But Kim, who succeeded former President Carol Folt<\/a> on July 1, wrote that as many 200 of those who received layoff notices could remain with the university in new positions. And he noted that the job cuts are nearly complete.<\/p>\n \u201cThe layoffs, of course, fall most heavily on those losing their jobs, but everyone else in our community also feels their impact \u2014 through the emotional strain of losing colleagues and friends, the resulting stresses on departments and units, and the challenge of doing more with fewer resources,\u201d Kim wrote.<\/p>\n USC interim President Beong-Soo Kim, who assumed the top job at the university July 1.<\/p>\n (Gus Ruelas\/SC Photo\/Gus Ruelas)<\/p>\n USC\u2019s deficit grew dramatically during the final year of Folt\u2019s tenure, mushrooming from $158 million to upwards of $200 million \u2014 an increase of more than 26%.<\/p>\n The private university, traditionally known for its wealth, embarked on several pricey projects in recent years, among them the opening of a campus in Washington, D.C., that included buying a building there for about $49 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2021, USC agreed to pay $1.1 billion in settlements<\/a> to former patients of university gynecologist George Tyndall \u2014 the largest sex abuse payout in the history of higher education.<\/p>\n USC had announced a spate of austerity measures in March<\/a>, including a hiring freeze, a reassessment of capital spending projects and restrictions on discretionary spending. <\/p>\n Now, with the layoffs, Kim said that USC is \u201con track to eliminate our long-term deficit\u201d by the end of the fiscal year that concludes in June. <\/p>\n \u201cNotwithstanding this encouraging news, we cannot afford the luxury of complacency,\u201d Kim wrote in the letter. \u201cFirst, our fiscal progress must be monitored carefully to ensure we reach our budgetary goals for this fiscal year and can sustainably generate positive margins in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n The USC actions come at a time of unprecedented threats against universities by the Trump administration, which has slashed billions of dollars in funding at campuses across the country. <\/p>\n On Oct. 16, USC rejected President Trump\u2019s education compact<\/a>, which offers priority research funding to universities in exchange for following Trump\u2019s conservative vision. At the time, Kim wrote that tying research benefits to signing the compact \u201cwould, over time, undermine the same values of free inquiry and academic excellence that [it] seeks to promote.\u201d<\/p>\n Kim\u2019s latest letter obliquely referenced a chaotic year for universities amid Trump\u2019s effort to remake higher education. He noted the presence of \u201csignificant stresses,\u201d \u201cuncertainty\u201d and \u201cscrutiny\u201d in higher education, adding, \u201cMore disruptions are coming, even if we can\u2019t predict their timing or form.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDuring these volatile times, it\u2019s important to be agile, remain open to different perspectives and ideas, and never lose sight of our long-term mission and values,\u201d Kim said.<\/p>\n The layoffs have come as USC has steadily raised tuition and fees to become one of the most expensive colleges<\/a> in the U.S. The university \u2014 which has been buffeted by controversy in recent years, including scandals involving Tyndall and former medical school dean Carmen A. Puliafito<\/a> \u2014 projects the cost of undergraduate attendance for the upcoming academic year to be $99,139, including housing<\/a>.<\/p>\n Historically, layoffs at USC have been rare. The 1990s, marked by a recession brought on by the collapse of the region\u2019s aerospace industry<\/a>, saw two notable rounds of job cuts.<\/p>\n In 1992, USC laid off 58 people<\/a> and eliminated 31 vacant positions to pare down a $15-million deficit. Three years later, at least 100 faculty members at the medical school took pay cuts and an undisclosed number were dismissed as part of a plan to address an $11-million deficit<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The University of Southern California has issued layoff notices to more than 900 employees since July amid a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[16476,2791,13396,828,25796,11082,5679,25794,48,52,51,25795,47,50,49,3020,25797,7161,315,1816,3533],"class_list":["post-36935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-budget-deficit","tag-campus","tag-cut","tag-employee","tag-fiscal-crisis","tag-high-education","tag-july","tag-kim","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-layoff-notice","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-president-trump","tag-same-value","tag-stress","tag-time","tag-university","tag-usc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} <\/p>\n