Faculty: in 1994-95, the number of faculty FTE’s (full time equivalents) was 181.5. In 2008-9, it was 222, for a growth of 22%

The cost of educating students within individual departments and divisions is a function of overall staffing, equipment, requirements for the major(s) offered by the department, and physical infrastructure relative to number of students who take classes in each area.

Auxiliary operations are forecast to lose $682,000 in FY 2010. This is down from a loss of $1M in FY 2009, and we are working actively on further reductions.

Winter Term is part of the required instructional year, so if we eliminated it, we would need to add four weeks of instruction to the fall and spring terms. Many fixed costs would be the same, but the greatest savings would come from closing down the campus for a given period. Given the summer program calendars, we are limited to how much we could save heating costs by staying closed in January.

Much of what happens within the Commons structure would still need to happen even if we did not organize our residential life into five Commons: we would still have student affairs deans, a residential life staff, a structure for programming, etc., and we would still need to select, train, and mentor res life staff, have others advise students whose advisors are on leave or leave the College, etc.

A faculty member earning $75,000 who does not receive an annual 4.5% increase for 2 years over a 20-year period foregoes $117,000 in present value. The loss is much less significant for faculty members who are farther along in their careers.

The leave program actually saves money on a yearly basis, as faculty on leave are on reduced salary and most are not replaced with additional faculty FTE’s, but with built-in FTE’s already on the faculty. Large departments all have built-in leave replacements; they are staffed beyond need, with an assumption that 1, 2, or 3 faculty will be on leave in any given year. If we reduced the frequency of leaves for faculty, we would need to adjust the FTE count through attrition, as we would have excess faculty on campus teaching. That attrition would be done by reducing the number of faculty who teach part-time (fewer than four semester courses/years) and are not in tenure-track positions.

$4.8 million, or 2% of the budget. Of this amount, about $4.13 million supports varsity athletics.

Yes, the Carnival fireworks are paid for by funds that come from the Student Activities Fee, which all students pay at the beginning of the academic year and which supports a wide range of extracurricular programs. This fee is assessed by the students—literally, it is student money--and has no connection to the College budget. Student leaders are very aware of our current budget challenges, and by participating on the Budget Oversight Committee, they have revisited their funding priorities in several areas. It is unknown at this point whether they will have fireworks this year.

That depends on the College’s priorities, and how one considers the cost of diversity. There is no doubt that recruiting a diverse student body has an impact on financial aid costs. It is difficult to say what price you can put on a socioeconomically diverse student body in terms of the quality of education and work experience for students, faculty, and staff. But recruiting and matriculating diverse students is only part of a diversity initiative. One also needs to have programmatic and staff support to ensure that the diverse students we do matriculate succeed.

Several offices are involved in supporting our diversity efforts, and will continue to do so. The question of whether we will have another chief diversity officer has been on the minds of many, and the administration gets more inquiries about this than any other of the open positions in the administration. We would like to fill that position if we can find an excellent candidate for the reasons stated above: a commitment to diversity includes creating the right environment in which diverse students can excel and therefore benefit individually and contribute to the life and vibrancy of the campus.

Yes. As a result of the closing of Redfield Proctor and Rehearsals, the deficit for auxiliary enterprises will be reduced by $145,000 for FY 2010.

The non-undergraduate programs and the programs that take place away from the Middlebury campus achieved a surplus this past year. Individual Schools Abroad can, from year to year, show a deficit, largely as a result of the weak and changing dollar relative to the Euro, but collectively, our eight Schools Abroad routinely add to the College’s bottom line. From the non-dollar perspective, we are seen as leaders in this important and growing academic program.

As with students studying on campus, this depends on how much financial aid a student receives. As on the Vermont campus, a full pay student adds net revenue to the college's bottom line. The amount depends on the operating costs at each School Abroad. Some of our Schools Abroad operate at a deficit, largely due to high fixed costs, particularly related to rental of space, benefits mandated by the state, etc. Each additional student, however, adds to the bottom line, and each School Abroad has a "break even" point in terms of number of students: Schools with higher fixed costs require a greater number of students to break even. Adding students from other institutions to Middlebury Schools Abroad is especially good for the bottom line, since these students are the equivalent of full-pay students, and if they receive financial aid, their home institution pays this aid. Overall, each additional full pay semester student adds at least $1,000 to the bottom line, and Schools Abroad operated at a net surplus during FY09.

An increase of 40 students would realize a gain of $1,450,000. This takes into account the average amount of financial aid we provide for students. Reducing the size of the student body would not save money given that many of our fixed costs, especially in facilities, require a particular student body size to cover costs. Since at some level, and to some break point, each incremental student adds rather than requires added costs, growing the student body is the best way to increase net revenues, but there are other costs a growth in the number of students would generate.

It need not add pressure to the budget, and in fact can help our budget. The biomass system cost $12 million. At $2.00 per gallon of fuel oil and $38.50 per ton of wood it will pay for itself in about 8 years.

Last year, all departments were required to cut their discretionary budgets by 5%. Theoretically, we could move forward with additional across-the-board cuts, but we believe it makes more sense to approach these cuts strategically, and make sure that our budget allocations are in line with institutional priorities. Not all areas and programs are beginning the exercise in the same position in terms of funding levels or in meeting the needs of their programs. While distributing the cuts equally may sound like a safe approach, weakening the institution on all fronts by cutting across all areas could prove riskier than making decisions, difficult though they may be, about where to focus our energies.

The purpose of an endowment is to preserve the institution and the core program of the institution to the extent possible. There are well established “spending” rules—that is, how much of the endowment an institution can draw for use to support the operating budget each year—based on the premise that the endowment must retain its value to support the institution, and on what is known as “inter-generational equity.” Many states set a ceiling of spending for non-profits that equals 7% of the endowment’s value. A 5% spend rate ceiling is standard in higher education. How one generation of Middlebury administrators, faculty, staff, and students use and benefit from the endowment greatly affects future generations, and the goal is to preserve the opportunities for future generations through careful stewardship of the endowment. We would not have the relatively large endowment we have today if it were not for the great care the treasurer, president, and board took in ensuring low spend rates during the 1950s-1980s. We have spent at a higher rate from our endowment than our peers since the mid-1990s, largely to support our campus’ infrastructural expansion and improvement, the growth of the faculty and staff, the improved financial aid program, and the much more competitive salaries for faculty and staff. To once again spend beyond what is recognized as prudent management for the long-term well being of the endowment (5% of the value/year) would place the endowment and the institution at greater risk.

No, not unless we want to repeat all of this five or ten years from now. All of our revenue projections in terms of salaries, improved financial aid, increased funding for programmatic support, and the increased cost of maintaining our campus infrastructure have fallen short, and that gap will take a very, very long time to make up. So, while the markets may look good at any one time, the overall loss of institutional wealth is significant and leaves a continual gap in our revenues. Based on our 2006-07 projections, our endowment today (FY2010) should have been $1.06 billion. Instead, it is around $750 million. That $300+ million deficit generates a $15 million shortfall each year to support our operating budget—that is, $15 million less than we projected and planned on, and we therefore need to make cuts. Any growth in the endowment now adds to the endowment, but does not close the gap of the missing revenue. In addition, some things external to the College will have an impact on our access to revenues: fundraising will take a while to recover, as those who had been planning to support the College lost significant wealth and need to wait to see how their assets fare before committing to support the College; access to relatively cheap credit is a thing of the past; and the tax laws are predicted to change, with the likely impact being fewer benefits to large donors who contribute to non-profits.