Few people in the world understand Scottish Gaelic. Even fewer enrolled in Celtic 131, “Intermediate Scottish Gaelic” at Harvard this past semester.

And yet the course was offered—an indication of how the University, even in the midst of the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression, has reaffirmed its commitment to its smaller departments.

Small departments, as the name suggests, serve a relatively small portion of the Harvard student body. In 2008, five undergraduates concentrated in Germanic languages and literatures, five in Sanskrit and Indian studies, and nine in Slavic languages and literatures.

Despite their sizes, such departments entail substantive costs: faculty and staff salaries, office space and supplies, and administrative support. Every dollar spent toward small departments is a dollar not spent elsewhere within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences—or toward fields that draw far more students.

In flush times, the luxury of garnishing smaller departments is just another reminder of Harvard’s reach and wealth—the trappings of a mighty endowment. But recent fiscal constraints have forced the University to sharpen its priorities and, consequently, devote greater attention to where cuts—not additions—can be made.

In this environment, the budgeting process for small departments, formerly almost a matter of course—is far less certain.

“Universities cannot cover everything—we cannot teach all the languages of the world here,” says Classics Professor Jan M. Ziolkowski. “We have to make choices.”

SMALL ENOUGH TO DISAPPEAR?

As the former head of the classics, comparative literature, folklore and mythology, and medieval studies programs, and a former member of the Celtic languages and literatures department, Ziolkowski is no stranger to the smaller humanities disciplines. He currently directs the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in D.C., which dedicates itself to such specialties as Byzantine, garden and landscape, and pre-Columbian studies.

With a resume like this, Ziolkowski is familiar with reconciling the specialized academic focuses of smaller departments with their financial realities.

“I would think of...the inefficiency,” he says. “You would think, this department has only one concentrator every two years and two grad students. And then you add up the grad student stipends, multiply by five years, and you ask yourself, ‘Why should we be doing this? Why do we need the small departments?’”

These questions became particularly relevant during last spring’s budgetary frenzy, when units across FAS found themselves re-examining their expenditures—ranging from cookies to staffing—and University Hall found itself searching for ways to rationalize the existence of separate units.

“We looked at all kinds of options for us when we began this process,” FAS Dean Michael D. Smith says when asked if the administration had ever considered merging or scaling back smaller departments.

Such considerations arose in the minds of worried faculty members who recognized that sprawling departments like Economics possess a distinct advantage over smaller units when making their cases for funding.

For example, Slavic Languages and Literatures currently lists 20 faculty on its website. It had only nine concentrators in 2008. In stark contrast, Economics had a student-faculty ratio of 20 to 1 in 2006, and resorted to cancelling its junior seminars because of a dearth of staffing.