Steps to Emerge Stronger (Faculty)

Announcements

Dear Faculty,

Today, Provost Katherine Baicker and I, in coordination with the deans and officers, are announcing a number of budget cuts and changes that will ensure that the University of Chicago is more resilient and in a strong position to continue to thrive.

The University, from its founding to today, has championed the idea that all the different ways of increasing understanding and knowledge are improved when they are in constant collaboration and dialogue. I am confident that we can build on this powerful way of thinking both within and across disciplines even as we address a challenging time.

There are two reasons why some difficult decisions are necessary now: one proximate, one structural. On the one hand, the profound federal policy changes of the last eight months have created multiple and significant new uncertainties and strong downward pressure on our finances. The University needs to be in a financial position to manage through a situation where even one or two of these risks comes to pass. On the other, despite important progress that all of you worked so hard to contribute to over the last two years, our annual income still falls short of our expenses. That is not something that we can allow to persist.

To address this, we will reduce our expenses by $100M on a base of $3.2bn annually.

The path forward rests on a clear-eyed reassessment, anchored in the principles and practices that define this ambitious and distinctive research university. Our charge is to ensure that we preserve and even strengthen our rigorous and collaborative research and learning cultures. Accordingly, four guiding questions shaped our decisions:

Can we better steward our resources to advance the highest levels of research?
In a constrained environment, how do we ensure that our educational offerings relentlessly meet the high bar of rigor and excellence we bring to our students? Are we optimally using our instructional capacity toward that end?
Are our capital projects financially sustainable while serving the evolving needs of students and faculty?
Are our administrative structures as simple and efficient as possible, so that the maximum amount of our effort supports our core missions of teaching and research?

Now: Taking these questions in reverse order, first, with regard to administrative efficiency, we are reducing the number of administrative leadership positions, both centrally and in divisions and schools. This involves reducing the number of university senior leadership roles, including fewer officers and asking leaders to take on additional portfolios. We are reducing some staff positions in select administrative areas. We are also strongly encouraging streamlining of some elaborate divisional and academic structures that are burdensome to faculty time. Importantly, these changes to the divisions will have the effect of returning resources and faculty time to where they are best used: toward teaching and scholarship.

Second, new capital projects are critical for our future, but we have to be able to afford them. We need to create new spaces for the most demanding new areas of inquiry, while preserving and renewing our many beautiful historic buildings. We cannot do this by continuing to support large projects primarily with financing. We have established new guidelines requiring that we secure philanthropic or other external support prior to embarking on any new projects. Accordingly, we have substantially scaled down plans for the New Engineering and Science Building; we will build the essential underground specialized space for quantum information science and technology and a more limited above ground footprint than originally planned, but will still include essential teaching labs. Concurrently, much needed renewal of the historic buildings spanning the Central Quads is one the highest priorities for our present philanthropic fundraising efforts.

Third, we are acting to better serve students at all levels.

Doctoral education is central to the life of this university and always will be. Our doctoral alumni are extraordinary creators of new knowledge in their own right. Yet, in too many cases, post-degree outcomes for doctoral students have not kept pace with their and our ambitions. Even as the costs for supporting these students have gone up substantially, external support for doctoral students, especially federal resources, are much tighter. Accordingly, we are reducing the number of doctoral students to better match the available funding. In addition, we are working with the Council of the Senate to coordinate with faculty-led local reviews tasked with examining how the University trains and prepares doctoral students for their next chapters. We will continue to emphasize securing philanthropic support for doctoral scholars. Smaller but better doctoral programs will be the result.

Student need for professional, skills-based, and domain-specific knowledge in order to pursue their goals in a knowledge-based economy that has been growing. In response, we have offered quite a few more master’s degree programs over the last ten years. I want to emphasize how much our master’s degrees students make us a better university, with their wide range of experience and the sheer energy that comes from knowing that they have a short time here to absorb the lessons in learning and culture that we offer. We should continue to develop new offerings in response to this student interest, even as we now take stock of our programs which have grown so rapidly. We are pausing select master’s degree programs and working with the Council of the Senate to conduct a faculty review of a number of others. We seek to establish periodic reviews and standards for ensuring master's degrees are not just meeting demand at the admissions stage but also meeting student needs well after graduation. Part of this must also be to make the best use of our limited faculty instruction time. We can learn from and leverage our successes in the College to be more strategic in the recruitment and support of master’s degrees students, especially in the divisions. All of this will result in a larger suite of master’s degrees programs that better meet student needs and make better use of faculty time.

An undergraduate degree from UChicago is in high demand, reflecting the excellence of our College; we consistently enroll students who cherish knowledge, welcome rigor, and possess deep intellectual curiosity. Over the past decade, the growth of the College has strengthened the University overall and greatly benefited students of all backgrounds. We will build on this success by augmenting direct faculty teaching engagement in the College. By focusing our resources, improving efficiency, and reducing the administrative burdens on faculty, we can enable continued student growth and offer more students the empowering and rigorous undergraduate education for which we are known.

Fourth: For research, the wise course for us is to look carefully and strategically within each area of the University to sharpen our efforts and make the best use of our finite resources. This is the time to be open to looking again at our structures and practices, which naturally differ across the different domains of inquiry. When we do this well, each individual part of the University will sharpen and the whole will be stronger.

This begins with a willingness to examine burdensome administrative and academic structures and extends to the closing of some of the more than 140 centers and institutes that have grown and grown over time without sufficient periodic review for redirection or sunsetting. We are also assessing certain long-term research outlays, with the aim of shifting those that can be sustained externally away from central funding. Doing so will free our core resources to seed new ideas and launch initiatives as opportunities arise.

Above all, our success depends upon recruiting and retaining exceptional faculty whose love of knowledge, acumen for discovery, and joy in teaching embody and renew the University for each era. In the last 20 months, we’ve completed the Wallman Challenge, endowing 30 faculty positions across the entire university, the most successful match effort to raise funds for supporting faculty in our history. It is a major goal to extend this further and secure more sustained support for faculty. But after the recent few years of faculty growth, we are adjusting faculty hiring and temporarily holding it to replacement levels, while focusing new hires primarily at the assistant professor level to ensure strong, long-term investment in the University’s future.

I know that many of these changes will be difficult, especially for those whose work and lives are directly affected. There are many specifics regarding research support, instruction, infrastructure, and administration changes that I have described at a high level here. Additional information will be forthcoming in companion announcements today by Provost Baicker and the academic deans.

I ask each of you to approach this moment as an opportunity to sharpen our focus and strengthen the University for the future. We are fortunate not to face this time alone: across campus and around the world, thousands of people—friends, alumni, and many others—have shown their belief in our mission and values, standing with us as we navigate change. As ever, I remain deeply grateful for the dedication, care, and the shared commitment that you bring to our remarkable university.

Sincerely,

Paul

Paul Alivisatos

President