More than 5,000 students have applied to Oberlin for next year’s class, the largest applicant pool in school history. The Board of Trustees and the administration are planning to cut the total enrollment by 20 students, bringing the campus to a total of 2,878, according to Dean of Admissions Debra Chermonte.

On a grimmer note, the College is projecting a $2.5 million budget deficit for fiscal year 2005, Vice President of Finance Andrew Evans said. The endowment registered $565 million in returns on Dec. 31, 2003, a recovery of over $40 million in returns as compared to a year before. At the close of 2002 the endowment stood at $519 million.

At a General Faculty meeting on Tuesday, the administration stressed how important it is to have a balanced budget this year, because of the $1.8 million loss in endowment revenue in the fiscal year spanning June 2004 to June 2005.

“This will enable us to have a stronger base to project next year’s budget,” Evans said.

Because of the shortfalls, Dye said that she would recommend capping non-union employee salary increases to two percent next year. She has refused a pay raise in each of the last two years, even while being granted a substantial retention package worth $1 million.

“This is a systematic financial issue,” Dye said. “There is nothing here that constitutes a crisis.” She said that the goal would be to increase College revenue, not to slash expenditures, backing her statements with a pledge to retain all employees through the lean times.

“We’re going to have to raise more money,” she said. “The endowment will come back, it will grow again. But it is not back with us now.”

She pointed to Oberlin’s resistance to major fundraising prior to the 1990s as the reason for a smallish endowment compared to Oberlin’s peers, some of which have endowments topping $1 billion.

“We are more dependent on tuition spending,” she said, adding that the full-priced Oberlin tuition of $40,000 is a double-edged sword.

“We see that fewer American families can pay that sticker price,” she said. “But every time we raise tuition, we have to raise financial aid.” Thirty-five percent of Oberlin students pay full tuition, and only five percent are completely subsidized.

Dye dismissed the idea that Oberlin alumni cannot afford to make major gifts to the College. “I’ve heard this a lot, that Oberlin graduates don’t make a lot of money, and aren’t able to give major donations.” She said that development during the recent campaign, which has collected more than $165 million in gifts, “established relationships with a lot of people we didn’t know were out there.”

An entire development staff will be retained to begin another fundraising venture in about two years. More than half a million dollars has been set aside to fund the new additions.

Addressing the College’s mushrooming healthcare costs for the faculty, Dye challenged them to appreciate the healthcare that the College offers and not abuse it.

She described her reasoning using an anecdote of a man who called on his doctor to give him the most aid that is physcially possible.

The physician planned a whole day and used virtually every piece of equipment on the market to ensure the thoroughness of the examination. At the end of the day, he proclaimed the man in great health, then handed him a bill of $2,200.

The patient panicked, explaining that it wasn’t possible for him to afford the checkup he had just received.

Puzzled, the doctor asked why he had ordered a procedure he could not afford.

“When it comes to my health,” the man explained, “money is no object.”

Dye played down numbers that suggested that healthcare costs might force the College to cut its share in the healthcare package, and force an additional $3 million onto employees by 2008. She said that the Board of Trustees had not set a cap on healthcare spending and stressed the unpredictable nature of medical insurance rates in general.

Waving a graph with the sobering totals, she insisted, “It does not show what will happen, it’s a projection.

“It is the goal of all of us that health care remains very good, accessible and affordable,” she added.

Evans expressed concern with balancing the books. “The growth of the projections is unsustainable. Our intent is how we can lower that base,” he said.

At the beginning of the meeting, Chermonte released the minority applicant statistics for next year which show nearly across-the-board increases. Native Americans are the only ethnic group less represented in next year’s pool.

African-American applicants increased from 311 last year to 335 this year, while Asian-American prospies increased from 319 to 332, and Latinos from 231 to 240. Overall, the total minority applicants increased by five percent.