OPB:
“According to PSU-AAUP, 37 of the staff laid off Thursday are non-tenure-track, two are academic professionals, and 12 are tenured faculty.
Jessica Rodriguez-Jenkins, AAUP Vice President of Grievances and Academic Freedom and a professor in the school of social work, called the layoff of tenured professors a “dangerous shift.”
“By utilizing Article 22, this retrenchment process, to bypass the protections of tenure, PSU is signaling that indefinite tenure, ‘permanent’ — the word permanent is [a] relative term,” Rodriguez-Jenkins said.
PSU-AAUP are calling for a one-year pause in the cuts. They’re skeptical that reductions will lead to growth and say the university should instead invest reserve funds in better connecting with school districts, employers, and community colleges.
“We’ve asked for a one-year pause in this whole process, no layoffs for a year … invest a mild amount, a small amount of reserves into enrollment, recruitment and to continue to grow what we’re already working toward,” Knight said. “Work with us in Salem to generate a political solution in which the state helps us to invest in enrollment, recruitment, and more that would put us on a self-sustaining footing.”
Faculty members also say university administrators could do a lot more when it comes to advocating for more state dollars for higher education. Oregon currently ranks 46th in the nation in per-student funding for four-year public universities, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.
Knight called the reductions, including the end of University Studies, a “backlash” to the humanities.
“The University Studies program was a faculty-led initiative that organized, thought through, and carefully crafted a sound curriculum that focused on humanities education, focused on building students into the kinds of learners and the kinds of citizens that a liberal model of education imagines,” Knight said.
“It’s a further development of this sort of vocational demand in higher ed. It’s a pullback from commitment to full-time faculty, and it is part of that growth of the casualization of labor in higher ed.”
Last month, PSU-AAUP took a vote of no confidence in Cudd’s leadership. Of the 67% of the unit who voted, 85% said yes. Other unions representing PSU staff also took votes, with 91% of Service Employees International Union workers and 97% of Graduate Employees Union workers agreeing with PSU-AAUP in lack of confidence in the university president.
“We are not lock and step with this new vision that President Cudd has been pushing forward,” Rodriguez-Jenkins said, reflecting a sentiment shared by students, faculty, and staff in survey results shared earlier this year.
In recent weeks, Portland State’s faculty union and local high school and college student activists from the Sunrise Movement rallied against the cuts on campus. PSU-AAUP are planning another rally for May 19. Some students demanded more accountability, transparency and decision-making power in the university’s restructuring process.
Portland State University freshman Qadira Stephens, center, rallies PSU students and area high school students, who walked out of school to join the demonstration, outside of PSU President Ann Cudd’s office in the Richard & Maurine Neuberger Center on April 30, 2026 in Portland, Ore. Eli Imadali / OPB
Other students worried about what a future PSU could look like.
“I’m scared that my education isn’t secure,” said Franklin High School sophomore Braeden Cain at a student-led walkout protesting PSU cuts on April 30. He said he’s already lost great teachers from Portland Public Schools budget cuts last year.
“If funding [for universities] is dwindling now, what’s going to be left for me a couple of years down the line?” Cain asked. “Will I get the same opportunities with a public college education?”
This year’s downsizing comes on the heels of $18 million in cuts from the prior school year. That process faced similar pushback from faculty and students.
For some faculty the announcement Thursday may feel like whiplash.
PSU-AAUP leaders say among those to receive layoff notices Thursday were eight educators who were laid off last year and then given back their jobs after an arbitration decision.
“To see them there again … I can’t express the pain and just the feeling of bleak sadness that we all feel about that,” Knight, the PSU-AAUP president, said.
“It’s hard not to look at the list and question retaliation,” Rodriguez-Jenkins added.”
The Oregonian: “This is the biggest layoff situation we’ve ever faced here, and there’s more to come in the next two years,” said Bill Knight, union president. He said the proposed cuts will not save PSU from a “death spiral of austerity” and he expects more layoffs will come in the future. Knight added that some faculty included in layoffs last year, who were reinstated after the union filed a labor complaint, were once again notified that they would be laid off. The union is also calling for a legislative fix, saying the state is at a “disaster level” for public university funding.
Willamette Week: “PSU-AAUP president Bill Knight previously told WW that the university was not focusing its energy on growing, instead racing toward cuts when there were other solutions available. In March, Knight said it was easy for the university to turn to cuts instead of establishing a more solid foundation for recruitment and retention. “The Cudd administration has opposed securing new state funding, signaling an intent to raise tuition at Oregon’s premier access institution and fire a significant number of mission critical faculty and staff,” PSU-AAUP’s Thursday statement reads. “The President and the Board have decided to balance the budget on the backs of students, faculty, and staff.”
KGW:
“However, Bill Knight, an associate professor of English and president of the PSU American Association of University Professors, said he is baffled by this strategy.
“These cuts don’t point to a future that pulls us out of a cycle in which we have to keep doing this. So for me, where is the recovery? Where is the future for this institution?” he said.
He said with rising admissions and enrollment, these cuts are premature.
“We’ve asked for the board to spend some reserves in this small investment in recruitment, marketing, enrollment and more, to build that work this year and to work with us in Salem to lobby for further investment in those ways,” Knight said.
He said that the right kind of investment from the state could help as well.
“We’re in a situation in which we haven’t invested the resources in recruiting, we haven’t invested the resources in marketing, and we’ve backed away. We’ve just passively assumed people will come to Portland State, but they haven’t, and that’s because of a number of factors,” he said.
PSU first announced it was beginning a retrenchment process in March. The initial plan looked at eliminating three departments and making reductions to 16 others, which has since changed.
In two weeks, Cudd or someone else she designates will meet with the impacted departments to discuss how the latest provisional plan may affect operations.
“This is a situation where students have told us again and again that this is upsetting. They feel powerless,” said Knight.”
KOIN:
“The faculty union is accusing PSU of not investing enough in recruitment and failing to ask for more money from the state.
“Work with us in Salem to generate a political solution in which the state helps us to invest in enrollment, recruitment, and more. That would put us on a self-sustaining footing from our point of view,” said PSU AAUP Faculty Union President Bill Knight.
Cudd said other universities in Oregon need more state money.
“Our funding, from the state primarily comes in the form of the Public University Support Fund, which we seek together with the other six state universities, through the Coalition of Oregon Public Universities,” Cudd said. “So, we go together for the funding, request the consolidated funding request every, every biennium. I do push back on the idea that we should raid the education stability Fund at this point. I think, first of all, we’re not in the same kind of dire, emergency situation that Southern Oregon is in.”
The school is still taking input from the PSU community for another month until they make a final decision on the cuts. Knight said they plan on holding rallies before the upcoming decision.
“No layoffs for a year,” Knight pitched. “Invest a mild amount, a small amount of reserves into enrollment, recruitment and to continue to grow.”
Many students are frustrated with the potential loss of their favorite professors and classes.”