Updates

Yale adjusts pay to cover "gay tax"

In January, the university began offering $125 per month in tax assistance to eligible employees who are in same-sex marriages. The extra cash is to compensate them for the fact that the benefits Yale offers to their spouses are taxable under federal law, unlike those of employees in opposite-sex marriages. Activists called on Yale to address the issue after the university mistakenly neglected to withhold those taxes in 2010 ("Withholding error calls attention to 'gay tax,'" March/April 2011).

Singapore college will offer master's programs

Yale-NUS College, the new liberal-arts college that Yale and the National University of Singapore are launching ("Singapore College Deal Is Made Official," May/June 2011), will offer accelerated paths to master's degrees for its undergraduates when it opens in Singapore in 2013. Yale-NUS will itself offer a Bachelor of Laws degree, which qualifies graduates for the Singapore bar, in a total of five years, and the college will partner with the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies to offer a master's degree in environmental studies after one additional year.

Levin predicts "challenging" budget year

Yale faces another budget deficit for 2012–13, according to a January statement by President Richard Levin '74PhD, but he adds that there will likely be no need for more of the "deep across-the-board cost reductions" that the university has imposed since the 2008 stock market crash ("As Budget Cuts Continue, Faculty Jobs Go Unfilled," March/April 2011). Levin said he expects that this year's budget can be balanced by "targeted reductions based on the normal evolution of programs, the availability of alternate funding sources, and the ongoing need to identify administrative efficiencies."