Academic cuts and queen sacrifices across the country

Greetings from a dark November. The past few days have been rainy and chill, the perfect atmosphere for this post.

(It’s November? I’m not sure how that happened. I’ve been on overdrive mode for months now and calendars have become… blurs. On a given day I only know what to do based on what my calendar and to-do lists tell me.)

Today’s topic is cuts to higher education. Some readers know I’ve been tracking what I’ve called “queen sacrifices” for years. The term comes from chess, and describes the move of giving up one’s most powerful piece — the queen — in a gambit to win the game. It’s usually seen as a desperate move. I applied the term to higher education, where tenured faculty play the role of the queen, given their tenure protection and institutional governance roles; colleges and universities can cut them in various ways, often as an attempt to get out of a financial crisis.

A gloomy sky from a winter month

Usually I write about a single instance, typically in the American northeast or midwest. Oftentimes the institution’s leaders cite declining enrollment and ballooning budget deficits as motivating forces. Sometimes a reduction in state funding plays a role for public institutions. Occasionally there are stories of financial mismanagement ranging from bad strategies to…