On Hiring Freezes in Academia

Women and people of color have traditionally been affected the most during times of economic restriction in academia.

Lea Van Puymbroeck Miller, a professor at the University of Washington, was the victim of anti-nepotism laws during the Great Depression. It was even mentioned in her obituary.

We were here before. In 2020, when the COVID pandemic caused a shift to remote learning and work at the research university, administrators instituted stringent hiring freezes or layoffs. I graduated amidst this pandemic and of course received no job offer or support from my department. Applications I had spent hours on were terminated immediately as they closed the application portals. Then I was on a job market competing against everyone. It took over a year to find a job.

Yet, in 2021 many universities ended up with a surplus.

Many universities pre-emptively instituted strict cost-cutting measures to buffer against anticipated state and federal funding losses. However, some of the top-research institutions actually ended up financially “ahead” of where they were in 2019 [1]. For example, Johns Hopkins, with a $6 billion endowment, projected to save $100 million by suspending retirement contributions for 1 year, and $20 million for freezing salaries, and $40 million for a hiring freeze [1]. In early 2021, Johns Hopkins was “stronger” financially than they had expected and re-instated hiring, retirement contributions, and merit pay increases [2]. Harvard University, with a $40 billion endowment, projected a $750 million loss in revenue, but were vague at the sources of this loss [1]. In 2021, Harvard announced a budget surplus [3]. Many universities refused to use their “rainy day” funds, and instead resorted to mass layoffs with minimal justification [4]. In a sense, COVID gave the research university the excuse to accelerate their corporate-cost cutting tactics and thrive.

If they wanted to hire people, they would period. Especially at these large STEM-driven research institutions with large endowments. I know, not all endowment assets are liquid. Yes, I know the financials are unbelievably complicated. But, we cannot deny that it’s the women and people of color who are cut, first.

Humanities departments have been cut and attacked for years. STEM students and faculty have had extremely arrogant attitudes about their “usefulness” or “merit” over the humanities never realizing that attacks on one affect all.

STEM is Big Business. It cries about lack of diversity, limited applicant pools, but here I am a women in STEM, highly qualified, and unable to move the up the ladder from postdoc to faculty or even research associate. Administrators were cancelling projects that involved DEI even before this administration. Graduate programs are freezing or rescinding offers. Fields that generate patents, profits, grants, or publicity will be prioritized. This is antithetical to the purported mission of higher education.

Since women and people of color are typically excluded from these prioritized areas and positions in STEM, they are disproportionally affected.

I recommend reading this article about the anger and betrayal that these scientists feel.

Also, according to rumors I’ve heard, departments are freezing graduate student admissions to at least mid-March at a lot of institutions. This will put further strain on current graduate students and employees to keep up research, if they are retained.

“Hiring freezes” also negatively impact members of the local community which often rely on the university for employment. Theses universities who usually do not pay taxes to the city.

“Hiring freezes” might imply the university is working to protect current workers. It is not. They may not provide cost of living raises, they might get out of retirement contributions, they may not fund new projects, or they may not renew contracts (which are often yearly in academia) so this is not considered a ‘layoff’.

Workloads will certainly increase.

More on how cost-cutting measures during the COVID-19 pandemic affected academic careers

The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly affected academic careers. Between February 2020 and 2021, there were over 650,000 job losses in academia [5]. In other words, about one of every eight workers left of lost a job (para. 2). It was the steepest drop in academic jobs since data began being recorded by the Labor Department in the 1950s (para. 4). Over half these job losses were non-white workers (56%) and women (58%) [6]. The number of full-time faculty members decreased at 62% of institutions. At doctoral institutions, real wages decreased 0.8%. About 60% of institutions had a salary freeze or reduction, 30% eliminated or reduced some fringe benefits, 5% terminated contracts or did not appoint some tenure-line faculty, about 20% did not renew or terminated contracts for some non-tenure track faculty, 10% implemented furloughs for some faculty, 50% took some action for tenure-line faculty, such as encouraging early retirement, and less than 50% implemented tenure-clock modifications [7].

Individuals in fields un-related to COVID research were more hard-hit within the institutions. Adjunct faculty had the greatest decrease in size at 5% reduction of the work force [8]. The greatest loss of faculty numbers was in Biological and Biomedical sciences and Business, Management, and Marketing [8]. Gao et al. examined science productivity among American and European based scientists in 2020 [9]. There were sharp declines in the initiation of new projects, reaching up to 36% for those working in non-COVID-19 areas. Scientists who were female and with young children faced the largest decline in new projects. Travel restrictions also made it more difficult to conduct field work [10]. Journals fast-tracked COVID-papers. Papers in other research areas were bottlenecked, with some acceptance rates falling below 5% [10]. In the United States, there were fewer papers published by women, fewer clinical trials conducted by women, and less recognition awarded to women, particularly related to the COVID-19 research [11]–[13]. Decades of progress for women were dashed in mere months, indicating that women’s place in academia is far from stable.

