Hundreds of faculty at Pennsylvania’s state universities are facing the possibility that when spring graduation rolls around for the Class of 2021, they could be out of a job.
Notices went out to faculty union leaders at 10 of the 14 universities warning that faculty job cuts could be coming next spring for financial reasons. The State System of Higher Education wants to achieve $250 million in savings and efficiencies within the next two years to align its costs with revenues.
The 10 universities that issued these so-called retrenchment letters warning of the potential for furloughs are: Bloomsburg, California, Cheyney, Clarion, Edinboro Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Mansfield, and Millersville. Similar letters were not issued by the Aug. 1 deadline at the other four system universities – Shippensburg, East Stroudsburg, West Chester and Slippery Rock.
The state system has been struggling with financial challenges and declining enrollment for years. The coronavirus pandemic has added to the system’s fiscal difficulties.
Having the contractually obligated retrenchment notices go out mid-summer is intended to allow time for discussions to take place between management and the union to try to avoid layoffs, said Jamie Martin, president of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties that represents 5,000 faculty members.
Letters to individual faculty members whose positions are being cut at the end of the academic year are to be sent be on or before Oct. 30. Deadlines for notifying non-tenured, probationary and adjunct faculty that their jobs are being axed fall later in the academic year.
The potential for layoffs comes as little surprise given system Chancellor Dan Greenstein’s directive issued in April that requires the universities to raise their student-faculty ratios to 2010-11 levels in two years instead of the five years as was initially announced.
“That will be essential to mitigating the impacts we were seeing before the pandemic occurred and then exacerbated by the pandemic,” Greenstein told the system’s governing board at an April meeting. No board member voiced opposition.
The decision to close campuses and switch to remote instruction created a $52 million hole in the system’s budget even after federal CARES dollars are deducted, he said. In light of that, he said he met with university leaders who agreed to move up the timeline in their institution’s sustainability plans. Updated versions of those sustainability plans that may shed more light on the scope of potential layoffs are due in a couple of weeks.
Jamie Martin, president of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties, said by raising the student-faculty ratio in two years time, "the universities would look just very different than they do now,” Photo provided by Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties
Why 2010-11 staffing level?
The 37-year-old system achieved its peak enrollment in 2010-11 with 119,513 students. Last year, enrollment fell to below 96,000 students. It is expected to drop even more this year due to a decline in the number of high school graduates and the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact.
Taking student-faculty ratios back to 2010-11 levels, according to the union’s data, will mean taking last year’s systemwide average of 17.94 students per faculty member up to 21.07 students per faculty member.
The number of faculty positions that would have to be cut at each university to achieve that higher ratio were not readily available from the state system, but sources familiar with the numbers put that figure in the hundreds.
“The universities would look just very different than they do now,” said Martin. “You’re talking about losing important programs at various universities and increasing greatly class sizes.”
Lock Haven University English professor Steve Hicks, who was the faculty union president in 2010-11, recalls class size being the top issue of concern to faculty when polled in the summer of 2010 and wanted it addressed in the next labor agreement.
He said at Lock Haven, they put freshman in classes in 100- to 120-seat auditoriums.
“One of the big concerns we had was putting freshmen in too many of these 100-person classes,” Hicks said. “You don’t have the same face to face. You don’t learn their names the same way. You don’t have the same connection in an auditorium that you do in a 25-person class. Nobody was prepared in 2010-11 for that many students and to go back to thinking that was the glory days seems to me to be a pretty big mistake.”
Martin, who taught criminal justice and criminology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania prior to taking her union leadership role, said she recalls teaching a class of 125 students that year. She said it became impossible to get to know students who would turn to her to ask for letters of recommendation to get into law school or graduate school or to provide information for agencies doing employment background checks for students.
“It was no panacea,” she said.
‘Challenging the status quo'
According to the system, actions like this need to be taken to get its universities on a financially sustainable course.
Labor costs eat up the lion’s share of university budgets. Universities are turning to their reserves to get their budgets to balance. The combined reserves of the universities dropped 15% in four years, from $851 million in 2015-16 to $724 million last year, as a result, according to system data.
Beyond that, Greenstein told the system’s board in April “our student outcomes were better in 2010-11 than they are today.”
The percentage of freshmen who returned for a second year was 78% in 2011, compared to 76.1% in 2018, according to system data. Additionally, graduates’ debt load in 2011 was $26,000; it rose to $35,000 in 2018.
“Students now and tomorrow depend on both a quality education at a state system university as well as an affordable one,” said system spokesman Dave Pidgeon. “We’re challenging the status quo, holding ourselves accountable, and striving to adapt to the higher education landscape as it is, not how we wish it to be, because students and the communities where our universities have existed for more than a century are depending on us.”
But shortening the timeframe for cutting faculty positions to balance budgets is unrealistic, particularly now in the middle of a pandemic, said Martin, the faculty union president.
“That part doesn’t make sense,” she said. “When you have a pandemic and students are maybe taking a gap year and say we have to hit those ratios by next fall, it’s not reasonable.”
It’s unfair to students, especially first-generation students who adjust to college better when they are in smaller classes and to graduate students who expect there to be fewer students in a class, Martin said.
According to the union, this increase will push the average student-faculty ratios at system universities even higher than other nearby public institutions.
Using 2018 averages, the union’s data indicated the State System had 17.43 students per faculty member while at Penn State, it was 12:1; Pitt, 14:1; Temple, 14:1; Lincoln, 15:1; and the State University of New York system, 15.68:1.
Martin said faculty are willing to work with the system to get to financial sustainability at the 10 universities in other ways than cutting so many faculty positions in a short time span.
“We can find some common ground and a way to move forward and increase our enrollments and have ourselves well positioned when we get through this pandemic,” she said. “At that point, we may have a lot of people who are interested in coming back for different kinds of degrees and certificates. If you have a demoralized faculty on a given campus, having them motivated and excited about coming up with ideas about how we might grow enrollment, it’s not going to happen when you are feeling completely demoralized.”
Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.
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