Provost resigns over ‘morally wrong’ job cuts

The provost of a private university in Georgia has resigned abruptly in protest against proposed budget cuts and faculty layoffs on which the board of trustees was set to vote on this week.

In a highly critical email to colleagues at Piedmont University announcing his departure, Daniel Silber writes that the proposed budget cuts – which would be the second round this year – were “morally wrong” and that the budget process had “failed to be properly inclusive”. He also argues that notifying faculty that they were being let go after the end of the academic year did not give them enough time to find new employment for next semester.

“I refuse to be a party to terminations that are carried out in such an unethical manner,” writes Professor Silber, who also served as senior vice-president for academic affairs. “Now that this draconian measure is being implemented, I have no moral choice but to leave the institution.”

Representatives from the university in Demorest declined to comment.

Steve Nimmo, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, will take over as vice-president for academic affairs on an interim basis. Piedmont has yet to name an acting provost.

Professor Silber’s resignation comes just a month after the Piedmont faculty senate issued a vote of no confidence in university president James Mellichamp, in part over “mismanagement” of the school’s finances and a lack of budgetary transparency, according to the faculty resolution. The board of trustees dismissed the faculty call for Professor Mellichamp’s resignation, expressing “complete confidence” in the president.

Piedmont cut 8 per cent of its faculty in February and has yet to give any of its current faculty contracts for next academic year.

Dale Van Cantfort, a communications professor and the chair of Piedmont’s Faculty Senate, said he was “very surprised” by Professor Silber’s resignation. He had met with the former provost just 48 hours before his resignation and had no idea that he was considering leaving.

But while the abrupt nature of the resignation took him aback, Professor Cantfort said he agreed with many of the frustrations that Professor Silber voiced in his email.

After a meeting to discuss the initial round of budget cuts in February, Professor Cantfort said, administrators promised there would be no more faculty reductions. But in April, the board of trustees rejected the budget that Professor Mellichamp submitted for the coming academic year. Professor Mellichamp announced that further cuts would have to be made – including 15 additional faculty positions.

“We are approximately two months away from the fall semester,” Professor Cantfort said. “Telling a long-time faculty member, ‘You don’t have a job,’ and leaving them with no hope of finding one for next year because everybody has already filled their positions, I think that is not morally defensible.”

Professor Cantfort said that through negotiations with senior administrators, he and other faculty members managed to reduce the number of positions to be cut in the proposed budget submitted to the board from 15 to four. The board has not yet voted on that budget.

Brian Mitchell, a former president of Bucknell University and co-founder of Academic Innovators, a higher education solutions company, said that while provosts often part ways with their institutions over disagreements, the suddenness of Professor Silber’s departure, as well as the grievance-filled email that accompanied it, was extremely rare – and could do even more damage to the institution.

“If you’re trying to protect the institution, you need to ask, what impact does this have, for example, on deposits or enrolment?” Dr Mitchell said. “If I were faculty, I would certainly applaud it, but within the broader context of the world in which we live, it probably didn’t help Piedmont at all to be presented in this way.”

In an email to faculty and staff on 8 June, Professor Mellichamp pushes back on the picture that Professor Silber painted in his resignation email, pinning the university’s budget shortfall on external circumstances.

“Our budget has been impacted by the pandemic, declines in graduate enrolment, volatility in the stock market, and overall economic uncertainty weighing on prospective students and their families,” he writes. “Under these conditions, we have had to make difficult decisions as we chart the institution’s path through the pandemic and beyond.”

But Professor Cantfort said Professor Mellichamp’s justifications were only a small part of the story behind Piedmont’s financial troubles, which he said stemmed from mismanagement by administrators and the board.

“This is not because of the pandemic,” Professor Cantfort said. “The finances of the school have not been handled properly for the past three years. Because of that, we find ourselves in a difficult financial situation, and the administration wants to balance that budget by eliminating faculty positions.”

In their no-confidence resolution, the Piedmont faculty cite unforced budgetary errors and expanded “real estate ventures” as reasons for the budget shortfall.

According to the resolution, Professor Mellichamp and other senior administration members knew about the university’s “dire financial situation” for many months before faculty were made aware. Professor Cantfort said that this lack of communication was part of the problem that led to both the no-confidence vote and Professor Silber’s resignation, and that the continued uncertainty has led remaining faculty members to consider looking for other work pre-emptively.

“I’ve got a number of faculty members who tell me they are actively searching, because they don’t want to be left in the lurch,” Professor Cantfort said. “It is not good news for the university that we’re in this situation…Every day that this drags on, there’s the potential we lose good faculty members.”

Dr Mitchell said the saga at Piedmont – from the initial budget cuts to the vote of no confidence to Professor Silber’s resignation – pointed to a failure of communication among the board of trustees, the senior administration and the faculty.

“The real story here is about shared governance,” Dr Mitchell said. “For a college or university to succeed, there has to be a synergy among the three groups, there has to be transparency and there has to be a willingness to engage in a dialogue that doesn’t turn public and ugly. And it looks like Piedmont failed on all those counts.”

Barbara Gitenstein, senior vice-president of the Association of Governing Boards and a former president of the College of New Jersey, said that as the liaison between the board of trustees and the university’s internal constituents, senior administrators are responsible for informing stakeholders about financial issues early and having conversations with those whom budget cuts would affect.

“In any situation where you have to share unhappy news, earlier and more open conversations are always better and lead to healthier results,” she said.

In his resignation email, Professor Silber offers a prediction for Piedmont’s future. He does not mince words.

“My hope is that there will be a last-minute change to change course, but, regardless, Piedmont University is in for some very tough times,” he writes.

Professor Cantfort was a little more optimistic, but he said major changes were necessary to make sure that Piedmont’s business and educational models were sustainable.

“Piedmont University is a very solid university, with instruction and education as our principal mission,” he said. “I believe it will survive this…but we feel changes still need to be made in order for Piedmont to build a better university.”

Dr Mitchell said that as institutions face growing financial hurdles, tensions were likely to increase between faculty and administrators, and provosts would only face more pressure serving as liaison between the two parties. In that case, he said, the sudden nature of Professor Silber’s departure, while uncommon now, might not be for long.

“The tuition revenue model upon which all less well-endowed schools depend is teetering right now, on the brink of collapse,” Dr Mitchell said. “We’re likely to see increased pressure on higher education leadership, and it’s entirely possible that we’ll see more examples of this down the road.”

This is an edited version of a story which first appeared on Inside Higher Ed.