Students and teachers at Queens College are pushing back against a new wave of layoffs
BY EMMANUEL KRAGBE
Imagine: After years of hard work, you’ve finally earned the graduate degree you set out for: a master’s in library science from Queens College (QC) in 2014. Soon after, you land a job as a non-teaching adjunct in the Department of Special Collections and Archives at Rosenthal Library. Twelve years later, budget cuts hit your department, and your boss has to deliver the uncomfortable news — after more than a decade of service, you’re being let go.
This was the case for Lori Wallach, a story relatable to the many adjunct professors and others at Queens College who are now facing a new round of layoffs. This June, Queens College administrators announced they would be scaling back the budget for temporary services — a fund used to pay hourly and part-time workers — by 50%, forcing many college assistants and non-teaching adjuncts to leave their positions on short notice. According to the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), a university union, the austerity measure could also endanger up to 40% of chemistry lab sections, restrict access to campus studios, and eliminate summer advising for pre-law students.
The cuts continued: in July, the administration released another directive for academic departments, asking them to cut approximately 25% of their adjunct faculty.
But the demands have triggered fierce backlash from students, professors, and advocates for higher education, who argue that they were already operating on a shoe-string budget and warn about the long-term effects of losing adjuncts.
“There’s nothing left to cut. Things have been cut so much already — we struggle to offer all the classes that students need to finish their degree,” said Amy Herzog, a current professor at Queens College who chaired its Media Studies department from 2021 to 2024. “I don’t know how we can support our students with anything less than we already have.”
“Some people just outright had to fire someone,” explained Melissa Checker, the chair of the Urban Studies department. “Other people were told that they couldn’t give the summer salary anymore, which was very rough because [the adjuncts] had been counting on it, and then suddenly you couldn’t do that.”
It’s no secret that Queens College has entered a tumultuous era. Since the pandemic, CUNY institutions city-wide have started to recover from declining student enrollment, except for Queens College, which has grappled with worsening enrollment and retention rates. As a result, the university has had to make several tough decisions, such as departmental budget slashes, and is now searching for its next president amid financial instability.
This summer’s cuts are the latest in a longer trend. According to CUNY’s most recent financial report, Queens College removed 87 full-time staff positions on net from Fall 2023 to Fall 2025, a 7% decrease. That figure is nearly twice the cuts across all six of CUNY’s community colleges combined; the next highest was City College, which lost 23-full time faculty, shrinking 5%.
Meanwhile, funding for adjuncts is already relatively meager. Adjunct-related costs at Queens College were projected to increase by 14% over the upcoming school year, primarily driven by contractual pay increases, which is the lowest of any of CUNY’s 11 senior colleges.
University representatives maintain that they are making the best of an intractable situation. “Queens College is preparing for the coming academic year under budget challenges while continuing to prioritize making sure that our students meet their educational goals,” said Troy Hahn, the school’s interim vice president for finance and administration, via email. “There is no across-the-board reduction of adjunct faculty or temporary services funding; however, annual/semester teaching appointments are always subject to need/demand and under-enrolled class sections could be impacted.”
“We will continue to work collaboratively across the campus to identify where reductions can be made with the least impact while also working to increase our revenues,” added Hahn. “During this process of greater focus on budgetary efficiencies, faculty and staff contractual requirements and regulatory compliance are being observed.”
Yet teachers and students aren’t soothed. On July 27, nearly 100 members of the PSC rallied outside the office of CUNY Board of Trustees Chair William Thompson in Lower Manhattan, accusing administrators of mismanaging university funds.
“Cuts and fiscal controls have pushed the academic community into a tailspin,” wrote PSC President James Davis, who spoke at the rally, in an open letter to Chairman Thompson and Chancellor Matos Rodriguez. “It will take years to recover, and now is the time to invest in Queens College, not intensify these measures. These are people’s jobs — college assistants, teaching and non-teaching adjuncts — and they should be restored.”
The event also drew the attention of Queens lawmakers, including Assemblymembers Claire Valdez and Catalina Cruz. “This is ultimately about the students,” Cruz told the crowd. “We’re not going to let this happen at Queens College or any other campus.”
Protesters were serenaded by the musical group Weird Mechanical Orchestra, invited by Thomas Lee, the administrative director for the School of Music at Queens College. Despite the context, the atmosphere remained optimistic, with chants attracting passersby.
“Queens College faculty has already been cut to the bone,” said Erica Doran, a member of the QC chapter of the PSC and a professor in the psychology department. “We are hurting, our students are suffering. There’s nothing left to give. If cuts need to be made, they need to be made from the top.”
