Professor John A. Menge: Will Dartmouth be Facing a Budget Crisis Like Stanford and Yale?

NO. DARTMOUTH IS NOT FACING, NOW OR AT anytime in the foreseeable future, a major budget crisis such as those at Yale and Stanford. There are several reasons for this.

First,in 1987, a group of faculty and administrators and the Trustees recognized that Dartmouth had a long-term structural budget problem revenues were not increasing as fast as expenses. Consequently, the College had some forewarning of the current fiscal crisis in the academic community. Second, at least as long as three years ago the College began to devise and implement plans designed to achieve budgets that would be in balance; The proposed budget for fiscal 1993 (beginning July 1, 1992) hopefully should mark the end of the process of cuts in programs and activities. This does not mean, however, that all existing budgetary categories can therefore continue to be funded, in whole or in part, in the future. As new or expanded activities are deemed to be of more urgent priority, some existing programs of much lower priority will have to be curtailed to insure that the College's budgetremains in balance.

And finally, Dartmouth has been blessed by several strokes of good fortune some of which were the result oflong-standing College policies. Important among these has been Dartmouth's strong commitment to maintaining the soundness and viability of the physical plant. Unlike Yale's estimated bill for deferred maintenance of $1 billion over the next ten years, the College has few such liabilities, if any. In addition, unlike Stanford (or Columbia, Yale, Princeton, or many other large research universities), Dartmouth has not greatly expanded arts aud sciences graduate programs, which are more expensive to maintain than undergraduate education. Such programs often depend to a.significant extent on "soft money" derived primarily from government grants and contractsthe revenues from which are often unpredictable and, as institutions such as Stanford have discovered, unreliable.

All of which does not mean that Dartmouth is home free. In the years ahead, if we are to continue to be in the top ten U.S. universities, and first in student satisfaction, the College will have to maintain firm control over expenses and the proliferation of activities. At the same time, it will have to work hard to expand and to increase its Sources and levels of revenue to support its core academic programs and functions and its other principal institutional priorities.

ProfessorJohn Menge

JOHN A. MEN GE is a professor ofeconomics and chair ofDartmouth's Council on Budgets and Priorities.