Please examine graphs 7 and 8, comparing them with graph 3. Let me begin by saying that we of the faculty are confident that we share with the Legislature, the Governor, the Regents and the people of Montana the desire to have an economical and efficient University, as well as an excellent one. But if we are going to achieve those goals in an era when higher education has become more important to Montana's citizens and, at the same time, more complex and more expensive, we must also candidly acknowledge that the University has been chronically under funded. The cutbacks about which you ask, then, must be considered against a background of chronic financial stringency. In my Department, for example, we have a faculty travel budget which permits full funding for attendance at a national conference for at most two of the nine members.
International conferences are out of the question.
We are forced to decline to present papers which have been accepted or to pay our own way in many cases. Our library acquisitions budget is but a fraction of what it ought to be. We recently trimmed the list of journal subscriptions once again. There are two particularly noteworthy immediate effects of under funding on the academic program. Our class sizes have generally increased, often beyond the point where it is possible to do a proper job of teaching a course.