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CUNY Adjunct Layoffs Are Already Happening Ahead Of Cuomo's Expected Budget Cuts
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Sydney Pereira
Published May 14, 2020
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By
Sydney Pereira
Published May 14, 2020
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The City University of New York is issuing internal guidance across various campuses to plan for budget cuts ahead of anticipated spending reductions totaling more than $10 billion statewide. As adjunct professors expected, they're on the chopping block first.
“I was kind of shocked at the manner in which John Jay has handled this whole thing,” said Harry Blain, a graduate student who teaches American government courses in the political science department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Blain was recently told he wouldn’t be offered courses to teach for the fall semester.
Though he's yet to receive a formal non-reappointment letter, Blain is among the estimated 437 adjuncts who could be let go by John Jay College, according to the faculty union Professional Staff Congress [PSC].
On May 8th, provost Yi Li told faculty to brace for $21 to $55 million in cuts at John Jay College alone.
To prepare for the “worst-case scenario, the college will be issuing non-reappointment letters to all one-semester adjuncts,” by the contractual deadline, May 15th, Li wrote. He added department chairs may be able to rehire adjuncts again, depending on efficiency, and cost savings.
Since then, PSC president Barbara Bowen has negotiated with CUNY administrators to extend that deadline to May 29th, union spokesperson Fran Clark confirmed. The union is demanding no member employee layoffs be made. They also called on CUNY not to challenge unemployment applications and extend health insurance programs until 2021.
“They’re not actually even waiting for [Governor Andrew] Cuomo to say, specifically, to CUNY, 'we’re coming for you,’” Blain said. “They’re really rushing to just cut the shit out of the budget, then of course they target the most vulnerable people, which, by and large, is the adjunct faculty.”
The Cuomo administration faces $13.3 billion in revenue loss and without more federal cash plans to make spending reductions of $10.1 billion, including $8.2 billion on localities. Budget spokesperson Freeman Klopott said a public health crisis and the resulting economic impacts is “not the time” to raise taxes—a solution advocates like Michael Kink of the Budget Justice Coalition have called for in lieu of austerity measures.
“You can’t tax your way out of a 14 percent revenue shortfall,” Klopott added.
“We are on semester-to-semester contracts,” said Sami Disu, an Africana Department adjunct lecturer at John Jay College and Hunter College and an organizer with the faculty activist group Rank and File Action.
Disu expects he’ll be let go at John Jay College since he already received a non-reappointment notice for his courses at Hunter College. “That’s been the experience already for us. We get called in for a course at the very last minute when another professor can’t teach. There’s very high turnover in the adjuncting because it’s not a liveable wage; it’s poverty wages.”
Disu receives $4,400 for a typical course per semester, expected to rise to $5,500 by the 2022-2023 school year, if he remains employed.
John Jay College spokesperson Richard Relkin said the pandemic "is having an unprecedented impact on all of us, and CUNY is not immune.”
Asked for comment, Klopott said the potential cuts are “exactly why the federal government needs to act swiftly to offset the steep revenue losses faced by states and provide certainty to those institutions and services that rely on state funding.”
It’s unclear how many non-reappointment letters have already been sent across both four- and two-year colleges as a part of broader cost-savings measures. CUNY has said the city has proposed cutting $31.6 million in the upcoming fiscal year. A proposed $20 million in cuts could slash the Accelerated Study in Associate Programs, a program supporting low-income students since 2007, according to Councilmember Fernando Cabrera. A CUNY budget memo distributed to the PSC in April said up to $95.3 million could be cut from the system.
Brooklyn College’s administration has already requested program directors submit plans for a 25 percent course reduction for the fall. PSC says City College is being asked to cut 25 percent of their adjunct budget, and the College of Staten Island is planning for 35 percent in adjunct reductions.
Yet as CUNY campuses prepare to layoff hundreds of adjuncts, across 20 locations, the education system has received nearly $237 million in relief funds from the CARES Act, with about half set aside for emergency financial aid for students, according to estimates the PSC gleaned from The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Each college is preparing for the worst, nearly 10 adjunct faculty told Gothamist.
An adjunct at New York City College of Technology, Emelyn Tapaoan, was also laid off after serving as an adjunct professor for the CUNY system since 2004.
The non-reappointment has “dangerous implications on my wellbeing as an adjunct,” said Tapaoan, who relies on her position teaching social sciences for her health insurance. Her notice was a single sentence, which she found disrespectful.
“I begged to him, I said, please, I beg you,” she recalled saying to her chair. “It’s immoral that they’re doing this.”
The school did not respond to a request for comment.
Queens College provost Elizabeth Field Hendrey told faculty to make plans for 10 to 12.5 percent in spending decreases.
“We are not implementing these cuts at this time, but we need to have a plan in case this becomes reality,” Hendrey wrote in a message to faculty reviewed by Gothamist, noting that $7.5 million in adjunct raises are unfunded and $3 million in tuition increases haven’t been approved. “If any of these scenarios come to pass, and regrettably that appears likely, our adjunct and part-time budget will have to be significantly reduced.”
Jane Guskin, who has taught labor studies since 2018 at Queens College and is getting a PhD in sociology, said the CUNY system is "trying to pit students against adjuncts and other faculty."
“The legislature needs to step up and they need to put a check on Cuomo’s power,” she added.
Journalism professor Michael Balter wasn't offered a reappointment from The City College of New York, one of the system’s 11 senior colleges.
Balter, who said this will have worse impacts for those who have taught at the college for years and rely on it for health insurance, said “[I]f they can’t employ all the adjuncts that they have been employing,” he said in a phone interview, “the classes will be bigger.”
“To tell our working class students that they must bear the brunt of yet another wave of cutbacks is unconscionable,” he wrote following his goodbye email in a blog post. “Can we not, for once, just take this lying down?”
City College did not immediately respond for comment.
Hunter College has also begun laying off adjuncts. One full-time professor who had been working at the college for two decades was laid off, according to Rank and File Action.
The Brooklyn College and John Jay College reductions were a “surprise” for some, said Jamila Hammami, an adjunct at Hunter College's social work school and member of Adjunct Project, a group organizing graduate student-workers and adjuncts.
“It’s frustrating that people aren’t taking into consideration that our entire lives are changing and we need to be in the loop with the communication that’s going around rather than waiting until when we get a letter next week sometime saying that we don’t have a job anymore,” they said.
Tagged
COVID-19
new york state
PSC
coronavirus
city university of new york
CUNY
Budget cuts
Sydney Pereira
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