Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
Wright State’s board of trustees voted today in favor of a plan to eliminate up to 113 faculty positions at the university.
Wright State President Susan Edwards recommended the faculty positions be cut due to declining student enrollment that is expected to continue in future years. The Dayton Daily News first wrote Wednesday about the president’s recommendations.
“Certainly, this is a difficult decision for the university, and I assure everyone it is a decision we have not made lightly,” Edwards said. “We have for quite some time focused on alternatives to these changes, including two separate rounds of retirement incentives, a reduced reliance on adjunct faculty and an effort to reduce by attrition. Unfortunately, those efforts have not sufficiently reduced the size of our excess faculty workforce. The continuing enrollment declines require us to act further.”
The university currently has a projected $7 million budget surplus in fiscal year 2021, but trustees said that budget surplus had nothing to do with the board’s decision to cut faculty positions. Wright State has said it’s cutting faculty to align with projected student enrollment declines following several years of decreases.
First-year undergraduate student enrollment has declined by 53% since 2015, according to the university. Reduced enrollment continued this spring, the university says.
In November, university administration triggered articles in the existing Collective Bargaining Agreement between the union that represents Wright State faculty, the AAUP-WSU, and Wright State University, to begin the process of retrenchment.
