After nearly $70,000 in budget cuts since 2008, the math department was forced to decide between two options: losing undergraduate graders or losing the Math Help Center.

The Math Help Center won out — and the 33 graders who served the department last year are out of a job.

Peter Mucha, chairman of the mathematics department, said the decision was difficult because of high demand for the center, which is especially popular for non-majors.

Karl Petersen, director of undergraduate studies in math, said 33 graders were hired in fall 2009 — a reduction of 15 graders from the previous year’s fall semester.

“This is a cut that doesn’t make anyone happy,” Mucha said.

The mathematics department spent $44,000 on graders in the 2009-10 school year. Graders were paid $500 per semester for five hours of grading each week.

Mucha said graduate students have taken over all the tutoring in the Math Help Center, which had previously been the responsibility of undergraduate students.

“The Math Help Center is helpful,” Mucha said. “It gets used a lot, and we are definitely going to keep that thing open.”

Petersen said reports from last fall showed that the center served an average of 50 students a night.

To keep the center operating, Petersen said the Phillips Hall location will close one hour earlier and the Student Academic Services Building site was closed.

The loss of manual graders has led math professors to seek alternative grading methods, Mucha said.

Petersen said math instructors are now assigning online math homework for low-level calculus through WebAssign, a Web site that grades homework instantly.

He added that the program has been used since spring. Though Petersen said he has not heard any complaints about the program, it is not without opposition.

Greg Herschlag, a fourth-year math graduate student, said he worries that the changes might discourage prospective math students.

“When you solve a problem, you need written feedback,” he said.

Herschlag added that the WebAssign program is impersonal and does not provide in-depth explanations.

Petersen said he thought the online methods had advantages that textbook work didn’t offer.

“Students get instant feedback,” Petersen said, adding that students might not realize their errors with a hand-graded assignment for one to two weeks.

He also said he hopes the changes encourage students to ask more questions and to visit professors more frequently.

Contact the University editor at udesk@unc.edu.