<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=43mCnj_1Gws0TOK00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=43mCnj_1Gws0TOK00" width="1200" height="800" ></figure><p>The Academic Senate met for the third time during the 2026-27 academic year and discussed legislators potentially weakening tenure safeguards and how rising student enrollment coincides with proposed staff layoffs.</p><p>On Nov. 2, the Senate discussed how to respond to an audit report to the Utah Legislature. Despite rising student enrollment, the Senate also discussed projections of a decline in enrollment over the next two decades. </p><h2>Audit report</h2><p>On Oct. 31, The Salt Lake Tribune reported that lawmakers are “ready to weaken tenure safeguards in the state.” The decision came after a professor at Weber State University was paid $175,000 to walk out in lieu of firing over fears of a lawsuit. </p><p>Sarah Projansky, the senior vice provost for faculty and academic affairs, said that the U has carefully reviewed the audit, which examined how tenured faculty perform and are held accountable during review. The audit focused on course evaluations and found 40 “problematic” cases where they believe the reviewed professor should have faced more action from the school. “We believe seven of the 40 cases that they identified as problematic are from [the University of Utah],” Projansky said. “The other 33 cases are from the other institutions [in the state], so we’re sort of all in this together.”</p><p>HB438, which passed in 2024, requires Utah public colleges and Universities to perform mandatory tenure reviews. The audit came after the academic year of 25-26, which was the first year the Tenured Faculty Review (TFR) guidelines were implemented. </p><p>In the case where a tenured professor is met with a dissatisfactory review, they are placed on an improvement plan, “not disciplined, not meant to shame people but designed to help people get back on track,” Projansky said. “Either in [the three TFR areas of] research, teaching or service.”</p><h2>Tenure</h2><p>Sydney Cheek-O’Donnel voiced what she said was the quiet part out loud. “It is concerning that they are drawing on [this] data,” she said. “There was not time for this process to actually even play out one cycle before the legislature decided to review whether it was doing anything, which seems a little bit bananas to me,” she said. </p><p>According to Forbes, eight states have taken steps to limit tenure since 2023. “There seems to be a real lust for getting rid of tenure altogether across the country,” Cheek-O’Donnel said during the meeting.</p><p>Richard Preiss, the past senate president, said that Commissioner Geoff Landward of the Utah System of Higher Education (USHE) is putting together a task force to study the findings and recommendations of the audit “and figure out how to implement them.” Priess said that he has been asked to serve on the task force.</p><p>Porjanksy said that there are no separate rules for tenured faculty. “We’re going… to think about it through the reality of our policies as opposed to a narrative about tenure, because we don’t have separate rules about tenured faculty,” she said. “We fire faculty if we need to because of behavior that violates faculty code,” she said.</p><h2>Student Recruitment</h2><p>The University of Utah has reached another record enrollment and has been doing so for seven years in a row. This year, the U enrolled 39,060 students. This was up 2.3%, or 888 students, from the previous year, growing from about 33,000 students in 2017. </p><p>International graduate enrollment declined by almost 6%, according to Paul Kohn, the senior vice provost for strategic enrollment. “The patterns reflect a changing or very challenging international recruitment environment,” he said, “with executive orders and other rules changing, that are having a quite chilling effect on international student recruitment.” </p><p>The U’s goal is to reach 40,000 students. Kohn said that to reach that recruitment, the U “needs to be mindful of the fact that the competition is intensifying rapidly… elite liberal arts colleges… are buying students to make sure they have enough.” </p><p>Kohn said student success and degree completion is a part of the U’s success. “Our work beyond recruitment has to pay attention to all of the other elements that can turn into barriers or crevices the student can fall through on their way to that degree,” he said. “[The] access and affordability part of our mission is going to require us to be very strategic about how we use our scholarship and financial aid resources.”</p><p>HB352, the regional framework initiative, requires the USHE to “organize the institutions of higher education within the state’s system of higher education to geographic regions,” according to the bill. This bill will see an organization of horizontal and vertical integration across USHE. According to USHE’s website, “Instead of focusing solely on enrollment growth or mission expansion, success under this new structure will be measured by how effectively each school fulfills its specific purpose and contributes to the overall strength of Utah higher education.” </p><h2>Enrollment cliff</h2><p>High school graduate numbers are projected to drop, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, by 10.5% by 2040. “We’re going to have to expand to serving more people who have some college but no degree,” Kohn said. “Maybe people who want to retool or pursue a different career now… We’re going to have to think about all audiences… It’s not going to be feasible for us to remain only in a single lane.” </p><p>Alejo Stark brought up the recently proposed modernization effort. “President [Taylor] Randall cited the impending enrollment cliff as a rationale for staff cuts at our last faculty senate meeting,” Stark said. “If the university is simultaneously highlighting a record growth in enrollment, can you help us sort through how these narratives fit together?” </p><p>The enrollment cliff has not quite hit Utah as it has in California or New England, Kohn said. “We are plateauing, and this year we’re going to start to go down,” he said. “So the pinch is not going to be felt here as significantly for another year or two… Our descent will never be as bad as Californians because people kept reproducing here after the financial crisis of 2008,” Kohn said. </p><p>“But it is going to hit us in the next couple of years [with the declining] high school population and the number of universities in the state competing for that limited population,” Kohn said. “I don’t know if it’ll be a crisis, but it is going to necessitate that we think very differently about how we serve, including what the president has instigated by increasing some efficiencies so that we can scale without adding more people.” </p></div></body>

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The Academic Senate met for the third time during the 2026-27 academic year and discussed legislators potentially weakening tenure safeguards and how rising student enrollment coincides with proposed staff layoffs. On Nov. 2, the Senate discussed how to respond to an audit report to the Utah Legislature. Despite rising student...

Academic Senate discusses possible changes to tenure and layoffs

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The Academic Senate met for the third time during the 2026-27 academic year and discussed legislators potentially weakening tenure safeguards and how risin

Academic Senate discusses possible changes to tenure and layoffs

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