The University of Chicago faces rising debt levels more serious than those at any of its peer institutions, a result of overspending in the sciences that could cost the elite campus its traditional strength in the humanities, a professor has warned. The situation at Chicago seemed comparable, said Clifford Ando, professor of Classics and history at Chicago, to that of West Virginia University, which recently caused angst by cutting 143 faculty positions – heavily in the humanities – to address an estimated $45 million (£36 million) budget shortfall. While such cutbacks may not be imminent at Chicago, with an endowment worth about $10 billion, “what we have done, in the scale of our leveraged investments, what we have done in terms of borrowing or issuing bonds, is just outrageously beyond any peer institution”, Professor Ando said.
