Several of the nation's most prominent liberal arts colleges are facing unprecedented financial ... [+]
Midway through the fall semester, the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage American colleges and universities, with new rounds of budget cuts, program terminations, furloughs and layoffs taking place at institutions across the country. Estimates are now that the national higher education workforce has decreased by at least 7% since the outbreak of Covid-19 in the country. Especially hard hit in the past two months have been private liberal arts colleges, including some of the nation’s premier small colleges.
Having already reduced their budgets by slashing maintenance costs, travel expenses, and technology purchases, small colleges feeling the pinch have few places left to turn except to trim their workforces. Those cutbacks have been substantial, and many signs point to a future where still more personnel cuts will be required.
Near the end of August, Scripps College imposed partial furloughs on 59 employees from its dining and custodial departments, reducing their hours to 20 per week though December 20. The college, a liberal arts women's school that’s part of the Claremont Colleges consortium, was attempting to cope with decreased revenue and unanticipated costs that were approaching $20 million.
In September, after deciding to pivot to an all-remote fall semester with very few students in residence, Smith College announced it would furlough 230 employees. Altogether, 48 employees were placed on partial furloughs and 182 went on full furlough. Some employees are being furloughed for this full period, while others are furloughed for just a portion of it.
Also in September, Pomona College, another member of the Claremont consortium, revealed plans to temporarily furlough 264 non-faculty staff as part of its pandemic-related cost cutting. Pomona is facing a budget gap of more than $37 million, 21% of its overall unrestricted budget. Almost immediately, 85 faculty members sent a letter to the administration demanding the furloughs be called off, but the administration has stayed the course with its furlough plan.
“The duration and magnitude of this pandemic crisis has now forced a step the College had sought to avoid,” said Pomona College President Gabrielle Starr.
Last week, Dartmouth College laid off or cut back the hours of seven employees in its campus services division. Those cuts come on the heels of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth terminating 18 workers. Overall, Dartmouth is projecting an $83 million deficit for fiscal year 2021.
This week, Doane University (Nebraska) President Jacque Carter recommended the termination of more than a dozen academic programs, as the school struggled to cope with the financial strain caused by the pandemic. On the chopping block were majors such as criminal justice, political science, philosophy, religious studies, film and media production, German, International Studies, health and society. The Doane Honors program was also slated to be ended.
“Recommendations to stop providing these programs come only after a thorough review of nearly 100 program reports completed by faculty, placed into quintiles by task forces, and assessed by a review panel,” the university said.
A similar situation was shaping up at Illinois Wesleyan University where several programs in the humanities - including French and Italian, religion, anthropology, American cultural studies - along with three other academic departments were being targeted for elimination in the 2021-22 academic year. In addition to the program cuts, nine tenured faculty members at the university were affected: two faculty transferred to other departments, while others took early retirements or negotiated departure dates over the next couple of years.
The process to eliminate these programs began before the pandemic and was driven largely by the shifts in student enrollments away from the humanities and toward more career-oriented fields that’s being seen not only at Illinois Wesleyan but at most colleges. Nonetheless, the continuing strain of the pandemic on the university’s budget contributed to a fiscal environment that helped ensure the demise of the programs.
On Tuesday of this week, a faculty senate group at the University of Evansville voted no confidence in President Christopher Pietruszkiewicz. The motion was approved 13-2. It will now advance to the full faculty for a vote. Results are expected within the next few days.
The vote is the latest move from professors who have clamored for more voice in university governance as the school conducts a program review that is likely to result in job cuts. Faculty are expecting that $2 million to $3 million in budget cuts will be made, which they estimate will lead to the loss of 20 to 25 jobs.
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Small, private colleges must grapple with several factors that make the financial consequences of the pandemic especially severe for them. We are watching new examples of those difficulties unfold almost every week.
- First, with the exception of those schools with large endowments, small residential colleges have fewer sources of revenue than larger schools. Consequently they depend to a greater extent on tuition and room and board fees, both of which have been plunging this semester.
- Second, early indicators are that private colleges are suffering larger enrollment dips than public universities. Undergraduate numbers at private, nonprofit four-year institutions have declined 3.8% this semester, compared to public four-year institutions with a slight decrease of 0.4%.
- And finally, small colleges continue to try to cope with students’ flight from the humanities, requiring them to reevaluate and possibly retool the very curricula that historically have been their calling card and that have been the main province of their senior faculty.
