“We’re Broke.” PSU to Begin Faculty Cuts with Resignation Incentive Program

Micah Bessette, Brady Lyons 

He/Him, He/Him 

Media Editor, Staff Editor 

9/13/25

The future of the humanities has been a point of concern at Plymouth State for some time; last semester, it was revealed that the administration made a proposal to layoff around 30 tenured faculty throughout the humanities, cultures, and communication programs (HCC). Though PSU President Donald Birx emphasized the fact that the cuts were just a proposal, PSU now seems prepared to follow through. 

During the University Days meeting on August 20th, faculty were informed that the reduction process will soon begin by offering a Separation Incentive Program (SIP) to tenured faculty. The program, which will allow faculty who meet certain requirements to voluntarily take an early retirement package, will come after months of speculation about Plymouth State’s future in the wake of large budget cuts to the University System of New Hampshire. Along with this change will come a restructuring of PSU’s Administrative Unit (cluster) model into a six-school approach. 

In March, The Clock reported on Plymouth State’s plan to retrench some 30 tenured faculty. The SIP allows PSU to begin terminating faculty contracts without committing to retrenchment and its prerequisites. Elliott Gruner, president and founder of PSU’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), describes retrenchment as a “fancy word for firing tenured faculty.” For tenured faculty to be retrenched, PSU must either commit to program curtailment or make an official declaration of financial exigency, according to the AAUP collective bargaining agreement. 

According to an email sent from administration to faculty in HCC, affected programs will include English, history, communication and media studies, biology, music, political science, as well as several minors and discontinued majors within the liberal arts. 

Faculty who choose to take a SIP will receive it on January first, and they won’t continue teaching through the Spring semester, according to Nathaniel Bowditch, PSU’s Provost. Faculty have said that administration has been uncommunicative about who will be offered this package and what it will include. “I don’t feel comfortable talking at any level of detail because we are still working on it,” Bowditch told The Clock. “I think it’s premature to [guess] how it’s going to play out.” 

For faculty to be eligible for a SIP, they must be at least 59.5 years old and a full-time employee of the University System for at least 10 years, according to the AAUP Collective Bargaining agreement. 

According to English Professor Nicholas Helms, administration said during the University Days meeting that PSU needs to reduce its number of tenured faculty by 27 to balance the budget. John Krueckeberg, a history professor and co-head for the new School of Integrated Liberal Arts, figures that every tenured professor in HCC will be offered a SIP, but not everyone will take it. “It’s a great package, and it’s a package that nobody wants, because who wants to be pruned?” 

Some faculty feel that the SIP really represents an ultimatum: “The administration is offering SIPs in the hopes that faculty will leave quietly and save them the bad PR that will come with retrenching the liberal arts faculty,” said Scott Coykendall, a Communications and Media Studies professor. 

Many faculty are also concerned about the timeliness of these changes, as the January first deadline is fast approaching with little information. Gruner, in a letter to president Birx, described the changes as “hastily thrown-together, top-down organizational restructuring and ‘curricular’ changes, and another massive cut in personnel.” Gruner continued. “Meanwhile, our administration has avoided any measure of public evaluation or accountability,” referring to the fact that senior administrators have not had a campus review in several years. 

Though it’s not clear why the faculty cuts target the humanities specifically, it is clear the school needs to save money. In Bowditch’s words: “This is a not-for-profit public institution. We don’t make any money. We’re frickin broke.” According to Bowditch, around 92% of Plymouth’s funding comes from student tuition, and New Hampshire legislature recently cut 10 million dollars to the university system’s budget.  

Alongside offering SIPs, PSU is moving towards a massive overhaul of its academic organization by replacing the current Academic Unit-based model with a six-school approach, including a School of Integrated Liberal Arts (SILA).  “The idea behind the integrated liberal arts was to [ask], ‘how do we take these great programs and put them together in a way that makes them stronger?’” said Bowditch. 

It is not clear the extent to which the programs inside SILA can survive with presumed reductions in their faculty. “Whether we can have those majors yet, we’ll just have to wait and see,” Bowditch said. “Universities close programs all the time. This is just difficult because it involves faculty.” 

SILA would include programs like HCC, Art and Design, Music and Theatre, and Interdisciplinary Studies. The other five schools would comprise the School of Business, the School of Health, the School of Human and Public Services, the School of Science and Technology, and the School of Education.