University of Akron Board of Trustees Cuts 97 Professors From Faculty
“authorized the elimination of 97 full-time professors out of about 570 total in response to a projected enrollment decline and ongoing budget woes”
More of this is coming to many other schools in the near future.
Inside Higher Ed reports:
Budget ‘Bloodbath’ at University of Akron
The University of Akron’s Board of Trustees on Wednesday unanimously authorized the elimination of 97 full-time professors out of about 570 total in response to a projected enrollment decline and ongoing budget woes. Some 21 full-timers also recently resigned or retired.
The cuts will take effect starting in two weeks. The university is in the process of notifying affected professors, but their identities are not yet public. No programs cuts were made, per se — Akron already cut about 80 programs in 2018 as part of a major academic restructuring — yet some professors wonder how and if their departments will function with so many of their colleagues missing.
Pam Schulze, professor of child and family development at Akron and campus faculty union president, called Wednesday’s board meeting “depressing,” more for the university and its students than for the faculty.
“From what I’ve seen, some of these programs will be so badly hurt, I don’t know if they can continue,” she said. “I don’t view this as a union issue, I view this as a university issue.”
Cuts were made by department chairs and deans — many of them interim and acting, due to the recent reorganization — at the university’s request that they trim their programs by up to 25 percent. The union says names were selected regardless of rank or tenure status.
Throughout Wednesday’s board meeting, Akron president Gary L. Miller and trustees said they needed to pave a “sustainable” way forward, as enrollments continue to decline across Ohio for demographic reasons, and as COVID-19 rattles higher education. They expressed confidence that Akron will emerge from the pandemic stronger than before, as a result of shared “sacrifice.”
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Comments
This is only the beginning of a long, painful process for the higher ed industry.
Long overdue.
Shared sacrifice, BS, have they cut administrators pay yet? 50% would be a reasonable shared sacrifice.
And, all the BS majors need to go. I have seen too many people with BS degrees who are completely useless. Just to be clear, their degrees were bullshit.
U of Akron was in a steep decline path prior to the Wuhan flu, this is just another ingredient to the recipe fora slow death.
How many administrative cuts were made?
Those cuts are also long overdue.
Cuts were made by department chairs and deans
… who no doubt seized the opportunity to rid themselves of any conservatives or other less-than-enthusiastic leftists somehow still in the department.
(Notice that tenure was no protection.)
In Akron? Are we sure of that?
I see lawsuits on the horizon.
Let’s see how many gender/race studies profs were cut?
Diversity administrators?
The winnowing of higher ed continues. I’m not paying a lot of attention to what’s happenING now. It will be far more interesting to look back in a couple more years and see what happenED.
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“yet some professors wonder how and if their departments will function with so many of their colleagues missing”
Wonder no more. “Function” was never an operative verb in the Womyn/LGBT/Queer & Afro-stylists Studies
If they cut all white males, that might make for a civil rights discrimination case. There need to be some of those won to help roll back some of the crap.
Heh. Haven’t you heard? White Males HAVE no civil rights…..
They could get to the target number faster by illuminating administrative stuff.
This is trueness; we should be able to SEE administrative staff before firing their worthless @$$es…..
They better cut the Athletic Departments TO THE BONE before they cut one Professor’s job. It’s the time of the GREAT REBALANCING in higher education and we can start with the departments that hand out all those athletic scholarships to sometimes less than qualified applicants-merely because they can shoot hoops or score TD’s. And many of them are minority students. What goes around, comes around.