Posted on 05/07/2020 8:36:11 AM PDT by fluorescence
KALAMAZOO, MI -- More layoffs are coming for employees at Western Michigan University as leaders look to cut expenses amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The university will implement staffing reductions in phases between now and September, said Jennifer Bott, provost and vice president for academic affairs, during a budget briefing published this week on Western’s YouTube channel.
WMU could lose another $85 million in the next fiscal year because of the coronavirus pandemic, Bott said.
Further staffing cuts will be part of overall cost-cutting efforts, she said, as nearly 70% of the university’s general fund expenses go to employee compensation.
“We cannot avoid personnel reductions regardless of how personally difficult it may be," Bott said.
Like other institutions across the state, WMU has lost more than $45 million due to the crisis this year so far, President Edward Montgomery said during a WMU Board of Trustees meeting Thursday, April 23. The school could lose another $45 to $85 million next fiscal year, Montgomery said.
Last week, WMU announced it was laying off 240 employees from one of it’s unions, and implementing 2.5% wage reductions for all benefits-eligible, non-bargaining staff.
Prior to that, the university asked all non-essential employees to use leave balances rather than working during the closure. The decision was met with harsh criticism from WMU’s faculty union and others in the community.
Also taking a pay cut are the university’s senior executives, including the university president and seven vice presidents, who each took a 10% salary cut. In addition, all associate and assistant vice presidents, associate provosts and vice provosts and deans will take a 5% pay reduction, the university said.
(Excerpt) Read more at mlive.com ...
Lots of Liberals suddenly about to become very unhappy with the lockdowns...
Smart Kids graduating from High School will avoid the college rip off and due 2 years of community college work. At that point the can reassess whether a University is worth it for the final two years.
They may as well burn the whole place to the ground.
Democrats trying to destroy the economy to attack Trump are also hurting Democrats. They’re starting to wake up to the hoax.
Another Michigan campus, Eastern Michigan University, put its lavish and overblown business college building (1990) up for sale and sold it. That bldg. was named for the union and Dem pol Gary Owens who became Michigan House Speaker, and was the guy who diverted the taxpayer money to build the place. They actually thanked him for doing that. Profs and overcharged students will now crawl back to an aging building being propped up. The business degrees actually are worthwhile compared with many of the silly ones in liberal arts.
Big college problem: How can they provide value for the tuition and fees paid? Women's Studies and other degrees don't pay many bills for the underemployed graduates now at Costco and Starbucks.
I wonder if the president of the university is going to take a 10% cut to his $486,000 salary?
I knew that place was infested. ..back in the 70’s.
Every university should shut down all its academic programs that have no real life utility or application, and in the process get rid of the useless, single-class marxist professors making well north of $100,000.
No more gender studies, art history, black studies, political science, women’s studies, journalism, and all the other sit-around, bulls##t for four years nonsense.
If you’re not learning something useful, like accounting, medicine, engineering, mathematics, architecture, (some) economics, biology, you shouldn’t be in a university and they should have classes for you.
It would be more productive if universities taught welding, auto repair, plumbing, medical technology or whatever would make the student a useful citizen.
As we are learning now, like the un-maked-up, roots-showing pundits and anchors are also learning, you need a barber or hairdresser or waitress more than a PhD gender studies or journalism major.
Social Sciences have some value provided you back it up with a year of Calculus and a couple years of Statistics. The disciplines should require this and they’ll be able to weed out the “world-savers”.
agree, but those are limited to a few social studies programs
+1
There’s an old saying that goes something like.....
There’s no great loss without some small gain.
Even this pandemic has some silver linings.
These universities are microscopic views of the states run by socialist democrat dictators. The US Senate has already said they will not be bailed out.
The forced reductions in state budgets is going to happen. The states will be forced to downsize.
The longer this lockdown lasts in the dictatorship states, the deeper the hole they are digging for themselves.
I do not take pleasure in the agony of the state employees, and the suffering they are about to incur.
But, man, I cannot wait to hear the drivel and spin and pain that is going to come from the politicians that caused it....
A major collapse of Big Education has been forecast for a while. Helps to have some historical inflection point assist.
These people better sign on to a fishing boat and learn a trade.Michigan will turn red if their campuses close.
“Also taking a pay cut are the university’s senior executives, including the university president and seven vice presidents, who each took a 10% salary cut. In addition, all associate and assistant vice presidents, associate provosts and vice provosts and deans will take a 5% pay reduction, the university said.”
I have no idea how many students go there, but it seems fairly heavy with vice presidents, associate vice presidents, assistant vice presidents, etc. How many do they need? How many of these people actually work? How many of them are getting mid-6-figure salaries?
On the college tour a couple of years ago, one of the parents remarked that a construction crane was the official flower of all college campuses.
I recently found out my alma mater expanded the gym to include a climbing wall! To be competitive with other universities! This gym which students and faculty hav to pay to use was free when I went there, but “only” had universal gyms, running track, racquetball and basketball courts. How did we survive?
If they cut their inclusive department then we know they are serious.
This university and many others could meet their budgets without cutting anything useful.
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