This article is the first in a four-part series about how the recession has affected different parts of the university.
Despite the current economic crisis and the associated cuts to the university's budget, Tufts' graduate schools say they will be able to make it through the recession without being forced to reduce educational quality.
Meanwhile, though college graduates nationwide increasingly consider fleeing the ailing job market, hoping to wait out the storm in academia, application rates to many of the university's graduate schools have not experienced noticeable bumps.
All Tufts schools are facing similar challenges, and the graduate schools' economic tests are not far removed from those of the Medford campus. Representatives of many of Tufts' graduate programs have said that it will be difficult to embark on new ventures, but all hope the core missions of their schools will be preserved.
Many of the graduate schools are cutting back on extraneous expenses to compensate for budget cuts. "Holistically, we [want to look] at the entire school itself and say, ‘How can we be leaner?'" Nathaniel Eberle, the director of public relations and communications at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, said. "Every department at Fletcher has reviewed its expenditures with a fine-tooth comb to come up with ways to save money to weather the storm."
The School of Medicine is taking a similar approach. "We are reviewing the entire budget. All departments are economizing," Marsha Semuels, the school's executive administrative dean, told the Daily in an e-mail.
Representatives from Fletcher and the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine mentioned that they would cut lunches served at meetings to save money. These sorts of changes "are all ways we can trim our budgets and not affect our overall mission," Eberle said.
The School of Medicine is taking a similar approach. "We are reducing other parts of the budget so that we can continue to support research at the same level," Semuels said. She added that the school is hoping to increase its revenue with a new master's program. Administrators there are also considering increasing class sizes.
At the Cummings School, budget cuts accompany an increased focus on the environment.
"We've asked each of our departments to trim their budgets by three percent," Cummings Executive Associate Dean Joseph McManus told the Daily in an e-mail. "Environmentally conscious budgets cuts have included elimination of bottled water from our buildings. It might be surprising to learn that this measure alone will save us more than $20,000 over the next year and a half."
The school is also encouraging the use of electronic course documents and cutting back on trips. "We're printing less, traveling less and being more environmentally conscious, and this has resulted in savings [for] the school while reducing our carbon footprint," McManus said.
Meanwhile, while Eberle did not have final numbers for applications for next year's Fletcher class, he said that in general, dry job markets lead people to consider attending graduate school as a means of opening more doors. The Fletcher School saw the last large increase in applicants following Sept. 11, 2001.
But as the recession grows in scope and lending becomes scarce, a countervailing trend could emerge as students become increasingly unable to afford delaying their entry into the job market, even if they do not secure desired positions. This tendency could explain the lack of additional applications to Tufts' graduate schools.
Based on initial predictions, the number of applications to both the Cummings School and the School of Medicine were relatively similar to recent years.
In light of the economic situation, the university is focusing first on financial aid to students.
"Apart from the near-certainty that we will have to reduce the 15 percent tuition discount for Massachusetts residents if our state funding is not restored, it is too early to tell how financial aid will be affected," McManus said, although he suggested that there would be increased demand for aid from students in the future.
The university's second priority is faculty retention. Even with the difficulties in meeting students' financial needs, the graduate schools hope to avoid cutting faculty.
"In Fletcher specifically, we haven't had to make any staff cuts yet, which is important to the overall mission of offering the highest level of excellence of education here," Eberle said.
The School of Medicine does not plan on faculty cuts in the near future either, and the Cummings School has also endorsed the university-wide focus on human resources.
"Our dean wholeheartedly agrees with President Bacow that our people are our most valuable resource and understands that talented faculty and staff should never be taken for granted," McManus said.
Eberle cautioned that the university is still unsure of the lasting effects of the recession. "We're still in a bit of an unknown as to how far down the road we're going to go in this recession. So there's a bit of optimism, but there's also a bit of realism in terms of the fact that we may have to make additional cuts down the road," he said. "[For] now, we've steadied the ship."
