Editorial: IUP’s job slashing is scary move
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It’s that spooky time of year when things that chill the soul wait around every corner. Vampires. Zombies. Blood and gore and skeletons. But the scariest frights are the ones you didn’t expect.
On Friday, what jumped out of the dark at 81 faculty members of Indiana University of Pennsylvania was one of the biggest boogeymen of 2020: the pink slip.
Coupled with retirements and unrenewed contracts, when the spring term ends, the university will be down 128 full-time positions.
The bloodletting was foreshadowed. The budgets versus the enrollment at most schools in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education has been a looming issue for years. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit and threw colleges and universities around the country for a loop. Costs rise while enrollment drops. Some families opt to put school off, while some students sue for not getting what they signed up to obtain.
PASSHE universities have tried to make do by teaming up, like California University of Pennsylvania is doing with its sisters in Clarion and Edinboro.
But just two weeks ago, IUP said it was making its own plan. President Michael Driscoll announced moves on Wednesday that he said would help preserve the university in the face of a one-third drop in enrollments and a $16 million budget shortfall.
The problem is that where other PASSHE schools have made plans that have tried to lean on each other to shore up offerings — and minimize employee casualties — IUP appears to have relied on assurances, and then amputation.
The results of that plan are an explosion of anger and sorrow, evidence of which can be seen in social media with the hashtag #shameonIUP. “I am so angry,” one graduate student shared. “This is devastating for staff and students,” said another.
The grief and the rage are justified. One of the victims of the IUP massacre is the school’s journalism department — an educational shop that has turned out five Pulitzer Prize winners. Earlier in the week, five departments of the College of Fine Arts were closed to new enrollment. Information systems and developmental studies are all falling under the knife.
Perhaps the most ironic is decision science. That field is the study of things like risk-benefit analysis and how to make the best use of assets to achieve an objective. The university administration might have done well to audit some of those classes.
This bloodbath is a sequel — the second major job cut at the university in two years. In July 2019, 111 non-faculty positions were trimmed.
Yes, IUP is undeniably facing a dramatic budget crunch that will require bold — and no doubt unpopular — action. Yes, many industries are dealing with cutbacks and juggling jobs amid the coronavirus pandemic. Professors aren’t exempt from that because of their education.
But IUP’s sister PASSHE schools have shown that it didn’t have to be a horror movie.