San Francisco State U. Firing Lecturers Due to ‘Financial Emergency’
“It’s terrible, it’s tragic that people are losing course assignments, but you can’t offer sections when there aren’t students”
What a shame. And right before Christmas. Well, that’s just how things go sometimes.
The San Francisco Standard reports:
SFSU lecturers canned amid financial emergency
An unknown number of lecturers at San Francisco State University are being let go as the college faces a “financial emergency,” The Standard has learned.
SFSU spokesperson Bobby King confirmed that the university has decided not to rehire lecturers for the spring 2025 semester in an effort to adapt to decreasing enrollment, which fell to 22,357 students this fall from 29,586 in 2018. King said he did not know how many staff members are being laid off.
“It’s terrible, it’s tragic that people are losing course assignments, but you can’t offer sections when there aren’t students,” King said. He blamed the lower enrollment in part on the 2008 financial crisis and its effects on birth rates.
Jennifer Beach, who has been a lecturer in the English department for two decades, is among the cuts. She said she’ll have to find another job to support her two disabled adult children.
“I’m 58 years old. It’s a rough moment,” she said. “I have to relaunch my career at the end of my working life.”
English chair Maricel Santos said 19 lecturers are being laid off in that department alone. King confirmed this.
“I don’t think my department will even exist in seven years,” said Sean Connelly, another English lecturer. “It’s seen as some sort of weird legacy of another time. It doesn’t slot neatly into the kind of program that employers or the market seem to be demanding.”
He estimated that thousands of staff cuts have been made this year across the California State University system. A CSU spokesperson said she could not confirm this, and “it would be speculating to say how many lecturer appointments there will be for spring.”
Lecturers dispute that a drop in enrollment is to blame. Multiple adjuncts said their classes are still full, even after the administration increased capacity, and students are struggling to get the courses they need.
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Comments
Any bets on whether they’ll be keeping their DEI staff intact? And lecturers in other racialist studies, LGBTQ studies, womyn’s studies, or other genres that don’t prepare students to be productive members of society will be largely untouched, no doubt. But the English teacher have to go.
President needs a 20% pay raise due to all the pressure on him having to make this tough decision.
There are 8 administrators in the DEI dept who are probably paid much more than a lowly lecturer. I bet firing those 8 DEI drones would save more money than firing a dozen lecturers.
https://equity.sfsu.edu/meet-the-team
Whatever they do, they mustn’t fire Bucket Manyweather. That is a divinely inspired name.
They/Them Manyweather?
I consider myself to be literate ~despite~ the English classes I’ve taken. Could someone enlighten me to the supposed purposes of these studies? Exposure to classical writers? What purpose does that serve in the greater scheme of things? Of those so exposed, what percentage actually absorb the ideas presented? How many people that you talk to actually think in terms of what they’ve read?
Anyone interested can pick up whatever book he wants and read it. An English course ought to be no more than a reading list and a “have a good time” suggestion from the teacher. No tests. No essays. No checking to see if assignments have been done. Not important.
Soft studies, English among the softest, add at most an infinitesimal advantage to civilization as we know it.
[Descending from the soap box now….]
Sounds like a DOGE like university overseer might be necessary to cut out the waste which sounds plentiful in the CA university system.
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