In Hard Times, Colleges Search for Ways to Trim the Faculty

The Jones Theatre at Washington State University is getting a $500,000 face-lift this summer. A construction crew has already ripped out its 500 orange and blue seats and is replacing them with new ones covered in a wine-colored fabric. The theater’s walls are being painted a light beige, and a new set of black velour curtains will grace the stage.

But some professors are worried that the theater will remain dark. That’s because the department of theater and dance is one of three academic programs slated for elimination because of budget cuts at Washington State. Officials say they must slash a total of $54-million from the university’s budget over the next two years. The 11 tenured and tenure-track professors who work in the three programs are also on the chopping block.

Administrators are calling the eliminations “vertical cuts.” Instead of slicing costs equally across the board as many other colleges have done, the administration singled out a few that it said were not crucial to the university’s mission and attracted few students or little outside research money.

As the economy slumped this year, institutions in other states adopted similar strategies. The Louisiana Board of Regents cut the philosophy major at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, for instance, and colleges in Idaho, Florida, Michigan, and Wisconsin are also planning to eliminate programs and departments.

That has typically happened after broader austerity measures have failed to stanch enough red ink. “You can bleed to death from a thousand cuts,” says Warwick M. Bayly, provost at Washington State. “We felt we had to prioritize.”

But selective cuts have their own price. Faculty morale is hurt, and professors worry that the damage extends to the overall reputation of the institution. Terry J. Converse, a professor of theater who has been at Washington State for 18 years, is angry that his department is scheduled to be wiped out completely while others remain largely intact. “It’s unconscionable,” says Mr. Converse. “It’s just not fair to knock off a very functional department that is critical to the liberal arts when it clearly could have been completely avoided.”

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