Economics students will face larger classes and fewer offerings next semester as the department faces staffing problems and a funding shortage, according to Economics Dept. Chair David Mills.
Immediate concern arose after two faculty members retired and seven other full professors announced their intention to go on research leave at the same time. The department will bring in five visiting professors to relieve the faculty shortage.
Mills said he expects the problems to be temporary, as the professors going on sabbatical are expected to return.
"Course offerings in the spring are going to be unusually tight, but this is only a one-semester problem," Mills said.
Elective economics courses will take the brunt of the professor shortage.
"We are about 100 seats short of last semester, and we are short in the number of electives offered," Economics Prof. John Pepper said.
The problems facing the economics department next semester highlight some of the long-term problems the College has faced over the past few years, according to College Associate Dean Karen Ryan.
"After 9/11, the state economy took a huge hit, and we felt it," Ryan said. "We have been running in a deficit or near deficit for the past few years."
The economics department in particular was hurt by the funding crisis. Mills said the department's biggest problem has been replacing tenure and tenure-track professors when they leave the University.
Economics departments tend to have a naturally higher job turnover than other departments, Mills said. The problem at the University was exacerbated by a University-wide hiring freeze put into place in 2001 that did not end until recently. During the hiring freeze, the economics department had a net loss of about two faculty members a year, Pepper said.
To quell the turnover, Ryan said the economics department was allowed to hire some new professors, even in years when the College budget was facing operating deficits.
To make matters worse, many economics departments at peer institutions have increased their efforts to recruit professors.
"Top-ranked universities are hiring very aggressively," Mills said. "Duke, Columbia and NYU are taking people that we would like to hire."
The mobility and marketability of economics professors poses an additional challenge.
"When hiring economics professors, we are competing with the World Bank and the Fed as well as peer institutions," Ryan said.
To lure and retain economics faculty members, the University has begun to offer additional benefits not available to the faculty at large, Ryan said. One such change includes cutting the teaching load from four courses a year to three because professors are attracted to the opportunity to do more research.
Cutting teacher course loads creates an additional strain on the number of students who are able to take economics classes.
In order to make up for fewer classes taught by full-time faculty, the University has adapted by bringing in adjunct professors, Ryan said.
Despite these setbacks, many faculty members are optimistic.
"We are on the cusp of a really good period," Ryan said. "The provost and the president have made a very significant commitment to increase the base budget of the College, which means most departments stand to see new lines of hiring."
The immediate staff shortage is not related to the long-term funding issues, Mills said. While this spring's reshuffling is particularly large, faculty members routinely take leave. Many of the professors going on leave are endowed chairs who are entitled to one semester of leave every three years. The others are professors who are entitled to one semester of leave every six years.
Pepper agreed but added that it is an "unusual and unfortunate coincidence" for the department to have seven professors going on sabbatical at the same time that two are retiring.
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