History Dept. Plans Cuts In Teaching Fellow Funds

In order to meet the administration's targeted budget for next year, the History Department is planning an approximate 8-per-cent cutback in teaching fellow funds.

Dean Rosovsky has asked the 30 largest departments to submit "no growth" budgets for the academic year 1974-75 and to absorb inflation costs by cutting back where they feel they can.

'People Costs'

None of the other major departments has yet announced any cutbacks. However, Robert E. Kaufmann, assistant dean for financial affairs, said yesterday that "about 90 per cent" of the budget money in question is intended for "people costs"--the salaries of all teaching appointments and clerical workers.

Wallace T. MacCaffrey, chairman of the History Department, said yesterday the cutback would probably mean a loss of two or three teaching fellow positions. He also said that the department next year will replace only two of the four assistant professors who will have left by the end of this year.

Make Up the Loss

MacCaffrey said that the History Department next year will make up the lost teaching positions "by using more junior and senior faculty members--to direct theses, for example."

Kaufmann said that "by giving each department this [no-growth] objective, the dean is giving them the flexibility to choose how to absorb the costs."

He said that some ways in which departments could meet the approximately 7-per-cent inflation rise would be by not replacing faculty on leave, by delaying new appointments or by cutting back on teaching fellow units, as the History Department is doing.

Peter S. McKinney, administrative dean of the GSAS, said yesterday that even if departments do cut back teaching fellow positions, this should not mean that graduate students will not be able to get the jobs they want.

He said that because of an anticipated decline in the size of the graduate school, the number of graduate students seeking positions should decline as well.

Dean Dreben said yesterday that the new budget should not present serious problems for the coming year. He said that by the time the question becomes more pressing, he hopes to have some system worked out to distribute funds more equitably.

The Committee on Graduate Education is beginning a series of meetings tomorrow to review and revise rules that govern teaching fellows and to begin discussion on what McKinney called a "fundamental change in philosophy" about teaching fellows.

Jean Agnew, a fourth-year graduate student in History and member of the steering committee of the Graduate Student Panel, said yesterday there is "no question" that graduate students are already feeling a "tightening" in the availability of funds.

"If the union were a lusty fellow, we'd be doing something about this," Agnew said. "I definitely see this as a problem of the administration's priorities--which are first of all to their endowment and last to education."