Vassar Will Raise Tuition, Cut Jobs After Endowment Falls 21%

By Oliver Staley

March 31 (Bloomberg) -- Vassar College, the private liberal-arts school in Poughkeepsie, New York, is eliminating jobs, raising tuition and offering buyouts after its endowment fell 21 percent in the six months ended Dec. 31.

Vassar will reduce its workforce by 3 percent, through an unspecified number of job cuts, buyouts and attrition, and will suspend faculty searches and contracts for adjunct instructors, Catharine Hill, the president of the school, said yesterday in a letter to alumni. The school raised tuition and fees 4.5 percent, to $51,470, and will increase financial aid, Hill said.

To fund the 2009-2010 operating budget of $153 million, a reduction of $600,000 from the previous year, the college will spend 8.7 percent of the endowment’s projected value. Vassar’s endowment was valued at $848.7 million on June 30, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers, based in Washington.

“This level of support from the endowment is unsustainable,” Hill wrote. “Clearly we must reduce our reliance on the endowment for operating costs as quickly as possible.”

Founded in 1861 as a women’s college, Vassar became co- educational in 1969. The school has 2,450 students, according to its Web site. Graduates include Meryl Streep, the actress, and Jane Smiley, the author of the novel “A Thousand Acres,” who won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

To contact the reporter on this story: Oliver Staley in New York at ostaley@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: March 31, 2009 13:03 EDT

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