Columbus State eliminating jobs to make up for enrollment, credit hour declines

Columbus State University will eliminate 28 faculty positions, approximately 9% of the school’s total, for the next academic year as part of budget cuts caused by declines in enrollment and credit hours.

CSU interim president John Fuchko III and interim provost Pat McHenry announced the news Aug. 10 in an email to colleagues.

Since then, the Ledger-Enquirer has tried to get more details and context about the budget cuts. Although the L-E didn’t receive answers to the questions sent to CSU spokesman Greg Hudgison before publication, here’s what we learned about the situation from the leadership’s email and additional information obtained by the L-E.

The positions being eliminated for the 2023-24 academic year are 22 vacant positions and six filled by current faculty members. CSU won’t publicly identify those positions, out of respect for the people affected, Fuchko and McHenry said in their email.

“They are in no way connected to a person’s performance, capabilities or credentials,” they wrote. “We know how distressing this news is to the whole CSU community and how disruptive it is for our colleagues who are impacted. We will be working with each faculty member to ensure they are aware of job vacancies here at Columbus State or at other USG (University System of Georgia) institutions, and we will support their job search efforts outside the system.”

Background about Columbus State budget cuts

The L-E reported in June that, although CSU didn’t lay off any employees for the 2022-23 academic year, the university chose to not fill 11 vacancies (eight faculty positions and three staff positions). CSU also decided to reduce expenses in categories such as maintenance, operations, travel and equipment for savings of nearly $2.1 million to balance the budget, Columbus State spokesman Michael Tullier told the L-E in an email then. As of May 31, CSU had 1,226 employees (328 faculty, 436 staff and 462 part-time) and 117 advertised job vacancies, he said.

In the fall 2021 semester, CSU’s enrollment of 7,924 students was down 5.4% from fall 2020, while the University System of Georgia’s enrollment dipped 0.2% to 340,638. Only seven of USG’s 26 institutions had a larger decrease in enrollment during that period than CSU. The highest fall semester enrollment at CSU during the past 10 years was 8,453 in 2017.

The story was similar in the spring 2022 semester. CSU’s enrollment of 7,228 was down 6.3% from spring 2021, while USG’s enrollment of 314,318 dipped 0.9%. Only nine of USG’s 26 institutions had a larger decrease in enrollment during that period than CSU.

Based on that enrollment decline, CSU projects to have a $4.77 million cut in state funding for the 2023-24 academic year out of a budget that increased from $116.4 million in 2021-22 to $116.8 million in 2022-23. And with CSU on pace to have a 3% enrollment decline in the fall 2022 semester, Fuchko told the L-E in June he was bracing faculty and staff for some tough budget choices for the next two fiscal years.

All of which means CSU is preparing for budget cuts ranging from 4% to 9%, Fuchko said then.

Columbus State Strategic Alignment Task Force

CSU’s Strategic Alignment Task Force, comprising faculty, staff and administrators, has been working this summer to meet that challenge. Task force chairwoman Stephanie da Silva, a psychology professor, told the campus community in a June 2 email, “We need to adjust our Fall 2024 budget by over $9 million to accommodate a $4.77 million loss in state allocation and a predicted $4.23 million reduction in tuition revenue.”

The task force’s goal, da Silva wrote, “is to reach a balance operating status at CSU that can be sustained over years.”

The strategic alignment is being implemented in three phases. CSU is in Phase 1 now, focusing on “balancing program resources with demand to increase efficiencies,” da Silva wrote. Phase 2 will run from fall 2022 to spring 2023 and will focus on “opportunities and costs among programs,” she wrote. Phase 3 will occur over the next 5-10 years, “as we decide shifts in institutional priorities,” she wrote.

Aug. 10 was CSU’s deadline to notify faculty members if they wouldn’t be renewed for 2023-24 as part of the Phase 1 budget cuts. Da Silva told the faculty in a July 13 email “executive decisions” amounted to eliminating 22 vacant faculty positions and issuing nonrenewal notices to seven faculty members. So in the past month, the number of nonrenewals decreased by one to the six Fuchko and McHenry announced.

That July 13 email includes a chart showing the reduction equating to 9.85% of the faculty positions and saving $3.3 million, spread over three CSU colleges: College of the Arts, College of Education and Health Professions, and the College of Letters and Sciences. That means these cuts don’t eliminate positions in the D. Abbott Turner College of Business, at least as of July 13.

CSU biology professor Brian Schwartz is the local chapter president for the American Association of University Professors and serves on the CSU Faculty Senate executive council. He was a member of the task force for Phase 1.

“This is a very difficult time financially, and it has required some very difficult decisions, including and especially six non-renewals,” Schwartz told the L-E in an email. “This is a huge disruption for the affected faculty, and the AAUP is available to our highly valued colleagues to assist with appeals and career transitions.”

Asked whether faculty position cuts will cause any programs or classes to not be offered in 2023-24, Schwartz said, “I don’t know specifically, but the goal was to retain our teaching capacity and minimize impacts on the students. No programs were terminated in Phase I.”