Dwindling undergraduate enrollments have put further financial stress on the perennially money-losing Duke University Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, N.C., causing concern among administrators.
The marine lab's annual deficit of $500,000 to $1 million is the single greatest burden on the budget of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, which runs the lab.
"It's been in the red the entire time I've been dean and it seems to be getting worse, and so I have to cover that deficit," said Dean of the Nicholas School William Schlesinger, who added that there are reasons to believe the deficits will increase in coming years.
The biggest cause for the exacerbation of the lab's financial struggles has been a huge drop in undergraduate enrollment, especially for academic-year programs. During its heyday in the early 1990s, the lab would draw about 60 students per semester during the academic year and as many as 100 for the summer. This year, 32 students enrolled in a spring Beaufort-to-Bermuda program and only 14 enrolled in the regular fall program.
Undergraduate fees are not the only source of income for the marine lab, but they comprise a substantial chunk of the lab's revenue and administrators admitted that the enrollment woes are problematic.
"They have some exciting things going on," said Provost Peter Lange, "but that undergraduate enrollment really helped them."
Schlesinger identified several causes for the decline, most notably the proliferation of study abroad programs throughout the world, including in marine environments such as Costa Rica and the Caribbean. He also said he personally believed that the success of Duke basketball and social life in general contributed to students' lack of interest in the lab, although the drop has been steeper in the fall than in the spring.
Changes in the Duke academic scene could also be affecting marine lab enrollment. Michael Orbach, director of the marine lab, pointed to the 1996 decision by the biology department to require two semesters of cell biology for majors as having a major impact on the lab. "Our enrollment for biology literally fell by half [one] year after they changed that requirement," he said.
The number of biology majors at the University has also steeply declined in recent years, from 270 in 1998 to just 120 this year. Although the marine lab's official focus is "marine conservation," meaning policy issues are also taught in some detail, biology is still at the heart of the Beaufort experience and Orbach acknowledged the decline in majors could have an effect on lab enrollments.
Administrators said there is no talk of selling the lab or of even significantly downsizing the undergraduate program. Schlesinger said he would consider doing things differently in certain areas if enrollment did not pick up, but that he was committed to providing a full range of classes no matter how sparsely attended they were.
"You've got to fly your full schedule even if your planes are half full," he said.
Orbach said he had heard much more talk about possibly selling the lab in the 1980s, but he feels it is now a secure part of the University because of its many contributions beyond undergraduate education.
Research and rapidly growing master's and doctorate programs are among the other activities that make Beaufort a positive force for Duke, he said.
Indeed, the administration's actions suggest a sustained commitment.
Recent and planned additions to the Beaufort campus include a new oceanography building, a new building for student services and a remodeling of student dormitories. A 1998 agreement for the University's facilities management department to manage the lab's facilities was expanded in 2002 for all auxiliary services.
And, while a pledged $60 million gift to the Nicholas School by Board of Trustees Chair Peter Nicholas and his wife Virginia will not be of much immediate help to the lab, Schlesinger said the money could indirectly provide relief by freeing up a greater allocation of funds from the school's central budget to help the lab make ends meet.
In the meantime, Orbach and his staff will continue to recruit students with the ultimate goal of returning to an enrollment of about 50 students for the fall and spring programs. Despite a difficult task ahead, enrollment for the fall is currently up to about 24 students and Orbach said he is not worried.
"The marine lab does so many things in so many ways for the University that I'm not concerned about the future of the lab," he said. "We certainly hope at some point we would be in the black here, and are looking for ways to do that..., but the University has been very good about giving us slack and time to do that."
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