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At Portland State University, two academic departments are being eliminated and 36 workers are being laid off as part of an effort to resolve a $35 million budget deficit within the next two years.
The cuts, recently announced by PSU President Ann Cudd, came after negotiations, campus and community feedback, and multiple revisions.
The conflict resolution and university studies departments will be eliminated, and reductions will be made to six additional departments. A handful of employees will also go from full to part-time as part of the plan.
Asked to weigh in on the development, Bruce Gilley, a professor of political science at Portland State University, told The College Fix the university “finally got run over by the speeding train known as reality.”
Gilley is an outspoken conservative professor on campus who has been targeted by his left-leaning peers for years.
The plummeting enrollment is partly due to the “George Floyd riots that destroyed the downtown, DEI madness that discouraged white students from attending, feminist rage that ousted a results-oriented university president, unaffordable union agreements, radical faculty governance, and a failure to attract donors because of its crack-pot politics,” Gilley said via email.
In response to an inquiry from The College Fix about the reasons for the budget cuts, PSU spokeswoman Katy Swordfisk shared links to a letter from the president and a news release.
Even though the university studies program is being eliminated along with its $10 million dollar budget, “funding for the Higher Education in Prison Program has been preserved and will be moved to an appropriate unit,” according to the final plan.
Reductions are being made across six other departments: the Portland Center; Educator Licensure; Leadership, Learning, and Counseling; History; Philosophy; and World Languages and Literatures, according to the news release.
“With the exception of University Studies, the selection of impacted academic departments was based on a comprehensive review of university and workplace data,” a PSU Office of the President rebuilding outline stated.
“Over the last decade, student enrollment patterns have shifted significantly,” it stated.
“In the affected departments, staffing levels have remained constant or grown while the number of students choosing those majors has declined,” the outline added. “To ensure PSU remains sustainable, we must align our departmental resources with current student demand.”
A new general education program will be implemented in fall 2028 to adjust, officials said.
“We have not identified the full $35 million,” Cudd said in the news release about the budget shortfall, suggesting more cuts are in the offing. “We’ve been given two years to do that.”
“It’s incredibly sad that we’re here,” said Bill Knight, union president for Portland State University, in an interview with KGW News.
The union had hoped campus leaders would wait to finalize the plan until next year when the state may have granted more funds for higher education, he said.
“We know that legislative leaders are ready to work on this. We’ve had the conversations that generate our confidence in that,” Knight reportedly said.
Knight did not reply to The College Fix’s requests for comment.
“No matter how far this administration’s agenda and ‘vision’ diverge from the needs of faculty, staff, and students, one thing is clear: where PSU succeeds, it will be through our effort and our commitments, not by managerial intervention,” Knight wrote in a PSU-AAUP article.
Knight proposed PSU ask the state for additional funding.
Instead, “President Cudd asked [the Higher Education Coordinating Commission] for less support than she did two years ago, and the choice was … to cut thirty-nine jobs, reducing capacity instead of working toward political solutions,” Knight wrote.
The College Fix reached out to the PSU chapter of the American Association of University Professors but received no response.
