Interim UL Lafayette President Jaimie Hebert announced in a Thursday afternoon email to faculty and staff that 70 employees across all divisions will be cut through a combination of position eliminations, retirements, resignations and reassignments as the university seeks to close in on a $25 million structural deficit. These cuts are in addition to the six positions eliminated last month.
https://thecurrentla.com/2025/ul-lafayette-cutting-70-employees/
I encourage everyone to read the article because more cuts are coming to address recurring debt.
News tonight mentioned that the University hired 300+ employees with only about 70 being professors over the past few years with a declining revenue. Sounds like more than 70 employees need to be cut.
I have a feeling you’ll see more employees gone in the coming months.
All of this could have been prevented if T-Joe would have grown the university the right way. Now we have egg on our face the size of the omelette down in Abbeville.
Grow undergrad population to 20k. Split the campus and have more academic buildings in the research park near the athletic complex. Build commercial and residential space all around the athletic complex. Allow an investment group to manage and run it. Don’t get fleeced and just make money.
Instead we had to legitimately Go Woke Go Broke.
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Wrong.
If we would have focused more on true learning at the university, encouraging more studies in the areas of philosophy, sociology, and foreign languages, we’d be way in the black right now. Too much emphasis on the STEM and business majors is causing our beloved school to circle down the drain.
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Approximately a dozen gone from athletics this a.m. Don’t have much in way of names and wouldn’t post anyway.
Apparently another round is in the works before end of the year as well.
If 400+ were hired at the same time revenue was declining, cant help but think way more are coming. I’ve been through enough of these in the oilfield to know that.
Cutting heads is always the fastest way to reduce expenses.
That 400+ number is a little misleading. My understanding is that number was derived based on new roles/titles. However much of that was not actually adding to the headcount overall. Old roles were being done away with (retirement etc.) and they were not filling those old positions. However new titles/positions were created and accounted for that spot but in reporting it shows up as new.
Yes there was an increase but not sure what it is. Would be nice to see just an overall headcount on a year over year basis for comparison. As is usually the case this can’t be boiled down to one area. Revenue & expenses at multiple levels led to the issue at hand. The Covid time period really did a number. And with some sales taxes ending the state is looking to cut 250 mil from higher ed next year.
The budget shortfall at UL isn’t good and needs correcting but keep in mind we aren’t the only University with an issue. You aren’t going to hear much from any of the other schools because they are facing much of the same. Even LSU is having issues. I don’t think there is a University in the state that doesn’t have some type of hiring freeze in place.
