I am worried about posting this article from Inside Higher Ed because I don’t want to give academic administrators any ideas. Western Illinois University is laying off all nine of its library faculty. What is happening to higher education?
Here is a taste:
Western Illinois University is laying off all nine of its library faculty—eight of them tenured or on the tenure track—as part of wider efforts to offset a $22 million budget deficit driven by rising operational costs and a 21 percent enrollment drop since fall 2019.
While the university said in an Aug. 9 news release that it’s “made every effort to minimize the impact on students,” the planned elimination of the library faculty by May 2025 has academic librarians both inside and outside the institution questioning how WIU’s library will be able to effectively serve faculty and students in the future.
“It’s quite alarming,” said Leo Lo, president of the national Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), adding that in addition to assisting faculty in their teaching and research, librarians are especially helpful to first-generation college students finding their footing in higher education. “Without libraries to help them, it may hurt student retention” and recruitment, he said.
But Alisha Looney, a spokesperson for WIU, wrote in an email Friday that the university “will continue to have adequate coverage in the library” after the layoffs.
The university, located about 250 miles southwest of Chicago in Macomb, announced earlier this month that a total of 57 faculty—40 of them tenured or on the tenure track—and 32 staff will no longer have jobs by next May; some will be let go even sooner. An additional 35 nontenured faculty members, including one library employee, did not get their contracts renewed and vacated their positions in June, according to WIU.
“Adequate coverage?” What does that even mean? Work-study students working at the circulation desk and reshelving books?
If the staff left to cover the library do not have MLS/MSLS degrees, there will not be adequate coverage. The university is not thinking clearly.
I live in Central Illinois. What is going on at WIU is incredibly hard. We have also lost a lot of the local Christian colleges.
How does a University exist without librarians? It doesn’t. Doors will be closing soon.
Librarians are obviously outraged about this, as they should be. They are making very good arguments about why a university need academic librarians. I can’t believe we’ve come to the point where they have to make such arguments. It’s also distressing because arguments they make will no longer change the minds of administrators and boards in the way they used to 20 years ago. Even the best arguments for programs that used to be at the heart of higher education are no match for economic considerations.