Unlike peers, no major cuts for SAS grad division

The struggling economy has caused a nationwide decrease in the size of doctoral programs, but Penn’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences does not plan to make any significant cuts.

On Feb. 3, Yale University announced a 10 to 15-percent decrease in graduate school enrollment for the 2010-11 academic year. Columbia and Emory Universities have made similar cuts, according to press releases from the universities.

Though Penn is making changes, there is no University-wide budget reduction plan.

Instead, deans of each school assess departments on individual bases.

“The schools look each year at their numbers and decide what their budgets can handle — for both the next year and following years,” Associate Provost for Education Andrew Binns said. “There haven’t been any cuts in graduate stipends, and there are no plans for that.”

SAS’s budget modifications correspond “much less” to fluctuations in deficit and the endowment, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies Ralph Rosen said.

Instead, budget cuts relate to more complicated issues, such as the job market and how many students were admitted in past years.

“My approach has been to work one-on-one with pretty much every graduate group separately and figure out what makes sense going forward,” Rosen said.

While there have not been major cuts, small reductions have been made in the doctoral programs in a unique, colleague-to-colleague manner, he explained.

Rosen does not generalize all SAS programs because their budgets operate differently.

While many small humanities programs have around three students and fluctuate based on job opportunities and interest, the strength of natural sciences programs depends upon their access to grant money.

“The natural sciences are a completely different ballgame,” Rosen said. “We’re certainly not about to cut the sciences, which would affect things like teaching and recovery grants.”

SAS does not have to make as many substantial adjustments as its competitors because Penn, as a whole, is less dependent on its endowment.

Yale’s stipend decrease was significantly associated with a $150 million budget gap, according to The New York Times.

“We are committed to sustaining competitive graduate stipends: they are a critical element of our ability to maintain high quality graduate programs,” Dean of SAS Rebecca Bushnell wrote in an e-mail.

The endowment’s loss has been serious, Rosen said, but it has not been devastating for the graduate division of SAS.

“Our process is going to be much more driven by the standard metrics of need and success than our endowment,” Binns said.

And even if the graduate school did eventually have to make sizeable cuts, stipends would be one of the last areas to suffer, he said.

“We’re competing for the top students in the world, and in that competition, one clear area is in the level of stipends,” Binns explained. “We’re doing everything we can to make sure that we can attract the best graduate students possible.”

Other graduate programs at Penn responded similarly.

“I can tell you that we have not had any decline in graduate admission this year or in any past year,” Annenberg School of Communications Dean Michael Delli Carpini wrote in an e-mail.

This year, Annenberg received over 400 applications and accepted 20 students for the Fall 2010 term, he said.

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