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Portland State University announced Tuesday it will eliminate two academic departments and cut 36 full-time positions in an effort to close a looming $35 million budget deficit.
The university will eliminate its Conflict Resolution and University Studies departments and make reductions across six other departments, it said in an announcement Tuesday. The departments facing reductions are the Portland Center; Educator Licensure; Leadership, Learning and Counseling; History; Philosophy and World Languages and Literatures.
Over half of the layoffs – 20 in total – come from the elimination of University Studies, Portland State’s general education program. The elimination of the department and its budget will save the university $10.7 million.
Portland State University President Ann Cudd said the university had also considered reductions to the School of Earth, Environment and Society but was able to avoid those cuts because some faculty voluntarily retired.
“I offer my thanks to everyone who stepped up and stepped forward during this process, whether it was offering creative solutions, reconsidering their retirement plans or otherwise working toward a best possible outcome for the future of Portland State,” Cudd said.
Cudd first floated the potential elimination of academic departments in May in a provisional plan to address the university’s budget deficit.
The preliminary plan called for laying off 52 full-time faculty. But following negotiations with the university’s academic union, the American Association of University Professors, the university said it was able to save $16 million through mechanisms outside of layoffs.
Bill Knight, Portland State University English professor and AAUP chapter president, confirmed the negotiations in a July 9 news release.
“The administration has given us until July 15th to complete any retirement, cost-savings, FTE reduction, or other arrangements that would help us reduce the number of layoffs,” Knight wrote.
The university now plans to instead eliminate 36 full-time positions and reduce three positions to part-time.
Cudd said the final dates of employment for those who received layoff notices will be Dec. 15 for non-teaching staff and June 15, 2027, for instructional faculty.
Cudd said students currently seeking degrees in the Conflict Resolution department will still be able to obtain those degrees. University Studies is not a degree-issuing department.
“There is a clear path for all of the students who are currently enrolled to the degree that they chose,” Cudd said. “That is something that we are committed to and required by our accreditor, even. So we guarantee that they will be able to complete their degrees.”
In a Tuesday video call with the press, Knight said the union had attempted to work with Cudd and university administrators to find alternatives to layoffs but gained little traction.
“It’s very sad that we haven’t found in our president someone willing to fight for positive growth and transformation of the university that would increase our connection to the area, to the metro (and) to the state,” Knight said.
Knight said faculty have the right to contest layoff decisions in a retrenchment hearing with representation from the union and a personal lawyer.
“We will be making those cases very strongly, very openly. … They’re really important chances for us to make the narratives clear, to tell the truth about the situation and to offer a way forward again and again that doesn’t require us to cut our capacity,” Knight said.
The academic restructuring is part of Portland State’s coordinated two-year strategic plan for financial sustainability. According to the plan, student enrollment has dropped by 25% since 2019 and is expected to drop once again in the upcoming academic year, contributing to funding challenges that are projected to result in a $35 million deficit by 2028.
The university landed on the specific budget cuts to address the shortfall through its Article 22 process, part of its collective bargaining agreement with the union, which determines how the university and union evaluate and eliminate academic programs.
Cudd said there is still the potential over the course of the next 16 months for more layoffs until a budget for fiscal year 2028 has been finalized.
“We have not identified the full $35 million,” Cudd said. “We’ve been given two years to do that. … We are also making personnel reductions in a variety of other ways through unclassified and classified staff, adjunct faculty, graduates and some of those are also position closures that were vacant positions.”
Portland State is not the only public university facing funding challenges in the state. Several Oregon universities have reported multimillion-dollar budget deficits, including the University of Oregon and Oregon State University.
In June, Southern Oregon University approved a plan to cut $20 million in spending to ensure the university remains operationally stable through fiscal year 2029. Its plan includes eliminating three academic programs, cutting over 60 full-time positions and reorganizing departments.
The Higher Education Coordinating Commission is currently conducting a comprehensive study of the state’s post-secondary education system to develop recommendations to address financial instability and declining enrollment at Oregon universities.
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