Here's an article I wrote about the growing wave of firings of tenured professors that has become a national scandal due to budget cuts at universities around the country. These firings are undermining our educational system, and may result in even more students not going to these schools, resulting in more budget cuts and firings.
The University Wave of Firings: A National Scandal
by Gini Graham Scott, Ph.D., J.D.
Author of Scammed: Learn from the Biggest Consumer and Money Frauds and How Not to Be a Victim and Preventing Credit Card Fraud: A Complete Guide for Everyone from Merchants to Consumers
It's a national shame that's happening at universities all over the United States. The schools are using budget cutbacks to slash programs and get rid of tenured faculty with long-term contracts that provide for only firing for cause. They are also doing this without much input, if any, from academic committees composed of university professors, thereby cutting professors out of the usual opportunity to discuss the issue and suggest other alternatives. Then, with more and more tenured faculty members offered early retirement packages or arbitrarily terminated, the schools are bringing in non-tenured adjunct part-time professors at a fraction of the salary of a tenured professor.
A major casualty of this approach is the decline in the reputation of the school, a lowered morale for both professors and students, and declining applications and attendance by students. The horrific student debt crisis is making many prospective students reassess the benefits of a university education. Especially hard hit are the humanities and social science departments, which provide students with a liberal arts education so they better understand the world, while business and high tech departments are better able to withstand the ravages, according to a university professor.
So, why can't these schools take steps to reverse their budget declines? Why haven't these administrators invested university funds in high growth sectors to be able to maintain their budgets and save their departments and tenured professors from this pillage that has hit higher education? Although the problem resides in poor management, an irony of this situation is that the cuts are coming in academics rather than in the salary and ranks of administrators. No wonder university faculty members across the U.S. are becoming more and more furious.
For example, an Inside Higher Ed article in September 2017 describes how "faculty anger is growing at Stony Brook University, where cuts designed to reduce a budget deficit are concentrated in the humanities." (Colleen Flaherty, "Losing Tenure Bids to a Budget," Inside Higher Ed, September 21, 2017) In a Wall Street Journal article in February 2017, Paul Caron describes how the status of tenured professors, who once held "some of the most prestigious and secure jobs in the U.S." are finding that "their status is under attack at public and private college alike." (Paul Caron: "WSJ: Universities, Facing Budget Cuts, Target Tenure," TaxProf Blog, February 15, 2017) Indeed, trying to resolve current budgetary problems in several states, such as Missouri, North Dakota, and Iowa, legislators have already introduced bills to eliminate tenure and associated protections. University administrators are also trying to reduce the ranks of tenured professors by making them resign or retire "voluntarily" or by making it easier to fire them. And many small private colleges, such as the College of Saint Rosa in New York and Wartburg College in Iowa have offered buyouts to get rid of longtime faculty, while many other schools are reaching the same aim by simply eliminating selected academic professor positions. Meanwhile, the professors who have managed to hold onto their jobs have their workload increased with no proportional compensation in either salary, respect, or job security.
Even more recently, the plan to phase out two dozen programs blindsided faculty members at the University of Wisconsin at Superior. Among those programs scheduled for the ax were majors in political science, sociology, and theater. This change was justified by the university administration as an honorable attempt to streamline the school's academic offerings and relieve students from the burden of selecting between too many choices of courses. But the move occurred without any discussion with the school's faculty members or even notification to many professors directly affected by the cuts, so faculty members became demoralized and upset they weren't given the opportunity to work with administrators to find pragmatic solutions to the school's budget struggles. (Katharine Mangan, "Plan to Phase Out 2 Dozen Programs Stuns Faculty at Wisconsin -Superior, ' The Chronicle of Higher Education," November 1, 2017)
Now professors at several campuses of the University of Arkansas (UA) system are also up in arms because of a new tenure policy the system's administration is trying to impose on its faculty. How did this sorry state of affairs come to be? A future article will outline the steps by which an entire state university system, losing its financial battle, turned to seeking to balance the budget by pushing out tenured faculty and cutting the salaries of faculty members deemed to be "unproductive". It is a story crying to be told.
What will happen? Will the bottom-line thinking of university administrations win out, even though this undermines the integrity of the university in achieving its core mission? Or will the efforts of some of the faculty right the ship before it sinks into mediocrity and increasingly risks losing more students and funds? The future of academic freedom and excellence hangs in the balance.
Stay tuned to what happens next in this struggle, which provides a close-in example of what is happening at many other universities that are similarly facing budget cuts and have an administration committed to running the school like a business, even at the loss of its soul. At many institutions, the stakes are even higher, because tuition will increase. As a result, daunted by the student loan crisis leaving many with high loans they find difficult to repay on leaving school, fewer students will apply. This crisis can have deep long-term impacts, making the U.S. less competitive, due to the loss of many excellent students being unable to obtain a higher education.
Our institutions of higher learning, long considered the best in the world, are suffering financial crises, the solutions to which may erode their core mission. These institutional "fixes" do not seem like ways designed to Make America Great AgainTM.
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Gini Graham Scott, Ph.D., J.D., is a writer and journalist, whose specialties include writing about social issues and consumer and business frauds. Her books in this area include: Scammed: Learn from the Biggest Consumer and Money Frauds and How Not to Be a Victim; Preventing Credit Card Fraud: A Complete Guide for Everyone from Merchants to Consumers; and Lies and Liars: How and Why Sociopaths Lie and How You Can Detect and Deal with Them. She has published over 200 books, over 50 of them with major publishers, including Random House and Simon and Shuster. She is also a frequent contributor to a variety of media outlets, including the Huffington Post. Her websites include www.changemakerspublishingandwriting.com and www.ginigrahmscott.com.