Faculty capped despite balanced budget

With the University achieving a balanced budget for the first time in a decade, many Yalies hoped for a new era of faculty growth. But much to the disappointment of both students and professors, the Administration states that there are currently no plans to lift the cap on faculty hiring.

"We've brought the budget back into balance, and we don't want to go straight into deficit again," Provost Alison Richard explained.

Between 1990 and 1992, a $20 million deficit forced Yale to make radical reductions in spending. Over a five-year period, Yale's faculty was reduced by about seven percent. Since then, the plan has been to hold the size of the faculty constant in order to keep spending under control. As professors depart or retire, openings are filled or reallocated as needed, but no new positions are added.

Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72, was quick to point out that the restriction is a cap--not a freeze. "A hiring freeze says [that] even if you have a vacancy, you can't fill it. We have an active appointments process; we hired tons of people last year. [The hiring cap has] been seriously misrepresented. To say that Yale is not expanding the size of its faculty is not at all to say that it is not hiring people."

Nevertheless, some professors believe that Yale's current policy needs reevaluation. "[The cap] was constraining to our department, whose size is at the [extreme] low end of our peer competitors at other top research universities," anthropology chair William Kelly explained. "The sense of our department faculty is that an absolute freeze on faculty size is no longer a necessary policy, and I think it has become a counter-productive rhetoric, both for faculty morale and for Yale's image. It would be irresponsible to simply open the floodgates--administration concerns remain legitimate--but I think the time has come for some modest and targeted expansion."

Brodhead countered that Yale must act with extreme caution. "Now, as at any point, there are programs that experience strain as interests shift," Broadhead said. "Things change; they evolve. But if you hire someone in a tenured position who is 35 years old, you may be liable for that person for 40 years.

"Five years ago, Yale was poor. Today, Yale appears not poor. The stock market has been booming; will it boom next year?" Brodhead questioned. "In 1991, it was wrong to say, `Because things are bad today, Yale is bust.' But it would be equally wrong to say that because things are going like gangbusters in 1997, we can spend freely now. It's not wise to apply a long-term solution to a short-term problem,"
he commented.

But Kelly questions the consistency of the administration's policies. "Some faculty, myself included, do look rather cynically at one aspect of personnel developments in the last five years. The same administration that has held to an absolute faculty-size freeze has been expanding the ranks of its vice-presidents, their staffs, and other high-level management at a steady pace."

Not all areas have been affected equally by the cap. While some departments, like anthropology and political science, are starved for personnel, others such as philosophy have yet to fill available positions. "The cap issues have simply not been directly relevant for us," Professor Shelly Kagan, acting chair of the philosophy department, said.

Many Yalies have observed the disparity between various departments as well. "I can readily see some departments that are overstaffed and some that are understaffed," Heather Erickson, JE '99, stated. "I don't think the university should indiscriminately hire professors, but if a department is understaffed and needs to expand its faculty, then it should be able to do so."

Prospects are dim, however, for a lifting of the faculty cap, with Yale administrators arguing that the cap doesn't necessarily detract from Yale's academic environment. "There is turnover, and there are usually a number of vacancies," Richard said. "We want to enhance Yale's intellectual capital and keep it a distinguished place, but there are other ways, besides hiring more people, to do that."

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