Dive Transient:
- Southern Oregon College will remove 10 bachelor’s levels, 12 minors and one graduate program within the face of long-term structural finances deficits after a vote by the establishment’s board.
- The general public college may also lay off 18 workers and minimize roughly three dozen different jobs by means of retirements, the elimination of vacant positions and different strategies. SOU will shift 17 jobs off its payroll by funding them by means of various sources, such because the SOU Basis, a nonprofit affiliated with the college.
- The cuts are meant to stabilize SOU following years “marked by unprecedented fiscal crises,” in response to the plan accredited by trustees final week in a 7-2 vote.
Dive Perception:
SOU has confronted a quartet of issues plaguing different increased training establishments — declining enrollment, flat state funding, rising prices and a shifting federal coverage panorama.
The college’s full-time equal enrollment fell nearly 22% from 4,108 college students in 2015 to three,209 in 2024, in response to state knowledge.
“It is usually extremely doubtless that the federal authorities’s intent to dismantle help programs for low-income college students additionally can have a devastating influence,” the plan famous.
Earlier this 12 months, the Trump administration sought to scale back funding to sure need-based pupil assist applications and remove others altogether, such because the Federal Supplemental Instructional Alternative Grant program. Since then, each chambers of Congress have rejected a few of these overtures in their very own finances proposals for fiscal 12 months 2026, although Home lawmakers likewise pitched eliminating FSEOG.
On the state stage, Oregon’s fiscal 2025-27 finances raised funding for its public universities barely. However SOU argued that the bump fails to cowl growing prices outdoors of its management, corresponding to retirement and medical advantages.
In June, SOU’s board of trustees directed the college to seek out $5 million in financial savings by the tip of fiscal 2026.
In response, College President Rick Bailey deliberate extra important cuts to set SOU up for longer-term stability. He declared monetary exigency at the start of August, paving the way in which for a dramatic restructuring on the establishment.
The plan pitched to SOU’s board Friday will minimize greater than $10 million from the college’s annual instructional and common finances over the subsequent 4 years, bringing it right down to roughly $60 million complete.
Academically, the proposal will sundown “low-enrolled or much less regionally related applications” to focus on “what SOU does finest for almost all of scholars,” it stated.
Following the discount, the college will supply a complete of 30 majors and 19 minors meant to steer college students towards interdisciplinary applications “aligned with regional workforce calls for.”
“SOU is now not a complete college,” the plan stated. “We can not proceed to supply all of the applications and helps as we have now prior to now.”
Bachelor’s levels slated for elimination embody worldwide research, chemistry, Spanish and a number of arithmetic applications. It would additionally minimize a graduate management diploma targeted on outside expeditions.
Some applications initially thought of for elimination — corresponding to inventive writing and economics — will go on with restructured curricula and face extra assessment in coming years.
The plan may also restructure SOU’s honors school and remove direct funding for its annual creativity convention.
Throughout Friday’s assembly, board member Debra Price Jing Lee supported the cuts, arguing SOU‘s power shifting ahead might be based mostly on its potential “to be lean and agile and entrepreneurial.”
Board member Elizabeth Shelby equally voted for the proposal.
“It is incumbent upon us to plan as we should for the subsequent a number of years, even when that requires extra cuts,” she stated.
However Hala Schepmann, a board member and chair of SOU’s chemistry and physics division, opposed the plan, calling it “the nuclear possibility.”
“Do we have to make fast cuts? Sure,” she stated. “However taking away key foundational parts of our establishment will make it more durable for us to make progress.”
Schepmann additionally took problem with deciding on the plan amid “important fluctuations” within the college’s projected finances.
This summer season, SOU lowered projections for its anticipated income by $1.9 million after an inner evaluation discovered “a multi-decade problem” of double-counting some on-line training tuition income.
The workforce discount comes simply two years after SOU eradicated almost 82 full-time positions by means of a mix of layoffs, unfilled vacancies, voluntary reductions and retirements.
That wave of cuts left the remaining workers “feeling as if they have been requested to do extra with much less,” in response to the proposal. It argued that the brand new spherical of cuts will tackle this problem by paring down applications in tandem with shrinking the workforce.
