University of Wisconsin Madison - Badger Yearbook (Madison, WI)

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comfort of many younger members of the staif, along w th older members of the staff, rather than to break their careers by d.schargmg a large nt mber of them as some comparable universities did. Let me make one point clear: the senior members of the Wisconsm staff have been reduced m salary as drastically as m other umversities of Hke rank. It would, m my judgment, be a serious disservice to the young teachers to smash the salary levels of senior teachers to radically low levels for the temporary advantage of the junior teachers, for, by so doing, we would be setting up for the future a tragic uncertainty regarding the stability of the teaching income for men and women of mature years and heavy responsibility. The rewards of the teaching career are slim enough at best. If we surrender to emotional pressures in a time ot stress and set going the notion tkit mature teachers must, whenever stress comes, see every element of security go to winds to stabilize the income of young men and women in the morning hours of their careers, then the teaching profession, as a life work, will become even less attractive than it is to young men and women of ability. The general morale of the staff of the University has never been better, in my eight y-ears of service, than at the present moment. There is, 1 think, a growing feeling that we have done the best we could to meet a difficult problem. We cannot eat our cake and ha e .t. Wc cannot maintain teacher employment as fully as we have and also make as satisfactory a salary budget as we could for a drastically reduced staff from which two hundred or more ,unior members had been eliminated. All in all, Wisconsin ndes the Depression with realism and courage. And good days are .ihead! Glenn Frank. L.ikf Mcnd ' it.i, Winter

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the second semester ot 1934. There li.is been .i se.irchiiij; re-examln.ition ot all research in the physical sciences in the light of the social implications of its results. The research of the social scientists has been re-examined in the light of its relation to the strains and maladjustments ph sical science research has put upon the social order. The future promises a new collaborative relation between the physical and social scientists at Wisconsin. This is one of the great stories that will emerge from Wisconsin ' s depression period. Its details are still in the making. The drastic drop in inct)me has been met, in the tirst mstance, b ' the ordinary economy measures that would be employed in any organization. Vacancies have been left unfilled wherever it has been possible either to drop the work or to redistribute and absorb the duties of the positions vacated. N ' acant positions that have had to be refilled have been refilled with younger men at lower salary levels. The staff has been decreased through readjustments and reorganizations. This staff decrease has not been made by discharging teachers but by taking advantage of turn- over and not tilling vacant positions. This decrease has been, in the main, among assistants and instructors who resigned or left for other positions. Services and courses have been eliminated or consolidated. Heavier schedules of work have been required. Expenditures for business items have been drastically reduced. Miscellaneous capital expenditures for books and apparatus have been reduced at every point where it seemed poss;ble without serious effect upon educational service. Less vital physical maintenance of buildings and grounds has been deferred. Minor im- provements of plant and equipment have been postponed. No new buildings have been erected. All available balances have been returned to the General Fund of the state to help absorb the drop in income. All such measures were employed first in order to protect as long as possible the none too ample compensation of the teaching staff. But the drop in income could not be absorbed without resort to salary waivers. The first schedule of salary waivers ran from three to thirteen per cent with certain exemptions in the lower ranks for married persons. The second schedule of salary waivers put into effect last year was more drastic because the drop in income was more drastic and all other means of absorbing the drop had been exhausted. The net effect of the last schedule of salary waivers was from twelve per cent at the lowest to twenty per cent at the highest, with only the salary of the chief executive officer assessed as much as twenty per cent. Other unnersitics employed saiarv waiver schedules that looked more humane than ours. That is, they assessed the lower salaries, say, up to 51,500 more lightly than we assessed them. But these other universities, before they reached the making of their salary schedules, fired younger members of the staff right and left. One university summarily dismissed 23 5 of its younger staff members. Obviously it could then make a salary schedule for the remaining assistants and instructors that was more liberal than ours. We chos: to maintain employment by spreading the work even though it meant a more drastic impact upon the younger members of the staff. As far as the upper levels of the staff were concerned, their salary waivers were quite as drastic as in any comparable universities. Our salary waivers were, never- theless, attacked as illiberal by one member of the Board of Regents and by certain political forces outside. No depression budget in a large and complicated institution will be free from mistakes in judgment and some elements of injustice to individuals. It is mv conviction, however, that the Wisconsin salary budget, when examined ten years from now, will be seen to have been socially sounder than many better appearing budgets of the period. We frankly chose to sacrifice the n

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I A ' ;in I c; I he I I )iir 1 A ' ;in i e ' nrs Searching alonj; the widespread paths of change which the University of Wisconsin pursued in its quest for adjustment to the new standards which depression compelled, the impartial investigator is struck bv the diversity of factors which together pooled their stubborn strength to knock accepted levels and procedures into oblivion. But no one who points his light into the dark corners of the past tour years will escape the realization that to the university as a whole no movement brought so terrific an influence to bear on the prevailing campus mode of life as the insistent quest for economy, for balanced budgets, and for tax reduction, which colored every channel of public life. A powerful item on the state budget, the university, tied to the state b - the strong but invisible arm of tradition and the even more potent and very visible factor of financial de- pendence, was inevitably caught in the maelstrom of this zealous crusade for economy and re- duced appropriations. The story of this impact of economy on the university is told with faithful and terse sim- plicity by the figures themselves. In 1929, parcelling out its appropriations to its dependent institutions, the state legislature allowed the university S9. 269, OS 5 for the subsequent biennium, 1929-1931. Two years afterward, responding to the very real decline in tax yield and the insistent pressure against higher tax rates and for reduced appropriations, the legislature slashed its allowance to the university to $8,5 50,608 and then, through its own action and that of the emergency board, adjusted the total to $7,882,702. But if those who administer the affairs of the university thought that they were skimping and saving with only $7,882,702 at their disposal for the 1931-1932 biennium, they were soon to be initiated into even more drastic economy. The 195 3 legislature brought a razor-edged axe to its financial deliberations and slashed with the fervor of a taxpayers ' alliance at the budget requests of all state institutions. As a heavy item on the total state budget, the university bore the greatest load of retrench- ment. Its two year appropriations, for 1933-1935, were whittled to 56,448,198, resulting in the complete elimination of several services to the state, drastic curtailment in a number of others, and widespread dislocation in salarv ranges and allowances for equipment and materials. ' hde the university ' s major source of revenue was thus undergoing the severest sort of curtailment, the second most fruitful provider of funds, student fees and tuition, was revealing a similar disinclination to measure up to former standards. In the two year period of 1929-1931 the university harvested $2,240,324 from student pockets, and poured it into its lA operating lund whence comes the wherewithal to pav facultv salaries. In the subsequent biennium income from fees and tuition shrank to $1,908,5 12, and in the 1933-193 5 plunged to a new low of $1,422,120. There were many who pointed out that this shrinkage in student payments reflected a great decline in enrollment, and hence they pointed to the need for fewer teachers and lower maintenance costs, and logically the university ' s ability to absorb large reductions from the state. Such citizens were right as far as they went, but, as is so frequently the case, their reasoning was not projected far enough. [13]