Though Department Chair Mary C. Brinton oversaw a successful junior faculty search this year, the department’s faculty size has declined by the equivalent of three full-time professors since 2003.

Even departments that have maintained steady concentrator numbers in recent years struggle with perennially high student-faculty ratios.

In particular, the Economics Department and the Psychology Department, giants in terms of number of concentrators, have exceptionally low faculty-to-student ratios for Harvard.

“Our faculty-concentrator ratio is extraordinarily low and this makes it extremely challenging for us to deliver the high-quality educational experience that Harvard economics students deserve, and that we want to give them,” Campbell said.

VISITING PROFESSORS, TEMPORARY SOLUTIONS

When the administration turned its attention to the operating costs of the Faculty, reducing the number of visiting professors in FAS proved to be an easy short-term fix.

But administrators say that these members of the faculty—professors on contract for up to five years—can play a valuable role in meeting departmental needs.

Kloppenberg said that, despite multiple postponed faculty searches, the History Department has faced a diminished visiting faculty budget.

A reduced visitors budget also affected the Economics Department, which saw a significantly lower number of visiting faculty in the 2009-10 academic year. With five fewer full-time equivalents, the department had to cut its popular junior seminar program, which has since been reinstated.

The drop in visiting faculty numbers has, for some departments, translated into fewer course offerings for students.

“The biggest problem in terms of teaching is our inability to cover certain subjects with the current composition of faculty,” Rosenblum said.

Banaji said some fraction of courses should always be taught by visiting faculty, who may have the expertise to fill gaps in departmental areas of study.

“It would be a weakness if we did not have people from the outside,” she said.

But she also pointed out that too much dependence on visiting faculty results in unpredictable course lineups and gaps in the department’s faculty expertise.

Despite FAS-wide restrictions on visiting faculty, the Psychology Department has recently relied heavily on visitors and non-tenure track faculty to fulfill the high demand for its courses. Of the 40 courses currently planned for 2011-12, only 21 will be taught by tenured faculty.

Rather than depend on non-tenure track faculty to teach almost half of the department’s offerings, she said it would be ideal to have them teach one-third to one-fourth of the courses.

But in a department with an already slim faculty, that goal can be met only by an accompanying growth in the department’s permanent faculty size—difficult during the recent budget cuts.

“What budget constraints do is they force you to prioritize, and not to stop spending,” Patterson said. “Even if you have a fiscal constraint you can still prioritize in terms of where you put your money.”

—Staff writer Julia L. Ryan can be reached at jryan@college.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Kevin J. Wu can be reached at kwu@college.harvard.edu.