By M.C. Thomas
The root of this distress is Loyola 2000, a budget-cutting plan approved by the board of trustees. In the past year Loyola has cut $16 million from a $218 million budget, but to do so dropped more than 100 course sections and eliminated 116 jobs. Some professors are teaching extra classes because colleagues took early retirement.
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Meanwhile, tuition has skyrocketed. In 1994, when Loyola was considered a bargain for a private school, it was $11,000. This year it’s $17,750; next year it’s going up to $18,265.
Piderit said he plans to begin using graduate students to teach classes at Loyola, another unpopular move. “[Loyola] has a pretty small student to faculty ratio. It’s one of the reasons I came here,” said senior Matt Carlson, an editor at the student newspaper, the Phoenix. “If we lose that, we’ll be just like every other university–with an $18,000 price tag.”
A 1999 study of 508 endowments (including Loyola’s) found that universities were seeing huge returns on their investments–18 percent in 1998 and 20.2 percent in 1997. While Loyola’s endowment shrank, DePaul’s almost doubled in size, from $86 million in 1996 to $160 million today.
The council never received a reply. In December 1998 the board of trustees authorized the purchase for $11.6 million. “Real estate we’ve purchased has all been debt financed, so it’s not come out of the endowment,” Piderit said. “We have purchased properties that have been, or will be, productive for us. The School of Education is growing dramatically at Mallinckrodt.”
Whatever the size of the opposition, its leaders hailed the teach-in as a launchpad for an organized opposition to Piderit. Speakers promised that the movement to oust the president would intensify after the holiday break.
