Petition
Background
The City University of New York (CUNY) and Queens College (QC) administrations are responding to years of fiscal mismanagement by firing faculty and staff who are essential to the QC’s core academic mission. These layoffs are not only cruel, but also counterproductive to achieving the college’s long-term fiscal health. In June, administrators demanded cuts to the temporary services budget by 50%, causing many part-time College Assistants (CAs) and Non-Teaching Adjuncts (NTAs) to lose their positions, or reduce their hours, on short notice, leaving them without income and health insurance. The consequences for teaching and research at QC are also devastating. For example, 40% of chemistry lab sections will disappear this fall; art students will lose access to campus studios; the college will lose capacity to care for lab animals and reduce access to the library’s makerspace and archive; pre-law students will lose summer advising; full-time faculty will be forced to take on the work of non-teaching adjuncts. Ironically, it will cost at least 3-4 times more to compensate full-time faculty for this work.
Now, QC administrators are telling academic departments to fire approximately 25% of their adjunct faculty, who stand to lose their salaries and healthcare benefits. Again, students will also suffer because we all know that CUNY runs on adjunct power. With the proposed mass layoffs, students will have to defer graduation or transfer to another school, increasing the student attrition rate. CUNY and QC leadership must stop under-serving the communities who want to engage with our campus–including those comprising the planet’s most diverse urban area–through draconian budgeting.
A quick review of the CUNY FY2025-2026 Mid-Year Financial Update provides indisputable supporting evidence of the extreme cuts to faculty and staff at Queens College compared to other CUNY colleges. As of Fall 2025, compared to Fall 2023, we are down 87 full-time staff positions, a 7% decrease. Our staff losses are nearly twice as much as the staff losses across all six community colleges combined (46, representing a 1% decrease). We have also lost a whopping 61 full-time faculty members (a 10% decrease); the next highest faculty losses were at City College, who lost 23 full-time faculty (a 5% decrease). Regarding adjunct costs, our projected increase is 14% (driven by contractual pay increases), the lowest projected increase for any CUNY senior college in 2025-2026 and half as much as the overall senior college increase (28%) projected for that year.
The administration cannot argue that these cuts are necessary due to declining enrollment. In fact, although we don’t yet know for certain what enrollments will look like, projections for Fall 2026 are positive. Indeed, both QC undergraduate and graduate enrollments are forecast to be higher this fall over last fall.
Moreover, if continued unchecked, austerity will in fact strangle our enrollment. In Fall 2023, QC student enrollment was thriving (at 7.8% above the historical average). It only started to decline after budget cuts that slashed courses that students wanted and needed. Conversely, the college’s enrollment bounced back after a low-point in the mid-1980s, when investments poured in to celebrate the campus’s 50th anniversary.
Disturbingly, the Queens College administration seems to have insulated itself from much of the pain the rest of us have suffered. High-paid administrative positions are filled quickly, with new roles being added (or existing ones elevated). Right now, QC has eight positions that are some form of vice president, some newly created and some that were previously deans. For example, just this past spring, QC hired an associate vice president for student success. The college’s head of communications and marketing is also a vice president, while at other campuses this position is designated (and paid) as a dean. If there are costs to be trimmed, it needs to be taken from the top. The faculty and staff have nothing left to cut without undermining educational quality, access, and long-term institutional strength.
