Budget Update: From the Board of Trustees
The following message was emailed to Middlebury faculty and staff on May 12.
To Our Community,
On behalf of the Board of Trustees, we write to acknowledge the financial challenges we face as an institution and the impact that addressing those challenges has on you. While this is our first open letter to the community on the issue, it is far from our first engagement in this work. For a board, no job is more important and no responsibility greater than ensuring that the organization we serve is in sound fiscal health, today and for decades to come. That is why last winter we directed the administration to create a plan to eliminate Middlebury’s long-standing structural deficit by balancing budgets in the College and Schools as we continue to deal separately with the finances of the Institute.
As trustees, we have been giving our utmost attention to this effort, which we initiated well before the assault on higher education. That said, the executive orders out of Washington over the past several months have required us to focus intensely on those issues as well. We know that an already difficult climb could become significantly steeper if our endowment were to be taxed above its current rate, or if we lost all federal support for research and student aid.
These issues—along with defending our core principles of academic freedom and free expression—will continue to be our top priorities through the months ahead.
The board’s Executive Committee—along with the chairs and vice chairs of the Resources, Strategy and Programs, and Risk Committees—have been briefed every step of the way by members of the senior administration, and we want you to know that we are all invested in this work. All trustees, to a person, are aware of the pain, unease, even anger some of you are experiencing. We’ve been briefed on the community sessions held to discuss the budget. The board chair also met with faculty at an in-person meeting last month, and we have received the petition from a group of College faculty, staff, and students that was delivered at the conclusion of this past Thursday’s assembly outside Old Chapel.
To all our community, we hear you, value you as foundational to this institution, and are committed to collaborating with you and our administrative leadership team as we move toward a balanced budget.
But our goal must be putting Middlebury on a solid fiscal footing. Our current financial situation is sufficiently challenging that we recently needed to borrow $45 million to finance our current operating deficits. We cannot do so again, and we must realize a structurally balanced budget. As painful as the current budget measures are, we are convinced that they are necessary—both to address our own long-term finances and to safeguard Middlebury’s future given the external attacks on higher education. Simply put, there are worse choices than those on the table today that could be even more harmful to our core mission. Our senior administrative leadership was careful to assemble a series of the “least-worst” options that will give us much-needed financial flexibility.
We therefore fully support the decisions the administration has made, consistent with our mandate to balance the budget and our long-term commitment to Middlebury’s financial health. We discussed our position with incoming president Ian Baucom throughout the board meetings this weekend. As you are aware, he has also endorsed the Senior Leadership Group’s plan in an earlier letter to the community.
As we look ahead, there are a number of key things to note. Once we achieve a balanced budget through structural reform, the board, Senior Leadership Group, and our incoming president uniformly agree that significantly addressing issues of faculty compensation must be among our very highest priorities—as well as other compensation issues that might arise or have arisen within our workforce. We also agree that we cannot wait to begin that work. For that reason, even as our financial challenges remain, we firmly support the administration’s proposal—strongly endorsed by Ian Baucom—to move forward this coming year with salary increases for faculty and staff at the College. After he assumes office in July, we will be working with President Baucom and the Senior Leadership Group to address a work plan for ongoing financial challenges across the institution.
With this difficult but essential work ahead of us, let’s please keep talking, keep looking for ways to incorporate viable new ideas throughout this process, and together keep striving to strengthen the Middlebury we all love.
Sincerely,
Ted Truscott ’83, Chair
Karen Stolley ’77, Vice Chair
Leilani Brown ’93, Vice Chair
Kirtley Cameron ’95, Vice Chair
For the Middlebury College Board of Trustees