...at CHE. (Earlier coverage.) An excerpt:
Nearly two dozen faculty members at Manhattan College, most of them tenured, got word last month that they were being laid off. The decision appeared to contradict the “last-in, first-out” approach laid out last fall by the New York college’s administrators, in which the newest employees would be the first to go.
In what felt to some faculty members like a bait and switch, several senior professors who assumed their jobs weren’t at risk now face termination, while more-junior scholars, who signed buyout agreements because they thought they would be dismissed under the policy, now find themselves unable to revoke those deals....
The recent turn of events has made a disruptive period even more disquieting for some professors. Jordan Pascoe, a professor of philosophy who is her department’s second-newest member, was at risk of being laid off under the last-in, first-out policy, and considered signing the voluntary-separation agreement. Administrators said one or two positions would be cut from her department. “So there was still a chance that I was going to make it through. I love my job, and I didn’t want to lose it,” Pascoe said. “I thought to myself, ‘In 10 years, if I never manage to get another academic job, will I feel good about having voluntarily given this one up?’ I didn’t think I would, so I felt like it was worth staying and fighting to keep my job.”
She found out at the start of the spring semester that she wouldn’t get that chance.
