As students begin to register for the upcoming spring semester, Phil Certain, the dean of the College of Letters and Science, is worried. His department faced a six million dollar budget cut, and as much as the department has tried to minimize the effects, it is has been nearly impossible to ignore the financial constraints.
“We do our best so that students do not notice them. But I am getting pretty worried about second semester,” Certain said.
Last fall, the College of Letters and Science offered 1,873 lecture courses. The department was only able to offer 1,592 courses this fall, a cut that many students have felt directly.
Certain said that most of the decreases in courses are felt at the advanced and intermediate levels. Because the number of students in these courses is somewhat elastic, they are the ones that take the cuts. Nonetheless, this affects students graduating within a reasonable time span.
“You can walk across campus and you still see that students are here and there, and faculty is in front of all the classes. So you think, what has actually happened?” Certain said. “You have to really look deeper to see what has happened.”
In order to deal with the dire situation, Certain said the department set three main priorities last summer. The first was to ensure that registration for first year students went smoothly and that elementary courses needed were available to them. Second, they worked to ensure that courses necessary for a number of majors, such as calculus and organic chemistry, were readily available to all. Lastly, the department made sure that courses necessary for graduation were available to students.
“We don’t want to get into a situation where students are staying here for five or six years just because they are not getting into courses,” he said.
Certain also said he is especially worried about the spring semester because the department exceeded their budget in the fall semester hiring teaching assistants.
The classes that were cut this past semester are those that Certain said are the ones students enjoy the most.
“We are really missing the courses that are the ones that students like to take. They enrich the curriculum, they are the elective courses,” Certain said. “It is not going to be this huge visible effect, but I think it is going to make the undergraduate experience less rich for students.”
Certain said that this is a potential problem at any public university, noting, “This is a pretty common problem for public universities because of the economy.” He feels that Wisconsin, however, is taking a hard break from the cuts.
Board of Regents member Roger Axtell said that all schools in the University of Wisconsin system faced cuts, but the Madison campus took the biggest hit.
Axtell said he is unsure of what the exact cuts will be for next semester, but feels that it rests largely in the economy.
“A lot of it depends on how good of a Christmas we have and the sales taxes, and then if the economy improves,” Axtell said.
Certain said that he believes the economy will come around eventually, but the current times are the worst he has ever seen.
“The pendulum swings back and forth, and it seems every ten years we go through a phase like this; but, this is the worst it has been,” he said.
The effects of the cuts will not be entirely experienced until ten or twenty years from now, according to Certain. This is when he said the professors who would have been recently hired would be in the peaks of their careers, teaching classes and researching. Because of the cuts, however, they will not be given this chance.
Certain warned not to take the issue lightly, and that the effects could be devastating if things are not reversed.
“Anybody who tells you that this is going to make us stronger is a liar. It is not fun and it is not good for students,” he said. “There is no question about it.”
