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Hurricane Katrina

Battered by Katrina, Tulane University forced into layoffs, cutbacks

NEW ORLEANS - Staggered by Hurricane Katrina, Tulane University announced Thursday that it is laying off about 230 faculty members, dropping some sports and eliminating several undergraduate programs, including electrical engineering and computer science.

"This is the most significant reinvention of a university in the United States in over a century," declared Scott Cowen, the university's president.

The campus in the city's Uptown section has been closed since Katrina's floodwaters devastated New Orleans and drove out most of its half-million inhabitants. About two-thirds of Tulane's facilities flooded, including dormitories, and most of the students are now scattered at schools around the country.

The private university plans to resume classes in January, though it expects a costly one-third drop in enrollment. Tuition accounts for 35 percent of Tulane's revenue.

Before the storm struck Aug. 29, Tulane had about 2,500 faculty members and 13,200 students and an annual budget of $593-million. The university said the cost of recovering from the storm would be at least $200-million.

Tulane said it will eliminate about 180 faculty positions at its medical school and about 50 at its other graduate schools and its undergraduate program.

"I deeply regret that employee reductions were necessary to secure the university's future," Cowen said. "We have tried to make the reductions as strategically and humanely as possible, recognizing the hardship it places on those whose positions have been terminated."

Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, said Tulane's plan is unprecedented in its scope and speed. "I have thought long and hard to see if I could identify a comparable change at another university in the last century, and I can't," Hartle said.

The university said it will continue to participate in such NCAA Division 1 sports as football, baseball and men and women's basketball. But it eliminated men's track, men and women's tennis, men's and women's golf, women's swimming, women's soccer and men's cross-country.

The university also said that it will concentrate on areas where it can excel. Five undergraduate programs - civil and environmental engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer science, computer engineering and exercise and sports science - will be eliminated.

Incoming students will be housed on a cruise ship in the Mississippi River. Apartments in New Orleans are hard to find because of the widespread flood damage.

Under the plan, the university will establish a new undergraduate college. All incoming students, regardless of their field of interest, will enter through the college. In addition, students entering next fall and after will be required to participate in community service work and help to rebuild New Orleans.

Including Tulane's losses, colleges and universities in the city sustained an estimated $1.5-billion in damage from Katrina.

Loyola University of New Orleans announced 28 layoffs, none among tenured faculty. Dillard University, which sustained an estimated $350-million in damage, has laid off two-thirds of its faculty, at least temporarily.

On Wednesday, former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton, who have raised about $110-million for Katrina victims, announced $30-million in grants for higher education institutions, including Tulane and 13 other colleges and universities. The money will go toward such things as repairs and reconstruction, as well as salaries.

Over the past three months, Tulane's football team has been playing all its games in borrowed stadiums. The medical school has been operating out of four Texas universities.

[Last modified December 9, 2005, 01:20:12]