The College of Southern California is within the throes of its most aggressive cost-cutting drive in reminiscence — a grinding interval of monetary austerity that has shaken the college’s moneyed status and raised doubts amongst college and workers in regards to the faculty’s potential to maintain itself as a top-tier establishment.
Aiming to remove a finances deficit that ballooned to greater than $200 million, the personal faculty has reduce almost 1,000 positions, or virtually 4% of its workforce.
School and workers stated that the layoffs have been particularly annoying as a result of they’ve been ongoing for months, though the college stated final week that they’re almost full — and that as many as 200 of those that misplaced their jobs might discover new positions on the faculty. Different cost-saving measures have included restrictions on discretionary spending, reminiscent of journey for conferences.
“There’s a way of simply concern and anxiousness amongst all workers. Even those that are protected don’t know if that is simply the primary section of many future cuts,” stated Phil Turner, affiliate director of USC Housing, who spoke to The Instances as an worker and never in an official capability.
In a wide-ranging Oct. 29 interview, USC interim President Beong-Soo Kim defined how the college discovered itself in such dire monetary straits, detailed the austerity measures and pushed again towards the notion that college management didn’t talk to workers and college about how its plan would unfold.
Kim, who took over for former President Carol Folt in July, described a number of “inside” and “exterior” elements that contributed to the deficit, amongst them the bills related to the COVID-19 pandemic, rising prices for athletics and the paying of main authorized settlements.
The belt-tightening has come amid President Trump’s push to remake greater schooling in a way reflecting his conservative political agenda. His efforts have included slashing billions of {dollars} in funding to universities nationwide.
In early October, the White Home introduced USC and eight different colleges with an schooling compact promising precedence entry to analysis funding in alternate for following Trump’s imaginative and prescient. USC rejected the compact about two weeks later, and it’s not but clear how — or if — Trump will reply.
Nonetheless, in his interview with The Instances, Kim, 52, sounded an upbeat be aware.
“We are able to’t predict the longer term,” he stated, “however we’re feeling very optimistic that we’ve met the finances problem that was going through us, and might now deal with shifting ahead.”
What USC says about its deficit
Kim had signaled in July that layoffs can be forthcoming, writing a letter to the college neighborhood that stated USC’s bills had “considerably outpaced” its income for a number of years, resulting in a finances deficit that, in the course of the remaining 12 months of Folt’s tenure as president, mushroomed from $158 million to greater than $200 million.
Notably, in explaining to The Instances how the college discovered itself in such a big gap, Kim didn’t cite two initiatives that college and alumni have usually lambasted as monetary albatrosses: the Bloom Soccer Efficiency Heart, which broke floor in November; and the Capital Campus in Washington, D.C., which opened in 2023 and included the acquisition of a constructing for about $49 million.
“I really feel like we’re paying for the opulence of the final decade,” stated Turner, who additionally serves as president of the USC Employees Meeting, which advocates for workers.
However Kim instructed The Instances that the Bloom Soccer mission can be “largely … supported via philanthropy” and that the campus in Washington would present a “optimistic working margin after you calculate all of the revenues we’re producing towards bills.” He touted a number of applications and establishments with a presence on the Washington campus, together with the USC Leonard D. Schaeffer Institute for Public Coverage & Authorities Service and the Shoah Basis.
USC interim President Beong-Soo Kim assumed the position in July.
(Gus Ruelas/SC Picture/Gus Ruelas)
In July, Kim described a brand new problem: “Important shifts in federal help” for USC’s analysis and different applications stemming from the Trump administration’s sweeping effort to chop billions of {dollars} in grants to universities throughout the nation.
USC has additionally been girding for decreases in worldwide pupil enrollment. The Trump administration has elevated its scrutiny of pupil visas and enacted a journey ban that has prevented hundreds from learning within the U.S. Worldwide college students usually pay full freight, and as of the autumn, USC had 11,959 of them — the largest inhabitants in California and one of many largest within the U.S.
Kim stated that for this tutorial 12 months, enrollment of worldwide undergraduate and graduate college students is down 3% from a 12 months earlier. “This was really lower than what we had been anticipating,” he stated. “That’s an actual testomony, I believe, to USC’s model throughout the globe.”
However, Kim stated, “I don’t know what’s going to occur subsequent 12 months.”
The nine-digit deficit and avalanche of layoffs have come as USC has steadily raised tuition and charges to turn into one in every of the most costly faculties within the U.S. The college initiatives the price of attendance for the present tutorial 12 months to be $99,139, inclusive of housing, although many college students obtain sturdy monetary help.
Requested whether or not the determine would enhance, Kim stated, “We haven’t decided about that.”
“Let me simply say this: controlling the expansion in tuition is certainly a spotlight of ours,” he added. “Individuals deal with the sticker value, however the precise annual price of attendance is lower than half of that.”
Who’s accountable?
Traditionally, layoffs at USC have been uncommon. The Nineties, marked by a recession introduced on by the collapse of the area’s aerospace trade, included two notable rounds of job cuts. In a single wave, 58 folks had been laid off and 31 vacant positions eradicated to pare down a $15-million deficit. Three years later, a minimum of 100 college members on the medical faculty took pay cuts and an undisclosed quantity had been dismissed as a part of a plan to deal with an $11-million deficit.
This time is completely different. Not solely are the cuts deeper, however their scale and scope have shattered a way at USC that it was proof against monetary points plaguing different colleges. They usually’ve come after years of being battered by different crises, amongst them the Varsity Blues admissions bribery instances and the scandals involving former medical faculty dean Carmen A. Puliafito and former college gynecologist George Tyndall.
