The late completion of this year's state budget may have led to confusion about the number of seats available in classes offered this spring.
For instance, the history department has opened only four sections of its popular World War II class, two fewer than the six listed in the Spring 2002 Timetable.
Associate professor of history Stephen Kantrowitz said he is not sure the remaining two sections will open to students this semester due to what he believes to be a result of financial uncertainty.
He said classes in other departments might be in a similar dilemma.
Kantrowitz, who coordinates registration data for the department, said the ultimate status of closed sections depends upon finalized state budget figures.
\The fact that the budget got finished so late this year has been one problem,"" Kantrowitz said. ""That's across the board, everyone has that complaint.""
Debbie Monterrey-Millett, press secretary to Gov. Scott McCallum, said the governor's office received no complaints about the budget impacting the opening of classes.
""The UW [System] did extremely well ... so we haven't been getting any complaints,"" Monterrey-Millett said.
Kantrowitz also suggested that, to some degree, the number of faculty members on research leave during a semester affects the number of teaching assistants a department can hire.
He said when staff members decrease the time they spend teaching and increase the time they spend on research, more department funds free up to hire teaching assistants and enlarge popular classes.
""When faculty gets a research leave and goes off budget we get a certain percentage back from the college and we can allocate back as we want. We have a lot of faculty on budget, so we don't have a lot of extra money,"" he said. ""There are courses that historically had two TAs that only have one.""
He said the spring semester would be short about 200 to 300 seats from the fall semester.
""There are lots and lots of courses. There just aren't as many seats available in each course,"" he said.
Phil Certain, dean of the College of Letters and Sciences, said departmental budgets have a minimal effect on the hiring of teaching assistants.
""At the college level, we actually maintain a separate budget for TAs that is pretty insulated from the number of faculty that are on leave,"" he said, adding that he was not aware of the budget impacting departmental budgets.
History Professor Emeritus E. David Cronon said when the university receives budget cuts, department instructional budgets suffer.
He added that, as a former dean of Letters and Sciences, he encouraged professors to offer lectures without teaching assistant-led discussions as a technique to save money and open classes to more students.
""The only flexibility a department has is in its teaching assistants and visiting lecturers,"" Cronon said about the department's delegated budget authority.
