Dartblog

At today’s budget meeting, President Kim continued to reinforce the message that serious cuts in staffing and benefits, and a serious reorganization of the College’s business practices, were inevitable. Not only that, the uncertainty felt by the staff would not end in a month or two; the cost-cutting process would continue for at least this year, and it would do so no matter how well the endowment performed. Some quotes from an increasingly confident and determined President Kim:

“We have got to get serious in making the kind of reductions that we need so that we can grow.”

“Dartmouth is the economic engine of the Upper Valley, and with a $100M deficit, the engine is broken. We must fix the engine.”

“We have to be compassionate to those people who may lose their jobs.”

The phrase “structural deficit” was employed repeatedly, and Kim went so far as to say that a gift that would return the endowment to its pre-recession levels would not divert his administration from its purposes — to use a phrase once spoken elsewhere. Translation: the College’s finances were in a fundamentally unbalanced state when Jim Kim arrived in Hanover. Further translation: President Kim inherited an unholy mess.

Kim emphasized on several occasions that Dartmouth’s largest donors were waiting to see if the College responds to its financial challenges in a resolute fashion — as most donors themselves have had to do in the current fiscal environment. This observation, in addition to being true, is a useful one: the pressure of forces outside of Hanover can be blamed for the steps that the College needs to take.

All in all, a masterly performance. To use his own word, we have a serious President.