Troy University is restructuring departments and programs as operating costs continue to rise at Alabama colleges.

The university eliminated 95 vacant staff positions last year in an effort to balance its budget, officials told the Alabama Commission of Higher Education last month.

Now, the college is undergoing an additional review to see how many faculty are “teaching too few students,” they said.

“There’s going to be some, we’ll call this right-sizing, of faculty to student ratios,” Jim Bookout, Troy’s vice chancellor of financial affairs, said at a November budget hearing. “You want those ratios low, but you show me any university that touts a 1 to 12 faculty to student ratio, and if they don’t have a huge endowment or a large appropriation from their state, that ratio doesn’t work.”

In 2017, Troy had 1,365 staff members, including 566 faculty, 528 professional staff and 271 classified staff. By 2023, the school’s total workforce shrank to 1,174 employees – a decline of 14%.

In that same time period, enrollment shrank by 27%, according to state data. The school currently enrolls 12,416 students.

Bookout said the recent cuts allowed the university to free up its budget by $21 million in the last fiscal year, but officials have asked for additional help from the state to cover soaring property and health insurance costs, technology and software upgrades, and raises for current staff.

The Alabama Commission on Higher Education proposed a 6% increase to the school’s current budget of $75.8 million on Friday. The $5 million increase is about half the amount the college originally requested.

Now, after a long tuition freeze, officials are left with a choice: Raise prices for students or keep reducing costs.

“Somewhere there’s a formula that’s going to have to work,” Bookout said.

Staff vacancies

Troy isn’t the only state college that’s lost staff in recent years.

According to federal data, Alabama A&M University had the steepest decline, 19%, in full-time faculty from 2017 to 2021. Alabama State University, the University of Montevallo and the University of West Alabama also saw declines.

Other colleges, like the University of Alabama at Huntsville and the University of South Alabama, said they were struggling to offer staff a competitive salary as industry grows in those areas. And at the University of North Alabama, which saw record growth throughout the pandemic, 65 staff positions remained open as of last month.

At Troy, officials said they made cuts where positions had been vacant for a year or longer. Currently, the university has 125 active vacancies. Posted positions that are currently available include a mix of research and support staff and STEM and humanities faculty positions.

According to university data, about one third of the 95 recently eliminated positions were vacant for only one year. More than half, 59, of the cuts were for academic roles.

Many positions had gone unfilled after resignations or retirements, officials told AL.com, and were eliminated “in the interest of financial stewardship.” Administrators will work with deans and department chairs to determine which remaining positions are the most critical to keep, a spokesman added.

The university would not provide a list of departments or major programs that experienced or may soon see additional cuts.

“All employee vacancies are carefully evaluated to determine whether or not the position is necessary based on the university’s current strategic focus and the needs of students,” a university spokesman told AL.com. “No departments have been eliminated due to staffing changes, and there are no current plans to do so.”

While the number of faculty positions continues to decline, officials said they’re starting to hire more support staff to help meet changing needs on campus.

From 2021 to 2023, Troy hired about 30 more professional staff to support mental health services and programs for low-income or nontraditional students. Officials may also need to hire more IT personnel as online enrollment grows, Bookout said.

Campus closures, consolidations

The college is also weighing a possible closure of its Dothan campus, as well as potential cuts at other satellite sites in Montgomery and Phenix City. Troy had 65 teaching sites in 2010, and now has nine remaining across multiple states, Bookout said.

“As we see enrollments decline on those campuses, we see courses not being offered on those campuses, we see more of a community service from those campuses rather than educational opportunities in those campuses,” Bookout told commissioners.

Jim Purcell, the commission’s director, pushed back on the plan, citing recent research on workforce needs. An ongoing ACHE study found the Dothan area has the lowest rate of residents holding bachelor’s degrees in the state.

“We need that resource down in that part of the state to make sure we have the workforce as that economy changes, too,” he said.

Bookout said the review is not so much about closing facilities as it is about “justifying adding in-class programs to the campus” and assigning faculty to teach on those sites.

Officials told AL.com that the facilities reviews are ongoing and declined to provide details on any of the university’s findings. Decisions on any potential closures or consolidations are made by senior leadership, a spokesman said.