Colleges Are Using COVID as an Excuse for Austerity. Unions Are Pushing Back.
Union workers protest layoffs at Harvard University on January 14, 2021, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Stuart Cahill / MediaNews Group / Boston Herald
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As COVID-19 swept across the U.S. last winter and spring, colleges and universities adapted swiftly to the situation. Though it was swift, it was not without pain: Just as quickly as professors learned to teach through a screen on Zoom, administrations slashed budgets. In the early days of the pandemic, little was certain about the future — if students would defer fall enrollment, how states might cut education funding or if the federal government would step in to offset the financial impact of the crises. Nevertheless, public and private higher education institutions across the country put in place austerity measures ahead of what they foresaw as a fiscal emergency.