How to communicate college's financial problems to faculty candidates? I'm a faculty member at a small liberal arts college with significant financial problems, which make the long-term viability of the college questionable. In addition to faculty pushed out, junior and senior faculty have been leaving for other institutions. 

My department gained approval to do a tenure-track search. I am wondering how and when to communicate the situation to candidates. The normal sequence for a search is:


Solicit applications.
Interview the stronger applicants at the big annual meeting in our field.
Invite the best matching 3-4 candidates for an on-campus interview.


Our reasons for wanting to let candidates know about the problems are:


It's the right thing to do. 
We don't want them to reject us after we've used up a campus visit on them. 
We don't want one to leave a year or two after accepting the job because they did not understand the extent of the college's problems.


When should we let candidates know about the problems and how explicit should we be? For example, we could point them to news articles, put them in touch with junior faculty not involved in the search, etc.
As a member of the search committee, and as a department in general, you want to aid the department in getting the best candidate possible. Misleading the candidate and losing them after the campus visit, or even after a few years, hurts the department. Doing the right thing may have long term benefits but might cause short term problems.

I would pass this off to a higher up. If you are not on the search, ask them how they are dealing with it. If you are on the search committee ask the chair of the search and/or the chair of the department. Once you get to the university level, they should be able to produce some numbers that presents the university in the best light. While this seems like it is deceiving, what you basically want to do is convince the candidate that whatever they have heard in the news, there is still a good reason to think the university will pull through the difficulties.