University officials took steps two weeks ago to streamline the administration and loosen the strains on the Arts and Sciences budget when they eliminated the vice presidential post, formerly held by Mel Bernstein.
Calling the new structure "more economical," Provost Sol Gittleman said the changes allow Tufts to spend less money on administration and "more money on things that are more useful, such as faculty salaries."
Improving faculty compensation is one of the University's top three priorities, along with financial aid and technology, according to Executive Administrative Dean Wayne Bouchard, who oversees the Arts and Sciences budget. Attracting top-notch faculty is crucial to improving Tufts' quality of education, Bouchard said.
Increasing salaries, Bouchard said, could also improve the University's standing in US News and World Report's annual rankings, which gauge the quality of education at US colleges and universities. Administrators love to hate the list, but nevertheless purchase a copy each September concerned about its possible effect on an institution's national reputation.
"One of the measurements used in the rankings is the level of educational investment," Bouchard said. "Anything we can do to bolster the amount of budget spent on academic activities will improve our numbers."
Tufts ranks 28th in US News' list of universities that award doctoral degrees, tied with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The University placed 25th in the category of "faculty resources," one of the criteria incorporated in the overall ranking. Faculty compensation amounts for 35 percent of a school's final score.
"We want to be attractive and retain the best faculty," Bouchard said. "The president believes that the two most important things for the University are the quality of the faculty and the quality of the students."
But improving salaries is no easy task for a school whose $600 million endowment is significantly smaller than most of the schools it competes with for faculty. No administrator would say what Tufts paid former Vice President Bernstein, but he was not among the top five paid people at the University. According to The Chronicle of Education, the fifth highest-paid Tufts employee in 1999-2000 was Naushirwan Mehta, professor and chair of general dentistry, who earned $279,793 that year, including benefits.
The average salary for a full professor at Tufts, excluding medial instructors, was $89,300 in 1999-2000, according the Chronicle data. An estimated 201 full professors were employed on the Medford campus in 1999-2000, according to official statistics.
To raise the average faculty salary to $95,000 - still below what Boston College, Harvard, MIT, Georgetown, and other benchmark schools pay - would cost an estimated $1,145, 700 a year. To raise the salaries of Tufts' 144 associate professors from $66,300 to $70,000 would cost $532,800. The combined cost of the raises would be $1,678,500, excluding assistant professors, instructors, and part-time professors. Tufts' 1999-2000 budget totaled $389 million.
Along with improving faculty compensation, Ballou officials say they would like to increase the financial aid Tufts offers. Unlike many of its peer institutions, Tufts admissions is not need-blind. And while Tufts says it meets student need, allocating more resources to financial aid could help attract a more diverse student body, Bouchard said.
Eliminating the vice president's post is part of a trend of cost-cutting at Tufts to increase the University's academic resources. In 1994, for example, Tufts outsourced its janitorial work, and has since saved almost $1 million. "Those opportunities have been pursued so that resources can be redirected towards academic priorities," Bouchard said.
But some at the University downplay the impact of eliminating the vice president's office. "It will be helpful, but it is not very much money," said biology professor Benjamin Dane, who co-chairs the administrative-faculty committee on Budget and University Priorities.
Bouchard, however, says the restructuring improved more than just the University's bottom line. "By empowering the school deans, they will be in a better position to lead their institution in all ways that reflect our position in US News in strategies that reflect their academic vision," he said.
Under the new administrative structure, which is similar to the structure used in the 1960s, the deans of the two arts and sciences schools - Dean of Arts and Sciences Susan Ernst and Dean of Engineering Ioannis Miaoulis - will "be at the table" with deans of the seven graduate schools, according to University President Larry Bacow. These deans previously did not control all the tools necessary to manage their schools, such as financial resources, space, and faculty slots.
"The new structure strengthens their hands and has each reporting directly to the provost like the deans of the other schools," Bacow said. "I hope this new structure will be more agile and responsive to both student and faculty needs."
Eliminating the vice president's post is part of a trend over the past five years to centralize power in the administration. Much like the philosophy behind Dowling Hall, which was built two years ago to centralize student services, the streamlining of the administration is intended to bring together personnel from various schools to work toward common goals. The changes will help students and faculty determine who is responsible for certain issues.
"There's no one else to pass the buck to," Gittleman said. "The deans pretty much run their schools now, so if the faculty is going to look to find fault, they will know who look for now."
Faculty members say it is too early to predict how the new structure will work, but some say that streamlining will be beneficial. "The University has been top-heavy on administrators for a long time," Dane said. "I do not think that it will hurt the University not to have a vice president."
"I think perhaps an advantage is that the deans [who report to the provost] are a member of the faculty and are perhaps closer to the operational side of things than Mel Bernstein was," History Department Chair Howard Malchow said. "But I really think it's too early to say."
According to Bouchard, the people in the structure, not the structure itself, will determine its effectiveness. "Any model can work, it depends on the quality of direction in positions," he said. "By making good hires in deans, the model is less important."
