We noted the (ultimately unsuccessful) efforts of fired faculty to seek legal redress last year; the CHE now has this account:
[F]or the 96 faculty members who were part of the “reduction in force,” moving on has been nearly impossible. They call themselves “the RIF,” pronounced like “riff.” They see themselves as the human toll in a nightmare version of higher ed’s future, plagued by declining enrollments, cuts in state funding, assaults on tenure, and a bottom-line mentality more suited to a business.
Finding a new academic job has proved difficult, and they don’t want to uproot their families. Thirty-six have, like Bilia [a previuosly tenured English professor], returned to work at Akron as adjuncts — doing similar jobs for less pay. The laid-off professors want their colleagues elsewhere to know that nothing can stop the cuts once they begin. Not tenure, a union, teaching awards, or praise from students....
To get by, [Bilia and her husband, also laid off] withdrew money from her husband’s retirement account and relied on unemployment benefits. Bilia soon returned to the university to work part time. Their youngest son, then in high school, started a job at Walmart. Last year, she said, he made more money than she did.
“The administrators do not know what our families have gone through,” Bilia said, “how our kids are looking into a future that’s bleak.”
Some nights, she said, she would find her youngest son up late pacing, worried about the family and the future. She tried to tell him he was young and had his whole future ahead of him. But he reminded her of what had happened to them, and how things could change in an instant. “What answers do I have for that?” she asked.
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