If both professors were to leave, Harvard would be forced to discontinue between 30 and 35 courses, officials say.

Other Ways Out

Faculty cuts are by no means the be-all and end-all to reducing deficits, officials say. Rosovsky proposed five possible sources of expenditure decreases in the 1990-91 Annual Dean's Report, although he added that any of these solutions might be worse than the problem. Only one of these possibilities involves faculty positions.

Rosovsky, who is Geyser University Professor, said that in order to make drastic cuts and meet budgetary goals, the University must accept that the "standard of excellence would have to be sharply revised downwards."

The five possible sources include postponing salary increases for senior faculty, which could save Harvard up to $3 million per year; slowing the pace of laboratory renovations by rationing new appointments, which could eliminate up to $300,000 per year in debt service; and capping increases in library costs to the rate of inflation, which could save up to $380,000 per year.

His other suggestions for possible money-saving measures included reducing or abandoning Harvard's need-based financial aid policy, which could save the University up to $10 million, and deferring maintenance costs, which if reduced by 20 percent could save $1.8 million.

Another source of revenue, which has been suggested more and more frequently, is the possibility of spending part of the endowment. Officials are wary of this option, however, citing long-term losses.

Yale Deputy Provost Charles H. Long says that such a solution is brought up "at least eight or ten times a day" at Yale, but that he does not support a plan that would sacrifice the future strength of the endowment for the sake of paying day-to-day costs.

"There's no question that taking money out of the endowment for operating expenses is disastrous," says Long. Spending endowment funds for facility maintenance and capital improvements is somewhat less dangerous, but the Yale deputy provost warns against that also.

As for Harvard, the University is expected to report next month that its multi-billion dollar endowment grew at a disappointing rate in fiscal year 1990-91, making it difficult to justify removing funds from the endowment, University officials says.

Officials have attributed the endowment's weak performance to significant losses in Harvard's riskiest investment fund, the high-profile Aeneas Group. The fund includes holdings in real estate, oil and gas, and venture capital.

Yale's Plan

While discussions are further along at Yale than they are here at Harvard, the recommendations of the Yale committee are not yet set in stone, says Long. The cuts are currently being discussed among the faculty.

If made, the changes will be somewhat reversible, he says. Should the recommended sharp cuts to the engineering, physics and sociology departments take place, a reserve of funds will be made available to those departments when they become stronger and begin to attract more students.

Long says that though the proposed shortfall is just over one percent of the university's total expense budget--$799 million next year--it is much larger in relation to the $265 million of the budget which is actually flexible. Most of the university's funds, he says, are tied up in fixed areas such as grants and contracts. Thus the budget shortfall becomes "much larger...with respect to the difficulty of fixing it," he says.