Arts Programs in Academia Are Forced to Nip Here, Adjust There

New York Times
August 9, 2009

If you are looking for a sign of how strapped the University of California, Los Angeles, is for cash, consider that its arts and architecture school may resort to holding a bake sale to raise money. California’s severe financial crisis has left its higher-education system — which serves nearly a fifth of the nation’s college students — in particularly bad straits. But tens of thousands of students at public and private colleges and universities around the country will find arts programs, courses and teachers missing — victims of piercing budget cuts — when they descend on campuses this month and next.

At Washington State University the department of theater arts and dance has been eliminated. At Florida State University the undergraduate program in art education and two graduate theater programs are being phased out. The University of Arizona is cutting three-quarters of its funds, more than $500,000, for visiting classical music, dance and theater performers. Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts, which supports four departments — dance, music, theater and visual arts — is losing 14 percent of its $1.2 million budget over the next two years. The Louisiana State University Museum of Art, one of the largest university-affiliated collections in the South, saw 20 percent of its state financing disappear. Other private and state institutions warn of larger classes, trimmed offerings, higher tuition and fewer services, faculty and visitors.

The arts are of course not the only victims of the recent economic meltdown. Large reductions in budgets have stung pretty much every corner of academia, from philosophy to Chinese, from gymnastics to geology.

The University of California, for example, is raising student fees by 9 percent, reducing freshman enrollment by 6 percent and cutting at least $300 million across its 10 campuses. There are no nationwide statistics to reveal whether one discipline is suffering more cuts than others. But administrators at more than a dozen state and private campuses who were interviewed say that the way that arts programs are structured and operated may amplify the effect of reductions.

Since tenured faculty are generally insulated from layoffs, budget cuts fall on part-time and visiting staff, Christopher Waterman, dean of the School of the Arts and Architecture at U.C.L.A., explained. For teachers, “we want artists who are in the thick of their careers,” he said. The result is that a large proportion of the school’s instructors are not permanent members of the faculty. Every department across the board has been ordered to cut 5 percent — on top of a 10 percent cut last year — but that relatively small reduction could mean the elimination of a third of the art department’s staff, Mr. Waterman said. (Final decisions on specific cuts have not been made.)

Crowded classes may not be as harmful in lecture courses, but in creative and performing studios, increasing class size is not always an option, he added. “You can’t teach painting to 40 students or give that many students voice lessons in opera or jazz.”

Several other college arts administrators around the country also said programs that serve the surrounding community as well as the students — like museums and performing arts centers — are especially vulnerable.

In California figuring out which programs and positions will survive will take a few more weeks. In the meantime the School of the Arts and Architecture, like other sections of U.C.L.A., has been told it should search for more ways to raise money itself. “We’re looking at more summer classes for high school seniors and bake sales,” Mr. Waterman said.

Elsewhere on the campus the Film & Television Archive is paring back its foreign-film program “because we cannot afford shipping any more of those prints from foreign countries,” said Jan-Christopher Horak, the archives director. A smaller staff in the film studies center could translate into less academic research, he added. As public universities watch state legislators slice away their funds, private colleges have seen their endowments shrink. Both are having to rely more on private donations at the same time that the recession has left individual contributors less able to give.

Figuring out what or who faces the budgetary guillotine has been a harrowing process no matter how it was done. Few go quietly.

Officials at Washington State University held a dozen public forums, testified before state lawmakers, appeared before the student council, the Faculty Senate and the Board of Regents; they responded to thousands of electronic messages and spoke with every single student, legislator, faculty and staff member, alumnus and community member who requested a meeting before deciding where $54 million and 360 jobs over the next two years would come from. One result: Sports management got a reprieve; that program and major will continue, while theater arts and dance will be phased out.

Arizona State University’s four campuses lost 500 jobs, closed 48 programs and imposed 10-to-15-day furloughs this spring. The schools of music, theater, film and design were all incorporated into the existing art and architecture center. Virgil Renzulli, the university’s media spokesman, said that officials focused on slashing administrative costs to maintain the same number of courses and tenured faculty.
In Flagstaff, Northern Arizona University spread the $21.3 million in cuts across departments. “The only program that we eliminated was a B.A. in theater education,” said Tom Bauer, assistant director of public affairs. “It only had 15 students, and they will be allowed to finish.” He added that the university is still waiting to hear from the governor’s office how much federal stimulus money might be directed its way.

Like California, Louisiana has had a tough year, although the doomsday cuts that some administrators were forecasting have not come to pass. Laurence Kaptain, dean of the College of Music and Dramatic Arts at Louisiana State University, said, “We tried to save people and cut things in our operations.” The college, which took a 3 percent cut this year on top of a 10 percent reduction last year, is holding back on upgrading computers and production technology, spending less on costumes, scenery and special effects as well as travel and conferences. “It’s making us more dependent on private funds,” he said.

Over at Louisiana State’s College of Art & Design the dean, David Cronrath, said a 4 percent cut ate up the positions of three full-time tenure-track faculty members, eight adjunct faculty and two staff members. He hopes to offer the same number of courses by increasing the faculty members’ loads and by relying more on graduate-student teaching assistants and part-time faculty, he said. But he, like others around the country, expects more cuts despite federal stimulus money.

For some institutions many tough decisions are yet to come. Cornell University, for example, recently approved long-term capital projects, including a $20 million extension to its art museum and a $55 million building for the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, said Simeon Moss, a university spokesman. But the university is also undertaking a top-to-bottom evaluation in the face of a projected operating deficit of approximately $150 million within five years.

Although some arts advocates, faculty and students have complained that their subjects are saddled with a disproportionate share of the cuts, Sally E. McRorie, the dean of visual arts, theater and dance at Florida State University, said that did not happen in her case.

“Florida State has a long history of dedication and investment in the arts,” she said. “Our cuts have not been greater than anybody else’s.” She said the university made a decision to use federal stimulus money “to keep people employed” but noted that after next year, when “those funds are gone, I’m not sure if we’ll be able to maintain those positions.”

by: Patricia Cohen