[M]iddlebury College officials say they hope to trim spending on staff salaries by about $8 million – about 10 percent of what is currently spent – through voluntary buyouts.
School leaders announced the “workforce planning” initiative aimed at closing an ongoing operating deficit in a series of emails to staff and faculty in June.
The college will offer targeted, voluntary buyouts and retirement packages to faculty and staff.
In an email to employees last month, Middlebury President Laurie Patton wrote that the college will “look at every corner of our operations” over the next few months.
Senior administrators in a follow-up email June 27 said a first, smaller package of buyouts will be offered to staff likely in October, and a second is planned for April. Faculty members would also be offered incentive plans “later this year.”
Officials did not specify a timeline or a targeted savings amount. An involuntary reduction in force will be considered, “only if we do not meet our goals,” administrators wrote.
Separation packages will be offered to employees at Middlebury’s main campus as well as at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.
The school has about 1,500 full-time faculty and staff, according to Bill Burger, the vice president for communications and chief marketing officer for Middlebury College.
Small colleges across the Northeast have been struggling financially for years as enrollments decline across the region. But Burger said the school saw its largest number of applications ever this past year and has an endowment of well over a $1 billion.
Spending – not revenues – are the school’s problem.
“This is not the narrative that you often hear about liberal arts colleges which are struggling on the enrollment side. This is more on the expense side,” Burger said.
The school has been running an operating deficit since 2012. Short-term deficits are common at higher education institutions, Burger said, and school officials initially weren’t worried. But Middlebury’s was “on the order of $10 million” in the fiscal year that closed June 30.
“These things can sneak up on you. And in effect that’s what happened. And so now we’re taking steps to address it,” he said.
Officials have looked for savings elsewhere than personnel cuts. The school this fall closed 51 Main, a college-owned restaurant in downtown Middlebury that had been losing money for several years. It is also shuttering an MBA program at its Monterey location, and senior administrators’ salaries have been frozen for the past two years, Burger said.
“There’s anxiety, to be sure. But I think there’s also an understanding that the institution needs to address these issues. And I think we’re determined to do it the right way. But I don’t want to minimize the anxiety that people feel right now,” he said.
The school launched a large-scale initiative to trim back staff during the height of the financial crisis. But it took a different tack at that time, offering “open” buyout and retirement packages to any interested employee. Officials said that presented several problems – employees performing essential functions left, and so needed to be replaced anyway. And some departments were disproportionately affected.
This time, the school will evaluate each department’s needs and offer separation packages to employees performing work the college has decided it can do without.
“Middlebury has added 159 staff since the completion of the buyouts in 2008–2009. We believe the approach we are taking now is more strategic. Only by redesigning the work—not by simply reducing staff—can we achieve long-lasting change,” administrators wrote in the June 27 email.
