MLA convention out of my own pocket those first lean years in my career, to meet people. (A linguistic item: the term networking, of course, had not yet been invented, although I was working my way into the old boys' network.) By 1969, however, it was unthinkable to use your own money for such trips: no college funding, no trip. (Not necessarily a criticism: the cost of living, and especially the cost of travel, had gone up at least as rapidly as salaries, and many new PhDs were saddled with loans.)
By the time I became a dean in 1972, we were facing faculty reductions around the country, especially in the humanities and notably in languages. I'm sorry to say that the college I went to as dean had one Spanish major, two French majors, and no German majors, yet it offered two to four advanced courses a semester in each language, “to meet the needs of the major”—not the major program , but the major student . This choice was absolutely correct, academically: if you have students in the major program, there must be classes for them—independent studies just aren't sufficient for the entire program. But overall funding was still good in that state (Pennsylvania), so we didn't have to face the issue of staffing versus courses. Since overall enrollments were falling rapidly, we did save some positions by not filling vacancies in departments, especially in the school of education. (No language faculty members left or retired, by the way.)
When I became acting vice president in spring 1976, the financial situation was so strong that I had the joy of allocating an additional $500,000, because enrollments had actually held level. But the comfortable situation changed rapidly (new oil crises, clean-up costs of Three Mile Island, etc.), and in 1980, when I felt that college, we had retrenched twenty-one percent of the faculty—thirty-two people, all but two of whom were tenured.
The roller-coaster ride continues: my next deanship was at small private college that had already cut back and was starting to rebuild its faculty. The next, however, was at a fairly private university that had seen drastic declines in enrollments, and again I had to lead a devastating retrenchment. (That university has since reduced its size from three campuses to two. Surely it is easier to cut buildings than people.) And now, I'm at a flourishing public college: our languages faculty has grown from thirty to sixty-four.
So as I summarize this not-so-thrilling saga of growth, development, and decline, I can say (dinosaur that I have now become) that there actually is a pattern to this frustrating profession. For whatever external reason, we build! In the late 1950s, we did so to be competitive with the Russians. In the 1960s, we did so as part of the move to greater opportunities for all—as the cry went out to make “academic excellence available to everyone,” more and more students were encouraged to go to four-year colleges.
As surely as external factors initiate growth, new external factors later bring about shrinkage—enrollments decline, and planners have to take a hard look at how to save funds. In most state systems, too many colleges have been built, and one (or more) need to be closed. Such an obvious decision, however, is befogged by political debate: says important Senator Whoozis, “You can't do that to my district!” Thus, all colleges or universities in the system see small reductions at first, then larger ones, then deferred maintenance; finally, quality starts to dwindle. An insidious ratcheting starts too: more administrators are needed to handle planning, especially in collecting and analyzing data, as well as in legal affairs.
Eureka: a new crisis arises (e.g., comparison with Asian schools), higher education receives new attention and funds, and the cycle starts over. Growth, with the accompanying funding, gives faculties new expectations of strong financial support, which we again accept as a right equivalent to tenure.
I wish I could say that I heard something new at Seminar East. The story is pretty uniform: there is less and less money available for curriculum development, for faculty development, even for paper for tests. As we've become computer users, in the labs as well as in our offices, we've had to put more funding into equipment, even as the budgets fail to keep up with inflation (or, more likely, as they shrink). In hallway conversations, I found that a few of the colleges represented at the seminar seem to be in good fiscal condition, but their chairs were not talking much about their good fortune: bragging would be out of place, and the wheel of fortune may well turn on them soon.
After twenty-six years of deaning and chairing, I would like to be able to offer some simple (or even complex) solutions to our agonies. But the reality is this: if the college (or university) is cutting its budget, you will most likely cut your department's budget. You cannot go against the grain of the entire institution. You may, if the circumstances are right, make a good case to take a smaller reduction than others do or even get an increase if your programs are among the institution's priorities.
The best way to make the cuts is to get everyone involved. If you know the missions—of the institution, of the president, of the dean, of your department—you'll know where and how you fit, and you must make your case on that basis. If your primary institutional mission is to service the students in the liberal arts through a language requirement, then that will determine your funding. You may not like that mission; you may well prefer to service the major program. But as you reduce your budget, you'll have to keep a large proportion of resources in the basic language courses, or your dean is going to take a close look and ask why you are not meeting the college's needs. But if the institution expects strong faculty research and publications, you'd better keep some good travel funds; without support, the faculty's research will dwindle, and (again) your dean will ask why you aren't supporting the college's mission. After you develop a budget plan that supports the institutional priorities, try to fund as many of the department's priorities as possible.
