The University of Akron plans to cut 10 percent of its total staff, including nearly 100 full-time faculty members — the latest sign that the Covid-19 pandemic is set to take a severe toll on the higher-education work force.
The university’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously on Wednesday to eliminate 178 positions, including 96 unionized faculty members and 82 staff and contract professionals through layoffs. Taking into account previous layoffs and voluntary retirements, the university has eliminated about 23 percent of its unionized full-time faculty since the pandemic began. The university says the reductions in personnel have saved it $16.4 million — 5 percent of its budget for the 2020 fiscal year.
The layoffs must still be ratified by the union membership, and the matter could enter into binding arbitration, said Pamela Schulze, president of the Akron chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
The university regrettably reduced its work force in order to sustain its future.
When announcing the staffing cuts to the board, Gary L. Miller, Akron’s president, said the move was necessary because of the pandemic, state budget cuts, declining enrollment, and the need to protect the university’s financial reserves.
“Unfortunately, the considerable sacrifices already made by our employees were insufficient to design a budget that will sustain the University of Akron under the conditions that we now face,” Miller said.
“The institution’s financial challenges are just too steep to overcome without this sacrifice, and the university regrettably reduced its work force in order to sustain its future,” added Joseph M. Gingo, the board’s chairman.
Akron is the latest university to lay off faculty members after Covid-19 disrupted the spring semester and decimated university budgets across the country. Akron had previously announced plans to cut $65 million from its $325-million budget, Cleveland.com reported in June.
Wednesday’s cuts were met with harsh criticism from the faculty union, which protested outside the student union as members of the Board of Trustees arrived for the meeting.
The latest cuts will send a message to students that Akron is an institution in decline, which will have “a devastating impact on our enrollment,” said Schulze, a professor of child and family development at Akron.
“I think it’s going to hurt the university’s reputation, I think it’s going to send us into some downward spiral beyond anything we can recover,” Schulze said.
The faculty union had proposed alternatives to the cuts, including deeper cuts in athletics and compensation, furloughs, and a more incremental budget-cutting approach, Schulze said.
Now, the laid-off faculty members will be left without health insurance during a pandemic and will very likely struggle to find other jobs, Schulze said. “These are people with families that depend on them. These are community members. This is just the most irresponsible thing I’ve ever seen,” she said.
