Duquesne University Cutting Faculty to Cut Costs Amid Pandemic

Duquesne University Cutting Faculty to Cut Costs Amid Pandemic

The longer campuses are closed, the harder this is going to get for many colleges and universities.

Triblive reports:

Duquesne University cutting faculty to reduce costs

Duquesne University is moving forward with faculty cuts, informing some non-tenured instructors this week that their contracts would not be renewed.

The university had announced measures to reduce faculty as early as Dec. 4, according to an email shared with the Tribune-Review.

“As a first step, Duquesne has offered a comprehensive voluntary retirement incentive program to long-serving faculty,” the email reads. “As a second step, the university will not renew a subset of contracts of full-time, non-tenure track faculty and a few others who do not have tenure.”

The email, signed by Executive Vice President and Provost David J. Dausey and Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Matthew J. Frist, states these measures would reduce faculty by less than 5%.

Gabriel Welsch, Duquesne’s vice president of marketing and communication, said retirements and non-renewals of contracts occur every year, and this year’s faculty reduction will affect “a very small number of faculty who do not yet have tenure, in areas of limited demand.”

“With the financial realities created by the covid-19 pandemic, this year the university provided a broader voluntary retirement incentive than we have offered in the past, and chose to replace fewer positions than we typically have done, thus minimizing the number of contracts we did not renew,” Welsch said. “These moves are a continuation of our typical practices.”

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