Significant savings can be found in normal operations. In a seminar session, a chair mentioned that he had noted very high telephone charges; some research with the business office showed that the entire college was being overcharged. He saved his department some $600 and saved the college much more. So look for errors—they do happen. Five dollars here, fifty cents there—small savings can add up.
If it appears that you can't eke out faculty development funds because of the high cost of supplies, consider your paper use and copying practices. How many of you, for example, supply your students with all the paper they need for testing—photocopying, blue books, and so on? How much could you save by making students buy blue books, by switching back to the (yuck) purple Ditto? We have a photocopier rental bill of over $17,000 a year, not to mention the cost of paper, repairs, and so forth. By using Dittos, carbon paper, and other such antiquated materials, we could reduce the cost to about $5,000 a year; it may or may not be worth the complaints and the aggravation (and dirty hands), but if we were desperate enough, that would give us a healthy chunk of funding for other purposes.
Do you supply red pens, paper clips, and the like to all your faculty members? How much does a red pen cost? How many does each instructor use in a year? Well, if you quit supplying these materials, it may at first appear to put a heavy expense on faculty members, but I suspect they would use far fewer pens if they had to pay for them. (One of my faculty members picks up three bottles of correction fluid at a time, about once a semester; nobody types that much!)
One area in which you'll be asked to make savings is the use of part-time faculty members; there will be pressure to cancel extra classes and to move students from those classes into others. While we must resist any move toward too-large classes, you might consider this ploy, if you're really pressed for money: offer to take such a step if you can keep pat of the money saved. But pragmatics do enter the picture: if the enrollments in a class are fairly small, it may well be a good political move to cancel it and redistribute the students even if you can't keep the money. Doing so will that you're not afraid to make tough decisions, and it might well become a future bargaining chip in negotiations with the administration.
Academically, none of these measures are ideal. Nor is it ideal to ask students to buy blue books or faculty red pens. But we are talking times now, and lots of little items can help. (My dream is to yank out all the telephones; our phone bill is over $14,000, not including long distance. We would not only save money—think of the peace and quiet.)
Consider and discuss this question with your faculty: What is absolutely needed to maintain the quality and vitality of the program? For example, is your faculty travel budget being used primarily to travel to meetings, where faculty members get together with old buddies? If so, is your institution so physically isolated that without such contact, the faculty would lose intellectual stimulation? Is the red pen such a morale booster that cutting it out will hurt classroom performance? Similar tests can apply to almost every expenditure (including telephones). Some expenses can be delayed for a year or two without seriously affecting the program: find those items to sacrifice.
Remember too that in academia, as in life, things go in cycles: languages may be down now, but they will be up again sometime. As the brief summary of my career shows, the pendulum swings constantly. I've had the chance to build up programs, and even whole colleges, at five institutions. I've also had to retrench tenured faculty members at two of those same institutions including a good friend with whom I team taught and who was a bridge partner to me and both of my sons. I will never forget the pain of doing that; it makes cutting out red pens much easier. Contemplating such decisions might give you a perspective when faced with cutting travel funds: travel or people?
After twenty-six years in administration, I should have some magic words, or at least brilliant insights, to give you at this point. Alas, I don't, expect for these: Determine what is the lifeblood of your program, and consistently fight to fund that component as strongly as possible. Then when the pendulum swings back, you'll be in a good position to move ahead. 1
The author is Professor of Spanish and Head of the Division of Languages at the College of Charleston. This article is based on his presentation at ADFLSeminar East, 15–17 June 1995, in Charleston, South Carolina.
1 The author advantage of this paper to bid farewell to administration. I am returning to full-time teaching, after twenty-six years as a chair, and vice president. There are many satisfactions to be found in chairing a department, even in hard times. I began in 1969 and made a presentation at the very first ADFL seminar; I conclude with another ADFL presentation. I will simply say thanks to all my fellow chairs, deans, and colleagues over the years.
© 1996 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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