Dive Brief:
- Sonoma State University is moving to cut staff, faculty, programs, departments and its athletics programs as it faces a larger-than-expected deficit of nearly $24 million.
- Interim President Emily Cutrer described the depth of the university’s budget hole as “sobering news.” To manage it, the university is cutting four management positions and 12 staff positions, and it will not renew contracts of 46 tenured and adjunct faculty members for the 2025-26 academic year.
- It also plans to axe about two dozen undergraduate and graduate programs. Additionally, it will eliminate its departments of art history, economics, geology, philosophy, theater and dance, and women and gender studies, while consolidating other programs and schools.
Dive Insight:
In announcing the cuts at Sonoma State, Cutrer outlined several forces behind the university’s growing budget gap. She cited, in part, inflation — in personnel costs, as well as supplies and utilities. Recent cost escalations led the university to the “unfortunate realization” that its yearslong deficit was even larger than expected, the president said.
But the public institution’s chief challenge is enrollment, Cutrer said, noting a 38% decline since its peak in 2015. (Fall headcount stood at just under 6,000 in 2023, per federal data.) Those decreases hit the university’s revenue in tuition and fees as well as in enrollment-based funding from the California State University system.
To cope, Sonoma over the past two years has offered buyouts, made “strategic” job cuts and frozen hiring, among other operational moves, Cutrer said.
“Unfortunately, the actions taken so far, difficult though they have been, are not enough,” she added. “Further steps must be taken to fully close the budget gap and ensure Sonoma State’s financial capacity to best serve its current and future students and adapt to a changing higher education landscape.”
Those steps entail broad-based cuts. On the chopping block is a wide range of programs, including bachelor’s programs in art, economics, physics, philosophy and many others. Some master’s programs are also slated to be cut, among them Spanish, English and public administration.
Meanwhile, other programs will be consolidated. For example, Sonoma’s departments of American multicultural studies, Chicano and Latino studies, and Native American studies are set to merge into an ethnic studies department with a single major under it.
Also making headlines is Sonoma’s decision to end its Division II NCAA athletics programs after the current academic year, which was made after a “thorough review of the university’s financial necessities and long-term sustainability,” the institution said. Sonoma plans to honor the scholarships of current student athletes and to support those who decide to transfer to another school, such as by helping them obtain their transcripts.
Expected savings from the cuts include:
- $8 million in reduced instructional costs.
- $3.8 million from reorganization.
- $3.7 million from cutting athletics.
- $3.3 million from hiring freeze.
- $1.3 million from university-wide budget reductions.
Cutrer said the round of cuts likely represent the “large majority” Sonoma will have to make this year, but she warned more could be necessary as it discusses shared services with Cal State.
Sonoma is by no means the only public institution in California making cuts. The Cal State and University of California systems are both scrambling to manage potential reductions in state funding amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars after Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled his latest budget proposal for the 2025-26 fiscal year.
After the proposal’s release earlier this month, Cal State — facing a state funding reduction of $375 million — said that a “shortfall of this magnitude will negatively impact academic programming, student services, course offerings and the CSU workforce.”
