The Next Bulwark Against Faculty Cuts: GoFundMe?

A restructuring plan being rolled out at the University of St. Thomas, in Houston, will eliminate 30 faculty jobs — including those of two tenured faculty members — in pursuit of balancing the books.

Faculty members and students are questioning the financial necessity of those cuts. Instead of preserving its existing academic mission, they say, the small Roman Catholic institution has spent money on everything from a new satellite campus and athletics expansion to an augmented-reality Nativity scene for the holidays. St. Thomas enrolls roughly 3,000 students and employs about 150 full-time faculty members.

The restructuring — and the ire it has drawn — is hardly unusual. What might surprise veterans of academe is one method being used to protest the changes: a GoFundMe campaign.

Bearing the title “Save the Humanities at UST” and a $15,000 fund-raising goal, the page asks for “help to fund a legal defense for these professors to ensure that they can go up against the unlimited institutional resources of St. Thomas.” (A university spokesman noted in an email that of the faculty members whose contracts are not being renewed, “only a very small percentage were from the humanities, and no programs in the liberal arts or humanities were discontinued.”)

Jennifer Guevara decided to start the GoFundMe effort after hearing from a friend that one of her former professors’ jobs could be at risk. Guevara has earned several degrees from the University of St. Thomas, including a bachelor’s in 2014 and dual master’s degrees in 2017. She is working on another master’s degree at the university.

A previous restructuring effort at St. Thomas, in 2017, also prompted a GoFundMe campaign, led by a professor of philosophy. That campaign brought in nearly $12,000 in donations, and the faculty at the time “used various means including legal counsel to regain our status and contracts as tenured professors at the University of St. Thomas,” according to an update on the GoFundMe page.

The “Save the Humanities at UST” fund raiser was created on November 21 and has raised $1,200 of its $15,000 goal. Students have for years turned to crowdfunding to help with tuition and study-abroad costs, but campaigns like those at St. Thomas may indicate a trend toward crowdfunding higher education at a systemic, rather than individual, level.

“It’s not that surprising that this has crept into faculty-activism initiatives in order to maintain what they consider to be the academic integrity of an institution,” said Lynn C. Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

The public nature of crowdfunding campaigns, Pasquerella said, can make them very effective in academe, “especially if they appeal to the mission and purpose of an institution that is grounded in racial and social justice, or issues of equity and fairness. That kind of message will resonate with those alumni or supporters or members of the community.”

But, Pasquerella cautioned, creating a public campaign cuts both ways. “At the same time, it can have a reputational risk in airing the dirty laundry of the college or university, or showcasing the challenges for an institution that is most likely tuition dependent,” Pasquerella said. “That reputational risk can take a toll in the long run and undermine the very goals that they are seeking to achieve.”

While those costs must be weighed, the crowdfunding phenomenon is bound to continue, said Peter F. Lake, director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University’s law school.

“Given the realities of what we’re facing with downsizing higher ed over the next couple of years, I think we’re going to see an increase in pressure to try to save teachers, programs, even entire institutions,” Lake said.

Guevara said the GoFundMe campaign was something “I felt like I needed to do.” Students and faculty members feel “a little defeatist” about the changes, she said, and some told her that starting the crowdsourced project wouldn’t make any difference.

“I was a little deflated going into it, feeling a little melancholy and demoralized because I couldn’t believe my university was doing this,” Guevara said. “But I just feel like it should not go unchallenged.”

Faculty Concerns

Faculty members, too, are raising concerns about the restructuring process and whether those of them with tenure can be legally terminated. Randall B. Smith, chair of the theology department at St. Thomas, will not be directly affected by the restructuring but is among those who are worried.

“It’s been understood that faculty members with tenure can’t be fired except under financial exigency. Obviously, if the institution is near bankruptcy, then you can let go tenured faculty members if you have to,” Smith said. “In other words, the question we face now is, to what extent do you have to demonstrate financial exigency, and what does that mean?”

Asked whether the University of St. Thomas had any plans to declare financial exigency, Richard L. Ludwick, the president, was unequivocal.

“Oh, heavens, no. Not even not even close to that,” Ludwick told The Chronicle. Faculty contracts stipulate that tenured positions could be eliminated by the university’s Board of Directors, he said, in the case of a restructuring or reorganization.

“Clearly, this university is engaged in a significant restructuring, and when the faculty members were hired, that was part of the policies and processes they agreed to,” Ludwick said.

Smith, though, said tenured faculty members’ contracts were changed to the policy Ludwick described only last year, without most faculty members’ permission.

“If you ask ANY incoming or current faculty whether it has been made clear to them that they could be terminated once they have tenure without a public declaration of financial exigency, they would say ‘no,’” Smith wrote in an email to The Chronicle. “I have no recollection of any paragraph stating that tenured professors could be terminated if their department failed to retain a sufficient number of majors or if the ‘net cost’ of their department dipped too low.”

But the contract policies, Ludwick said, render the purpose of the GoFundMe page — to raise a legal defense for terminated faculty members — moot. “People contributing to a legal defense fund when there is, I think, arguably no cause of action is an interesting process,” he said. “It looks to me like whoever set that up doesn’t really understand what’s going on, because the humanities at the University of St. Thomas are stronger than ever.”

Athletics on the Rise

In addition to the two tenured faculty members, five tenure-track, seven non-tenure-track, and four part-time faculty members will be jobless when their current contracts end, on May 30. A dozen more faculty members are retiring — voluntarily, Ludwick said, to ease the university’s financial burden. “It shows me that our faculty are serious about supporting the university and the vision going forward,” he said.

The positions to be eliminated, Ludwick said, were determined by student demand, faculty seniority, and a new baseline the university is adopting of a 60-percent-to-40-percent ratio of full-time to part-time faculty members.

Most professors and instructors whose contracts are not being renewed were notified at the end of October, said a university spokesman, and Ludwick said St. Thomas had worked with a “significantly known outsourcing firm” to help them land new jobs. He also expects that the remaining faculty members will bear increased teaching loads.

Ramon Fernandez, an assistant professor of accounting who teaches nonprofit accounting, said he regularly reviews St. Thomas’s financial documentation and is alarmed by increasing tuition-discount rates and the university’s recent emphasis on sports. Data from the U.S. Department of Education show that the university’s athletics expenses rose 378 percent, from $320,300 to $1,532,386, from 2007 to 2017.

St. Thomas joined Division III of the National Collegiate Athletic Association in February, having previously belonged to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. The move required the university to field additional sports teams, but Ludwick said cost-analysis data show a net gain for academics with the addition of those teams.

And he said both the increased athletics presence and the academic restructuring reflected desires expressed by the community. “The restructuring of the academic portion of the university really comes through the fine work of our faculty,” Ludwick said. “It was set up to be that way,” with input solicited through a faculty committee, open forums, and surveys, he said.

But Fernandez disputed that notion.

“They are trying to create a narrative that this is being initiated, or this is being led, by faculty,” Fernandez said. “They do these perfunctory things like send out emails about wanting faculty input, but do they really want faculty input?”

Guevara said that as a student at St. Thomas since 2007, when she started her undergraduate degree, she has yet to see such a survey. “It’s kind of a joke. I’m always saying, ‘And where are these infamous surveys?’”

Megan Zahneis is a reporting fellow for The Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter at @meganzahneis, or email her at megan.zahneis@chronicle.com.