College course budgets face cuts

By Josh Rutenberg     2/4/10 6:00pm

Student-taught courses may soon want to include a lecture on thriftiness, because the pocketbooks of Rice University are rapidly shrinking.As the latest victim of the 5 percent university-wide budget cuts, college courses will have to work with a yearly budget of no more than $250 per college next semester, down from the initial $5,000 per college allotted in spring of 2008. After determining that most colleges did not use up their college course budget, the Dean's Office reduced funding for college courses to $3,000 for the current academic year. The subsequent reductions will go into effect next year.

Concurrently, the number of student-taught courses offered has risen from seven courses with 105 students enrolled in spring 2008, to 46 courses with 730 students enrolled in spring 2010. When student-teachers and academic committee chairs are included, roughly 25 percent of students have some level of involvement with the college courses.

Dean of Undergraduates Robin Forman said the responsibility of maintaining the college courses will ultimately rest with the individual colleges.

---

---

"Expenses beyond the budget will have to be supported by student budgets in the colleges," Forman said. "Students will have more responsibility to pick up the slack, and colleges may have to contribute to the [college course] budget."

Rice's only introductory law course, LOVE 237: Introduction to Law I, is among the courses that will have to find new sources of funding. The course, which originally used all $5,000 of its budget to pay a practicing professor to teach the course, will be unable to continue paying the same amount without additional resources.

BROW 114: Easy French Cooking with Sous Chef Thierry applied for and received a budget of $400 for the current semester from Brown's college course budget, but course instructor Thierry Rignol said the budget cuts will have a definite impact on the future of the class.

"If we want to offer the same class with the same quality, budget cuts will be a problem," Rignol, a Brown College sophomore, said. "I won't have the support from Brown academics I need."

Wiess College Master Michael Gustin, who helped start the college courses in 2007, said he believes the fate of the courses will rest with student interest.

"Making any kind of cut is a difficult decision," Gustin, a biology professor, said. "The real question is, 'What do students think is important?'"

Forman said the colleges will have to use more discretion on how to spend for college courses in the future.

"Like any other budget on campus, [colleges] will probably have to pay more attention to using money in cost-effective ways," Forman said.

Though the college course program started at Wiess, the other colleges followed suit in subsequent years. While most require petty expenses like copying handouts, several of the college courses have far larger budgets.

"If it was only making copies, then money wouldn't be a big issue, but there is an opportunity for [student-taught courses] to be more than that," Brown College Academics Committee Chair Pierre Elias said.

Elias, a Brown junior, said classes like BROW 103: Origins of Everyday Things, are an example of courses that use funding to achieve successful results. Last year, the course used part of their budget to tour a factory, giving the class a greater depth, Elias said.

"It only improves the whole system if you're able to do something interactive," Elias said. "For me, that's why the budget is so important."

Forman acknowledged the inherent importance of the college courses, noting that everything that has been cut shares a similar trait.

"Everything we might consider cutting has value," Forman said.

---