Drury plans to cut academic budget by $3 million, mostly in personnel

As students talk about staging sit-ins to save faculty jobs, Drury University is taking steps to explain why deep cuts in personnel — an estimated $3 million between this year and next — are necessary.

Top officials sent emails to students, faculty and staff and sat down with the News-Leader to outline immediate plans to save money by cutting positions and long-range plans to reverse more than a decade of declining enrollment.

They also wanted to quash rumors, which they say are unfounded. They denied there are plans to eliminate more faculty positions this year, cut any programs or abandon the liberal arts mission that is integral to the university’s identity.

“As Drury adjusts to changes in enrollment amid demographic and economic shifts, the university must make reasonable and responsible adjustments when it comes to resources, including personnel,” Drury President David Manuel wrote in an email to faculty and staff. “These are the kinds of adjustments all organizations must make when charting new courses for the future.”

Five years ago, Drury’s traditional “day school” enrollment was 1,618. This year, it stands at 1,315.

In explaining the situation with employees and money, officials on Tuesday for the first time put a number on the total positions eliminated in the past two years: 40. The university publicly confirmed reports Monday that it plans to eliminate five positions in May and seven positions at the end of next school year, and reassign three others.

Steven Combs, vice president for academic affairs, said positions were eliminated at the start of this school year through “natural attrition” including resignations and retirements. And, he said, more of those are expected.

He said the university was able to cut the academic affairs budget, the largest on campus, by $670,000 at the start of the 2015-16 year, largely through attrition. He said with that amount, the 12 eliminated positions confirmed this week and additional attrition expected this year and next, the university expects to save a total of $3 million.

Nearly all of that amount is savings through personnel moves, he said. He did not disclose the number of positions that could be affected.

Combs declined to provide the current amount of the academic affairs budget or the percentage of that budget represented by the expected cuts this year and next. He did say that the “involuntary reductions” confirmed this week represent a relatively small amount of the cuts.

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Drury must file a 990 tax form with the Internal Revenue Service and those are open to the public. The university’s report from 2013, the most recent, showed total expenses of $70 million and total revenue of $73 million. Of that revenue, $53 million was generated by tuition.

Sam Brady, a senior in English and political science, said he wants the university to be more transparent about its personnel decisions. “They keep students pretty much in the dark about stuff like that,” he said.

Brady said there have been several faculty cuts during his time at the university.

“It’s been concerning,” he said. “It seems like Drury is having financial problems and every year it is getting more dire.”

The university currently has 132 full-time faculty, five part-time faculty and 18 adjuncts teaching in the day school. The university also operates a graduate school and a separate “continuing education” evening program for undergraduates.

Combs said the cuts announced this week were driven by a desire to recalibrate the teacher-to-student ratio. He said while small class sizes are a hallmark of the university, the current ratio of one teacher for every 10 students is too low.

He said the goal is to return to the ratio from a decade ago, when there was one teacher for every 12.5 students. “That is a much healthier number,” he said.

Top officials say they appreciate the passion students are exhibiting for the faculty members who will lose their jobs in May or at the end of the 2016-17 year.

“These faculty members have advanced the mission of the university. They have families, they have forged connections with students, faculty, staff alumni and the community,” Manuel wrote in the email. “These are in no way easy decisions to make.”

Combs said top officials spent weeks studying faculty positions and looking at where cuts could be made. The cut positions are in the following areas: theater, philosophy, music, education and languages.

He said the number of majors in each area was a factor, but the university also looked at where it could tighten resources and not compromise the quality of the program.

A petition on Change.org started Tuesday afternoon demands university officials involve students in “vital decision-making that affects their education, provide ‘transparency with students’ regarding faculty decisions, and explore alternatives to cutting the positions. At 5 p.m., it had been signed by 70 supporters.

But Combs said Tuesday that talk of students staging campus sit-ins, launching social media campaigns and contacting alumni likely will likely not alter the outcome of budget decisions.

“Unless the underlying conditions change, I don’t see that these decisions will change,” he said.

A Facebook page called “Save Drury University as a Liberal Arts School” was created Monday evening and, by Tuesday evening, had more than 1,600 members. In numerous posts, current and former students expressed concern that with the cuts, largely in the humanities, the university is allegedly moving away from its liberal arts mission.

Combs said that is not true. “Drury always has been and always will be a liberal arts institution,” he said. “(But), we have always enacted that in a unique way.”

He said despite maintaining a liberal arts core and keeping the required credits for each major fairly low, encouraging students to take electives and explore other interests, the university created a business program in the 1960s and an architecture program in the 1980s. He said it has also offered a graduate program for decades.

“The liberal arts will have a strong, significant presence in the general education curriculum,” he said.

Combs said the definition of the liberal arts is also changing and the university plans to change with it. For example, Drury is developing programs in animation, film-making and writing for new media.

“There are a lot of good things happening,” he said. “We want to make sure we are in a position to increase the quality of our programming and the relevance of what we do.”

Officials acknowledged that being able to do that, long term, will require enrollment to stabilize. The goal, however, is to eventually reach the same student enrollment as five or 10 years ago.

Nationally, at least half of private universities report a drop in annual enrollment.

The development of a strategic plan to increase Drury’s enrollment started more than a year ago. Numerous work groups have been formed and changes have been made, while others are under consideration.

“Those changes include new academic and co-curricular programs and an enrollment strategy that seeks to grow the university’s enrollment and geographic footprint over time,” Manuel wrote.

A major emphasis of that strategy will be to marketing what sets the university apart, including the close-knit campus, small class sizes and the ability for students to experience a well-rounded education and work closely with professors.

Jay Fedje, vice president of enrollment management, said while 65 percent of students come from the Springfield area, there are only so many high school graduates to go around — a number that has dropped since 2010 — and other areas must be explored. The university has seen a growth in students from Kansas City, St. Louis and foreign countries.

“For us, it’s looking at more markets,” Fedje said.

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With fewer students, Drury cuts 12 full-time faculty, reassigns others