Workforce Reductions at The New School
A message from Dr. Dwight A. McBride, President and University Professor
Linda E. Rappaport, Chair, Board of Trustees
To the members of The New School community,
In April, confronted with the crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Board of Trustees directed President McBride and his leadership team to engage in rethinking approaches that would enable The New School to survive and thrive in a new, more challenging environment for higher education.
We knew that realizing this ambition would not only mean a painstaking and critical review of the university, but also would require difficult decisions. The pandemic has put severe financial strain on our university, making some of these decisions starker and more immediate. We have undertaken a thorough analysis of every aspect of the institution, guided by The New School’s values of equity, inclusion and social justice, and with input and perspectives from faculty, staff and student leaders to administrative leaders and other stakeholders. We owe it to those who went before us and to future generations of students to meet today’s challenges in a way that ensures that the unique transdisciplinary lens through which we see and interact with the world remains clear and intact.
The pandemic has demonstrated that the way we have operated in the past is not fiscally sustainable and must be addressed immediately. To be clear: the pressing need for operational efficiency and structural adaptability existed before the COVID-19 pandemic and has only been intensified and accelerated by it. Total university revenues are projected to be below budget by 29% for the year, leaving a $130 million revenue shortfall. This reflects a shortfall in degree-seeking enrollment of almost 10%, with new enrollment down 15% compared to our pre-pandemic budget.
The Board of Trustees has taken significant actions to address these financial challenges, approving the extraordinary step of drawing from the university’s endowment in addition to other measures designed to improve our financial position. These measures include deferred capital expenditures as well as the development of new revenue-positive activities such as professional education programs. Unfortunately, these actions alone are not enough. Without additional permanent expense reduction, the projected deficit for the 2021 fiscal year is approximately $95 million.
We have therefore made the difficult but necessary decision to approve the elimination of approximately 13% of administrative staff positions held by 122 employees. The reductions will affect job categories across all areas and levels of The New School. The determinations about job eliminations were made by prioritizing positions that are essential to the successful operation of the university’s core teaching, learning and research missions while giving committed attention to minimizing the number of impacted employees.
Those affected will be informed on Friday. These individuals have each made important contributions to The New School and are hard-working and highly valued members of our community. We recognize that these actions create hardships for many at what is already an unusually difficult time on so many fronts, and we will do everything we can to support them and treat them with respect. We have developed a list of FAQs that can be found here.
This is a difficult time, and yet we have a shared responsibility to secure The New School’s strength for its next 100 years. Our community’s collective voice says that we want a New School that can maintain its identity as a place where students, faculty, and staff can create and realize their own potential. Making this vision a reality requires that we become academically more integrated and administratively more aligned than we are today. To that end, we will continue the conversations and listening sessions we began over the summer, and President McBride will be meeting with faculty and staff groups across the university over the coming days and weeks to hear their concerns and fears as well as their ideas and vision for the future.
We are immensely grateful for your support as we work together to protect and strengthen The New School for future generations of scholars, artists, performers and makers who will continue changing our world for the better.