Lakeland Community College in Kirtland will look to cut 30 faculty positions to address an ongoing budget deficit, the college's president said Friday. The college’s faculty union has two weeks to offer a formal response and any alternatives to the cuts proposed by the administration.
Lakeland President Sunil Ahuja said the college needs to balance its budget. Enrollment has dropped by 44% since 2015, echoing a broader decline colleges and universities have seen across the country. The number of professors, though, has stayed basically same, Ahuja said. There are now 117 full-time faculty.
"This is not something that anyone enjoys doing," Ahuja said. "I am carefully, thoughtfully looking at this campus wide. And I think this will be the last round for us. We will produce a balanced budget for next year. And and we should be on stable ground after this."
This is the third round of cuts at Lakeland, with 25 staff cut in late 2023 and 17 administrator positions eliminated in summer 2024. Ohio Auditor Keith Faber in an April 2023 audit said the college was in serious financial trouble and needed to correct its course quickly. The cuts over the last two years have reduced the budget deficit from around $3 million to $2 million, although the college also "strategically" invested about $300,000 into a handful of positions to improve customer service and student experience, Ahuja said.
The Lakeland Faculty Association, which represents the faculty union the college, did not respond to a request for comment Friday afternoon.
Ahuja said the university has examined which courses are the lowest-enrolled, but has not yet proposed eliminating entire programs, as some local colleges and universities like Youngstown State University and Cleveland State University have done.
The University of Akron proposed laying off 35 faculty in November 2024 to address a budget deficit, while Cleveland State University laid off 14 staff and offered a wave of buyouts last year.
