MSU-Mankato’s move could ‘dismantle’ tenure, faculty union says

MANKATO – Some faculty are warning that a plan to lay off seven tenured professors at Minnesota State University, Mankato, could spell the end of tenure at the school.

In August, administrators announced a plan to cut costs by eliminating seven tenured positions through a yearlong process called “retrenchment.”

The Faculty Association said in a statement that they were caught by surprise, believing there would be no layoffs of tenured staff because the school already cut almost 100 courses and raised tuition by 8%.

“This approach reduces tenure and collective bargaining to empty promises‚” the Faculty Association’s statement said. “If this proposed retrenchment is enacted, it will effectively dismantle the institution of tenure at our university.”

Tenure provides certain professors with the right to due process if they receive a notice that their job is in jeopardy. Advocates say tenure supports academic freedom.

The school respects the laws on tenure, said David Hood, the provost at Minnesota State, Mankato, and senior vice president for academic affairs.

But the university needs to be run more like a business, Hood said in a phone call Monday.

The school has been cutting courses, raising tuition, eliminating some off-site locations, and offering early retirements. While the current budget is “balanced” with these cuts, the university still faces a “structural deficit” where costs such as inflation and benefits outpace state funding, Hood said.

(Sign up for the Minnesota Star Tribune’s Prairie Local newsletter covering Mankato and the southwest corner of the state.)

The departments affected are business administration, international business, civil engineering, astronomy, political science, gender and women’s studies, and history.

The college hopes to invest in programs anticipated to have high demand, with examples in a statement including computer science, nursing, dental hygiene, special education and aviation.

Retrenchment is a process in which the college can lay off tenured faculty members. The last time it was used at Minnesota State, Mankato, was in 2010.

The college says it informed the Faculty Association at a meeting in May that retrenchment might be necessary, with the departments to be selected based on enrollment numbers.

Faculty Association members said they have doubts about the criteria used to determine which departments had low enrollment. The association also claims that President Edward Inch said in the May meeting that there were “no layoffs planned unless budget shortfalls persist.”

And a college that runs like a business will have teachers focused on justifying funding for their department, instead of teaching students, said Danielle Haque, vice president of the Faculty Association.

“You can’t ensure longevity of a university if you’re chasing after market trends,” said Haque, who’s also a professor of English.

Some students said they hope to spend the next year fighting the layoffs.

The departments are contractually set to cut their most junior faculty members. Chad McCutchen, a professor in the history department for 10 years, said that means he’s on the chopping block.

“It just feels arbitrary,” said McCutchen, who specializes in Latin American studies and is also a graduate coordinator and a college liaison with local high schools. “It doesn’t matter how much you did or whatever, it just feels like you happen to be the lowest on the roster.”

The proposed layoffs have also created a dilemma for two professors in the civil engineering department: husband and wife Fatih and Başak Bektaş.

The couple, both naturalized citizens from Turkey, were hired on the same day in 2019, putting them at the same seniority level. Over the weekend, the pair lived in uncertainty over who would be chosen for retrenchment, based on the “programmatic needs of the university.”

Fatih Bektaş said he believes the university’s decision to cut faculty from civil engineering “appears targeted rather than data-driven,” as the field is widely projected to grow.