Rumblings at the U of A

So, I've been avoided posting about the troubles faced by the University of Arizona. Already coming into this semester, we knew our particular college (Social and Behavioral Sciences) was going to a $5 or $6 million dollar shortfall . . . and then coronavirus hit.

 Given that the U of A receives about half of its tuition dollars from out-of-state and international students, whose enrollments are predicted to decline precipitously for Fall 2020 the university is obviously in dire financial straits. To address this situation, upper admin is 
  • (A) introducing mandatory furloughs on all employees of at least 10%. Since teachers are not allowed to let the quality of their teaching suffer, faculty whose jobs consist entirely of teaching (like us lecturers) are basically being given "pay cuts", a phrase admin is apparently reluctant to use.
  • (B) A hiring freeze, and offering admission to fewer potential graduate students.
  • (C) Increased course caps for Writing Program courses . .. from 19 to ??. We still don't know. I've been hearing dark rumors that we should consider course caps of 25 students max a win.
  • (D) outright layoffs. In theory, furloughing faculty is supposed to prevent layoffs, but not this time.
So, obviously, our Writing Program will be heavily impacted. In our worse case scenario (drastically lowered enrollments, course caps raised ultra high), 40 out of 54 lecturers, including yours truly, could have their contracts non-renewed. Yes, that's right -- our Writing Program could be decimated, even though we won an award from CCCC less than three years ago.

Obviously, it's a time of high stress for us all. I'll keep everyone posted.

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