New School Announces Major Workforce Reduction Amid Financial Challenges and Restructuring

The New School has announced plans to eliminate 15% of its full-time faculty and staff by mid-June, as revealed in a March 13 email from Provost Richard Kessler and Executive Vice President Fransico Pineda. This decision stems from a projected $48 million deficit primarily caused by a 20% enrollment decline since 2021. The American Association of University Professors has described this as the most substantial faculty dismissal effort currently underway in the United States. Earlier workforce reduction measures included voluntary separation packages offered to 40% of full-time faculty in December, followed by similar offers to clerical and professional staff unions in February and March, which achieved only 7% of the needed reductions. Faculty members express widespread anxiety about job security, with assistant professor Carrie Hawks noting uncertainty about contract renewals and professor Catherine Telford Keough describing an atmosphere of instability despite assurances about program safety. The university is simultaneously implementing structural changes, merging Parsons School of Design with the College of Performing Arts and combining Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts with the New School for Social Research this fall. These consolidations will disproportionately affect NSSR and Lang colleges, which face more significant program discontinuations, while Parsons experiences fewer cuts due to its stronger enrollment performance. Faculty are responding through organizing efforts, including a full-time faculty union organizing committee formed in May 2025 that is collecting digital authorization cards. Both Hawks and Keough have emphasized the damaging effects of positioning disciplines against each other and the importance of collective protections for all faculty working with students.