Western Illinois University plans to cut 57 faculty positions — 40 of which are tenured or tenure track — and 32 staff positions. Faculty layoffs are part of an effort to become more fiscally sustainable, the institution said Friday.

The public university will also move 16 positions from its Quad Cities campus to its main Macomb campus in 2025 as the university streamlines operations and adjusts its offerings at Quad Cities to focus on select areas.

Those moves follow earlier budget initiatives by the university that included a hiring freeze, reducing student aid, elimination of 100 vacant positions, the nonrenewal of 35 faculty contracts and departmental consolidation.

Western Illinois joins an ever-growing list of institutions that are downsizing their operations and resorting to faculty layoffs to manage financial pressures.

“In order to address financial stability, we must recognize that our institution, like so many others across the country, must be the right size and the right shape to serve this number of students,” Western Illinois Interim President Kristi Mindrup said in the release.

As Mindrup alluded, the university has faced steep enrollment drops in recent years. Between 2017 and 2022, fall headcount fell 19% to 7,643 students. And that figure is down by 39.3% from 2010 levels, per federal data.

Read the full article about faculty layoffs by Ben Unglesbee at Higher Ed Dive.