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Budget cuts at Rice University are leaving some student-taught courses with uncertain futures.

Rice University, like many other universities across the country, is reeling from a 5 percent university-wide budget cut. As of next semester, all of the Universities’ colleges will receive no more than $250 in funding per course — far less than  the $5,000 each college was allocated in spring of 2008. The dean’s office had already reduced funding to $3,000 for this academic year after finding that most courses did not use the entirety of the $5,000 allocations.

Student-taught classes at Rice have become much more commonplace in the last two years. Only seven student-taught courses were offered in spring 2008; this semester there are 46 student-taught classes, with 730 students enrolled.

As the classes’ budgets get cut, the financial burden will fall to students.

"Students will have more responsibility to pick up the slack," said Dean of Undergraduates Robin Forman.

With budget cuts affecting the future of many courses offered at Rice, Forman said the colleges will need to use more discretion in spending.

“Making any kind of cut is a difficult decision,” said Biology Professor Michael Gustin. “The real question is, ‘What do students think is important?’"

If a poll on the Rice Thresher’s website, the Rice student-run newspaper, is any indication, about a third of students think the college course budgets should be cut, while about half do not. The remainder preferred only certain courses have their budgets trimmed, while the Rice Thresher published an editorial calling the move “both disturbing and disappointing.”

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