USC is a “rich establishment … and there’s a way of confusion from college as to the way it acquired this dangerous,” stated Ryan Boyd, an affiliate professor of writing. “It is a college that must be well-capitalized.”
The roles which were eradicated embrace each pupil tutorial adviser within the Viterbi College of Engineering and many others in the identical position on the Dornsife Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Different cuts have included adjunct and scientific instructors.
Turner, who has labored on the college since 2009, stated the “stringing alongside” of layoffs has despatched morale plummeting, which “inevitably goes to trickle right down to the scholars.”
However Kim stated that “earlier than we despatched a single layoff discover,” he attended about 40 city hall-style occasions with college and workers to debate the monetary points.
“We had been capable of compress an incredible quantity of motion into a really, very quick time frame,” he stated. “That was one other one in every of our targets, to not solely simply do that as soon as, however to do it as shortly as attainable, so it’s not hanging over folks any longer than is required.”
Kim stated that apart from “bizarre workforce changes that occur yearly,” the college has no plans to ship further layoff notices this 12 months.
Some folks have blamed Folt, whose multimillion-dollar university-owned Santa Monica house was put up on the market in October. (She not lives on the property, which is listed for about $10 million.)
“I’m all for USC having … names on buildings and being world-renowned. However the monetary gap that you simply go away while you don’t correctly plan for an funding like a constructing — it’s the workers which can be paying for these choices,” stated Turner, referring to the Washington acquisition, which Folt trumpeted in her 2025 State of the College handle.
In a press release to The Instances, Folt stated that when she turned president in 2019, the college confronted a litany of points, amongst them “a big deficit, expensive authorized challenges, and vital gaps in monetary help.”
Folt stated that underneath her management, the college took steps to deal with these and different points and tackled an sudden one — the pandemic — whereas specializing in “securing a sustainable monetary future for USC.”
“Six years later, the outcomes are clear,” stated Folt, who touted many successes, amongst them the Capital Campus.
As for the more moderen financial woes, “we additionally had been near closing the monetary hole,” however “exterior pressures” — together with inflation and better insurance coverage and well being system prices — necessitated “even better and quicker changes,” she stated.
Former USC President Carol Folt.
(Artwork Streiber)
A number of folks stated they didn’t blame Kim, a former federal prosecutor and the son of Korean immigrants. He joined USC in 2020 as normal counsel, serving to the college navigate the Tyndall scandal, which resulted in $1.1 billion in settlement funds to the gynecologist’s former sufferers — the largest intercourse abuse payout within the historical past of upper schooling.
Some USC stakeholders stated they admire Kim’s willingness to have interaction in a dialogue in regards to the finances.
“He’s met with Employees Meeting, together with assembly with me,” Turner stated. “And we’re grateful, as a result of that’s one thing we didn’t see over the previous six years.”
A gradual stream of cuts
Along with the layoffs, the college has sought financial savings through a hiring freeze, the sale of unused buildings and the discretionary spending cuts.
These trims, which have included paring again budgets for catering, skilled growth and journey — and requiring extra approvals for bills — have stunned some folks, as a result of the financial savings would look like negligible in sure instances.
Sanjay Madhav, an affiliate professor of follow on the engineering faculty, stated that when his division beforehand held daylong college conferences, $25 to $30 can be allotted for a lightweight breakfast and lunch for every particular person, and there was not a “strict higher restrict.” Now, underneath newly imposed guidelines, solely $15 could also be spent per particular person.
“At our final assembly, our boss purchased the espresso,” he stated.
In an interview, James Bullock, the dean of Dornsife Faculty, stated he understood that such cuts “are annoying.”
“However one of many issues that we’ve talked about in my workplace and all through the dean suite — and once I exit and discuss to folks — if it can save you $10,000 10 instances, that’s a job,” he stated. “And we’re prioritizing jobs.”
Madhav and others stated they’re extra involved with the lack of pupil advisers, who usually meet one-on-one with undergraduates and postgraduates to assist them chart their tutorial paths.
“Within the short-term, certain, it saves cash, but it surely doesn’t in the long term, and take into consideration all of the institutional information that’s being misplaced — and in addition the affect on college students,” stated Madhav, who together with Boyd is concerned in a union organizing effort for non-tenure monitor professors.
Bullock stated that at Dornsife, a brand new “hub and spoke mannequin” — to be launched in December — offers college students “extra entry to advisers than that they had earlier than.” Groups of “clustered advisers” will serve college students, every of whom will nonetheless have a main one.
Trump administration pressures
USC has discovered itself in a monetary quagmire at an unsettled second.
USC teachers celebrated the college’s rejection of the Trump schooling compact at a rally on campus on Oct. 17.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Instances)
The college’s rejection of Trump’s schooling compact was trigger for celebration at a campus rally on Oct. 17, although the members had been bracing for extra Trump hassle.
“It is a longer warfare towards greater schooling, and we have to be ready for this,” affiliate historical past professor Aro Velmet stated on the rally.
Turner cautioned that any try by Trump to deprive USC of funding shouldn’t be conflated with the financial ache introduced on by a finances deficit.
“We walked into this gap all by ourselves, effectively earlier than the election was even determined,” he stated.
Kim argued that shoring up the college’s funds might put it on a greater footing to take care of Trump.
“We wished to be as ready as we could possibly be for what’s coming down the pike,” Kim stated, “in order that we don’t must take our neighborhood via what they’ve skilled once more.”
