ATHENS, Ohio — After several years of falling enrollment, Ohio University welcomed its largest-ever first-year class this fall — but labor leaders say OU needs more staff to accommodate its rebounding student population.
“Across the board — maintenance, custodial and culinary — they’re woefully understaffed. They don’t see having a deficit, even though they have record enrollment,” said John Ackison, president of AFSCME Local 1699. The union represents about 500 OU classified staff members in more than 40 departments on the Athens Campus as well as at the regional campuses.
John O’Keefe, president of the Ohio University Chapter of American Association of University Professors, shared a similar sentiment.
“Our working conditions are student learning conditions,” O’Keefe said. “If we find more work is placed upon us, then … less time can be devoted to teaching, and that affects the quality student experience.”
OU, however, contends that it does not have a staffing issue. Pointing to the modest overall increase in student enrollment from last year to this year, OU President Lori Gonzalez said at a Sept. 14 press conference, “We’re able to accommodate those students because that number is spread across the entire institution.”
To the extent that OU has needed more employees, it has brought them on, the institution says.
“The University has responded with the addition of faculty and staff as needed to protect and support the student experience,” said Sam Pelham, an OU communications specialist.
Enrollment declined 23% from fall 2016 to fall 2022, according to data from OU Institutional Effectiveness & Analytics. Total faculty and staff numbers declined a comparable 22% over the same period — but different staffing units were affected far differently.
The number of full-time administrators actually increased slightly, for instance. Meanwhile, OU’s classified staff, which includes 1699 members, took the biggest hit.
The university lost 32% of combined part-time and full-time classified staff from 2016-2022. The biggest drop came in 2020, when OU laid off hundreds of faculty and staff. In May of that year, OU let go 140 union employees.
At the time, OU justified the layoffs by citing budget woes related to ongoing and projected declines in enrollment. Gonzalez acknowledged, however, that the current trend does not align with OU’s projections at the time, as this is the second year running that OU welcomed a record-breaking first year class.
Increasing first-year enrollment combined with an increased retention rate has begun to translate into greater overall enrollment, although the numbers remain well below pre-pandemic numbers — which had been falling for several years before that.
“We are getting our message out about the total experience at OU,” Gonzales said at the press conference.
Pelham said OU has responded to the growing student population by hiring 10 new full-time facilities management hires so far this year, as well as 36 new culinary services workers and eight new resident directors. She also pointed to new faculty hires, including new tenure-track hires.
OU did not respond by press time to a follow-up question about how current overall staffing levels compares to pre-pandemic numbers. The Independent’s request for records with more detailed year-by-year staffing remains pending.
However, Ackison said there is still a deficit among unionized staff.
OU now asks employees to do “more with less,” he said. Each custodian, for instance, is now expected to cover more square footage than before the 2020 layoffs.
“You can only imagine if you go to a drive thru and it's understaffed, the lines are longer, the trash is overflowing … and that's campus wide,” Ackison said.
“Employees just continue to work harder,” he added. “We have some really good employees that do a really good job, but you can only do so much.”
Faculty also have concerns.
O’Keefe, OU’s AAUP president, said, “We're glad that there has been a course correction with enrollments.” However, he added that insufficient staffing means that instructional faculty are taking on more tasks historically done by support staff, as well as dealing with higher workloads and larger class sizes.
“The ability to focus on teaching and research is affected by that,” O’Keefe said. Women and faculty of color are more likely to be expected to take on additional tasks, he said.
Greater workloads for faculty can affect students in various ways, such as less time to respond to student emails or devote to instruction, O’Keefe said.
The total number of part-time and full-time faculty declined 28.5% between 2016 and 2022, although the number of full-time faculty declined only 16.8%. Fifty-three instructional faculty members were let go during the 2020 layoffs, and many faculty entered voluntary separation agreements.
New tenure-track hires don’t nearly compensate for tenure-track positions lost, according to the AAUP. O'Keefe said the institution is witnessing tenure erosion as a result of insufficient tenure-track hiring and issues with attraction and retention.
Similarly, Ackison described an issue with retaining and attracting classified staff members.
“My granddaughter started a part time job as a student in Logan, Ohio, at Walmart. It's 15 bucks an hour,” Ackison said. “You're asking people to come here at a lower wage than that starting as a culinary or custodial. It’s just a real morale thing. … The new president really needs to get her arms around this issue.”
The current pay scale for 1699 members starts as low as $13.87 per hour.
“We realize there's problems, and we need to collaborate and come together and talk about ways forward to address the deficit, the shortfalls and whatever else,” Ackison said. “We have to continue to put the students first and foremost. We're here to serve students, that's the only reason why we're here.”
