Three Dozen Faculty Members Take Buyouts at Baldwin Wallace as Layoffs Loom This Semester

The major cuts predicted at Baldwin Wallace in November are now here. Credit: Erik Drost/FlickrCC

Last November, in the thick of a post-pandemic enrollment crisis for smaller American universities, Baldwin Wallace thought it faced a $3 million budget deficit. Further investigation revealed the number was actually $20+ million.

That financial audit, which followed some incomplete internal accounting practies, led to suspicion that BW would be soon laying off faculty and cutting courses with lower graduation rates, like those in Physics, Philosophy and the Romance languages.

“This is all part of a regular process of evaluating the efficiencies of the university,” spokesperson Dan Karp told Scene in a phone call in November. “Any healthy university is always evaluating its programs.”

Regardless of such normalcy, it seems like the bell’s tolled: 35 faculty and staff, the university confirmed for Scene on Tuesday, have taken or are in the process of taking buyouts as the prospect of layoffs loom throughout the semester. That amounts to about 7% of staff and faculty, moves necessary to cut millions from the university’s books.

What economists see as a reflection of declining birthrates during the Great Recession is laying imprint upon the accounting of major universities, from Kent State to Lakeland Community College to Notre Dame in South Euclid. (The latter shut its doors last year.) A 2018 study from Carleton College in Minnesota found that 19 states in the Midwest and Northeast will suffer a 15% drop in students from 2012 to 2029.

At BW, there’s actually been gains in enrollment this year with 2,842 total undergraduate students (3,318 total enrollment), the highest number in the last five years. And its full-time, first-year count—698 students—was the top count of all ten schools in the Ohio Athletic Conference this semester.

But for faculty who are set to leave teaching roles, taking buyouts instead of presumably incoming layoffs leaves a bitter taste.

“I mean, they’re acting like it’s business as usual,” a former faculty member who left BW this year told Scene on the condition of anonymity. “But my perspective? Parents and students, we’re all being sold something that’s not the case.”

“They’re bleeding faculty and staff,” they added.

In an interview with Scene, a BW spokesperson said that faculty taking a buyout have two payout options: leave by next May, get $5,000; leave by this December, get $10,000. Departing faculty will get severance pay that maxes out at three months.

Who exactly these 38 faculty are, and in which departments, BW’s spokesperson couldn’t or wouldn’t say. And exactly how their departure—without the need to pay salaries or benefits—impacts E&Y’s recommendations is, the spokesperson said, too early in the process to confirm.

“There is more long term to do,” they said. “Because obviously, if you have voluntary buyouts, you’re not going to have the immediate budget impact. So that’s going to be felt later down the road.”

Whatever the future state of BW’s deficit may be, a right-sizing of a good slice of its faculty base means that, in all cases, fewer teachers allotted to classes in general.

Any announcement of layoffs at the university, the anonymous source told Scene, could happen before the end of the fall semester.