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Dozens of Layoffs at University Given ‘Lifetime Censorship Award’ as Enrollment Plunges

posted by janrinok on Wednesday June 13 2018, @08:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the should-have-seen-it-coming dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Earlier this year DePaul University was given the first-ever "Lifetime Censorship Award" by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education for its long, inglorious history of punishing and suppressing mostly conservative speech.

The nation's largest Catholic university – which doesn't want students to hear about radical Islam's threat to gay people, vandalism against pro-lifers or criticism of race preferences – has appeared with regularity on FIRE's annual list of the worst colleges for free speech.

[...] DePaul is slashing dozens of staff positions to "place the university in a better long-term position to invest in strategic growth," according to a statement to staff Thursday obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

The 62 full- and part-time staff members are mostly in administrative support roles, and they represent 3.5 percent of non-faculty workers. The statement didn't specify exact positions. The school avoided the ire of its faculty by sparing them any layoffs.

Source: https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/45753/

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 13 2018, @10:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 13 2018, @10:13PM (#692572)

    Was anything of value really lost?

    I'm pretty sure the people who lost their jobs would answer "yes".

    If you look at the distribution of jobs within universities over the last few decades, you'll see that 30% of the current "jobs" are administrative nonsense that nobody had a need for in the past.

    I doubt any of these "administrative support" employees were responsible for their jobs being created.

    With the advent of many more reporting requirements, as well as administrators (supposedly) being more accountable, some increase in staffing is unavoidable. Plus, the more technology used by an organization the more support staff they employ (most of which have been added "over the last few decades").

    If they really want to cut the fat, and maybe return higher education to the "exposure to all sorts of new ideas, opinions and experiences" encounter that it used to be, I say start by culling from the top.