12/11/1977, Burlington Free Press

GODDARD MARCHES ON, DESPITE FINANCIAL WOES

By GREG HOOKER
Special to the Free Press

PLAINFIELD -- It is said that the more things change, the more they remain the same. And in some ways, this is the case at Goddard College.

Approaching its 40th anniversary, Goddard is fundametally the same school it was when it was founded in 1938 as progressive, "experimental" community rooted in the educational philosophies of John Dewey and William Heard Kilpatrick. The college continues to allow students to design their own fields of research with professional guidance.

As President John Hall says, "Our philosophy is that you start with a problem and then learn the disciplines with which to deal with that problem. At Goddard. you don't learn a discipline for discipline's sake."

Over $400,000 in debt, Goddard College was tottering on the brink of bankruptcy. Now operating in the black, the college continues to walk a financial tightrope, Free Press Correspondent Greg Hooker reports in the first of two stories.

One of Goddard's trademarks has been its fiscal woes. It's no secret that the college has no endowment and relies almost solely on student tuition and fees. In short, Goddard College has lived - and continues to live - on a shoestring.

The latest chapter in the continuing story of the college's financial plight surfaced in February when Hall, then interim president, discovered that the institution faced a $450,000 budget deficit. He was authorized by the Board of Trustees to take whatever steps were needed to balance the budget.

Those "steps" included the most massive retrenchment in the school's history, resulting in the dismissal of 24 full and part-time undergraduate faculty members, six administrative and graduate personnel and six staff members. The savings on faculty salaries alone, according to Hall, amounted to more than $350,000, though these savings were largely offset by $200,000 in raises given to other faculty and staff.

It costs upward of $5 million to operate Goddard these days ($2.6 million, or 58 per cent, of that amount in personnel expenditures, according to a Sept. 23 budgetary memorandum from Hall to the college trustees).

And the biggest victim of retrenchment was the resident undergraduate program, where Dean James Nolfi says he lost about half his faculty. Cited as reasons for the cuts were decline in enrollment in the resident undergraduate program and the fact that students enrolled in the program reguire on-campus housing and other services, accounting for the college's greatest expence, next to maintenance costs.

The drop in the program's enrollment, from 609 students last year to 412 this year, will result in the loss of nearly $300,000 in revenue, according to figures released by finance director Robert Leavitt. When the revenues generated by the college's graduate students in tuition and fees, as well as all auxiliary expenses such as room and board, are incorporated, the college stands to bring in nearly $600,000 less than a year ago -- $4,565,100 this year compared to $5,140,500 received in the last fiscal year, Leavitt said.

Despite these losses, savings resulting from the personnel and administrative cuts have resulted in an anticipated budget surplus of $28,100 in fiscal 1977-78, Hall said.

However, Hall and Leavitt are quick to point out that budgets and budgetary surpluses are only projections. And they concede that the anticipated $28,700 bulge is contingent upon an expected sum in excess of $100,000 in unrestricted gifts during the current fiscal year.

Another reason for optimisim is that Goddard has more than quintupled its performance in the generation of unrestricted money over the past year.

From Sept. 1 1976, to Aug. 31, 1977, the college raised $70,310, compared to less than $14,000 the previous year. Including restricted gifts and grants, Goddard generated $221,480 compared to less than $74,000 in the previous 12 months.

Despite the roseate picture being painted by the Goddard administration, there are still worries. Foremost is the fact that the school must maintain its enrollment to meet expenses in the absence of any supportive endowments.

Also looming is a $180,000 annual debt service, incurred by a $750,000 Farmers Home Administration-guaranteed loan taken out two years ago to cover debts owed to the Chittenden Trust Co. "There's nothing wrong with being in debt," Leavitt said. "You just budget yourself for the payments."

More important are the lingering results of the restructuring of Goddard's finances. While some would just as soon let the specter of retrenchment fade into the past - as resident undergraduate program teacher Janel Kotler says, "it's a dead issue now" -- retrenchment is actually not dead at all.

The re-evaluation of Goddard's financial structure, in fact, has affected many continuing reassessments of what Goddard's goals can be and how they can be achieved.

Next: The effects of retrenchment.