U. of Montana Plans to Eliminate 52 Faculty Jobs as Part of Budget Cuts

The University of Montana at Missoula will eliminate 201 full-time jobs, including 52 faculty posts, because of budget concerns, The Billings Gazette reports.

The university’s president, Royce C. Engstrom, who announced the cuts on Tuesday, said the disciplines most heavily affected would be journalism, anthropology, English, geography, liberal studies, art, political science, and forestry management, among others. Of the faculty positions being cut, 25 are already vacant.

Professors responded by criticizing the university’s commitment to the liberal arts and what they described as a lack of earlier planning, with some calling for more cuts at the administrative level.

“I have concerns that we’re not approaching the problem in a way that is going to accurately reflect the problem,” Allen Szalda-Petree, a professor of psychology, told the newspaper.

Mr. Engstrom also said the university would seek to increase enrollment in health care and human development, data and computational science, and business and entrepreneurship.