The COVID-19 pandemic particularly worsened career prospects for early-career academics. In the same Nature survey of postdocs, 61% said that the pandemic negatively affected their career prospects. Some postdocs reported being required to work as if “nothing had changed” [14] (p. 312). Others reported a feeling of unsafety, a lack of networking and career opportunities, a lack of employment opportunities, difficulty performing experiments, and visa issues due to travel restrictions [14]. More than a quarter of those surveyed said that they were given a lack of guidelines for how to proceed during the pandemic by their P.I [14]. And 13% said that the pandemic was a reason they lost a job offer [14].

These changes will have long impacts on academic research. Furthermore, they may result in a less diverse university in the future, with less funding, more cutbacks, and more emphasis on “fit” for job candidates [15]. There is concern that this can negatively affect student development of interdisciplinary skills [16].

It is unfair to make us sit in uncertainty. And these cuts, are not necessarily based on merit. It is very much political.

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References:

[1] J. Mervis, “As pandemic pounds U.S. universities, federal support helps their labs stay afloat,” Science, 2020, doi: 10.1126/science.abd1841.

[2] R. J. Daniels and M. Miller, “Update on University Financial Situation,” Financial Implications + Planning, 2021. https://covidinfo.jhu.edu/financial-implications-and-planning/ (accessed Oct. 29, 2022).

[3] N. Herpich and H. Correspondent, “University reports budget surplus despite pandemic challenges,” The Harvard Gazette, Cambridge, Oct. 2021. [Online]. Available: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/10/university-reports-budget-surplus-despite-pandemic-challenges/

[4] G. Svirnovskiy, “The richest colleges didn’t need to cut their budgets in the pandemic — but they did,” Vox, Jun. 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.vox.com/22521935/austerity-university-college-covid-19-pandemic-service-workers-labor-unions

[5] D. Bauman, “A Brutal Tally: Higher Ed Lost 650,000 Jobs Last Year,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Washington D.C., Feb. 05, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-brutal-tally-higher-ed-lost-650-000-jobs-last-yea

[6] D. Bauman, “Here’s Who Was Hit Hardest by Higher Ed’s Pandemic-Driven Job Losses,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, pp. 1–6, Apr. 19, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.chronicle.com/article/heres-who-was-hit-hardest-by-higher-eds-pandemic-driven-job-losses

[7] AAUP, “2020-21 Faculty Compensation Survey Results,” 2021. https://www.aaup.org/2020-21-faculty-compensation-survey-results (accessed May 03, 2021).

[8] J. Bichsel, M. Fuesting, S. Nadel-Hawthorne, and A. Schmidt, “Faculty in Higher Education Annual Report: Key Findings, Trends, and Comprehensive Tables for Tenure- Track, Non-Tenure Teaching, and Non-Tenure Research Faculty and Summary Data for Adjunct Faculty for the 2020-21 Academic Year,” 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.cupahr.org/surveys/results/

[9] J. Gao, Y. Yin, K. R. Myers, K. R. Lakhani, and D. Wang, “Potentially long-lasting effects of the pandemic on scientists,” Nat. Commun., vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 6–11, 2021, doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-26428-z.

[10] S. Joshi, “Why Faculty Aren’t Vibing With the Moment,” Inside Higher Education, Sep. 27, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2022/09/27/ongoing-challenges-women-and-minorities-face-covids-wake-opinion

[11] A. Mandavilli, “Could the Pandemic Prompt an ‘Epidemic of Loss’ of Women in the Sciences? - The New York Times,” New York Times, New York City, pp. 13–15, Apr. 13, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/health/women-stem-pandemic.html?campaign_id=154&emc=edit_cb_20210413&instance_id=29192&nl=coronavirus-briefing&regi_id=97056389&segment_id=55508&te=1&user_id=2682819b5d310126ed6b7427598699f7

[12] B. P. Gabster, K. van Daalen, and M. Barry, “Challenges for the female academic during the COVID-19 pandemic Science,” Lancet, vol. 395, no. January, pp. 1968–1969, 2020, [Online]. Available: https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(20)31412-4.pdf

[13] J. P. Andersen, M. W. Nielsen, N. L. Simone, R. E. Lewiss, and R. Jagsi, “COVID-19 medical papers have fewer women first authors than expected,” Elife, vol. 9, no. June, pp. 1–7, 2020, doi: 10.7554/eLife.58807.

[14] C. Woolston, “Pandemic Darkens Postdocs’ Work and Career Hopes,” Nature, vol. 585, pp. 309–312, 2020, [Online]. Available: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02548-2

[15] J. C. Flowers, “The University We’re Losing,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Aug. 24, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-university-were-losing

[16] R. Dutt-Ballerstadt, “Academic Prioritization or Killing the Liberal Arts?,” Inside Higher Education, Mar. 01, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2019/03/01/shrinking-liberal-arts-programs-raise-alarmbells-%0Aamong-faculty

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