DePauw University President Brian Casey doesn't want his administrators to need to make cuts next year.
“Don’t make it come out of the budget. Do not make us cut the budget. Invest from the endowment,” Casey said in a press conference earlier this afternoon.
“I said I don’t want to do this again,” remarked Casey of making cuts to the budget.
The board agreed.
The board still adopted a five-year admission model mimicking this year's strateg, but included investments from the endowment to make it possible without future budget cuts.
“We knew that as we continue to push up the academic quality of the class, the classes will remain a little bit smaller for a period,” Casey said. “But to make the budget work, we’re going to have to draw from the endowment.”
This year, Bridget Gourley, chair of the faculty, and Harry Brown, chair of the department chairs, attended the Trustees meetings and will update the faculty at the faculty meeting Monday.
“On the admission’s front, the board unanimously and enthusiastically endorsed the direction,” said Marshall Reavis, ’84, chair of the Board of Trustees, at the press conference. “And under Cindy Babington, there just is a ton of confidence that it will be executed well.”
Reavis succeeds Sarah Wallace, ’76, who was the first chairwoman of the board and had held the post since 2010.
“I would love to call the board up and just say, ‘Yeah we maintained that 3.7 - 3.8 GPA of the freshman class, and now there’s 650 of them,” Casey said. “Models don’t indicate we’ll get there right away. I think we’ll get a little closer.”
However, the retention rate from the first year to the second year was at 93 percent, a rate higher than it has been in a while.
Casey expects campus diversity to be the same with the continued admissions strategy. Currently, about 20 percent of the student body being domestic students of color and nine to 10 percent being international students. Casey said those numbers put us at the top in terms of diversity in the Great Lakes College Association, which consists of several peer institutions such as Denison University, Kenyon College and Wabash College.
“You can always look at numbers and say we’d like more of anything,” said Ken Owen, executive director of media relations.
Since the board decided to continue the admissions strategy that resulted in a smaller class.
“The board said, ‘Let’s stay the course,’ and we also have confidence that that class will be a more normal sized class,” Reavis said. “If it isn’t, there’s cover, but we think with what Cindy’s doing it’ll be more normalized.”
Normalized means not have a class that is roughly 100 students less than intended.
“It would have been easier to stay the [former] course,” Casey said. “[Pursuing the new course] feels expensive. It feels hard. It feels exciting.”