BSU Cutting 2 Degree Programs, 14 Faculty Positions

On Wednesday, Lakeland News reported that 14 faculty members and two degree programs will be cut at Bemidji State University at the end of this academic year. We sat down for two interviews with BSU staff, one with President John Hoffman as well as one with Professor of Philosophy Dennis Lunt, who is part of the faculty that will be laid off in May.

Since the start of the pandemic, Bemidji State University’s enrollment has dropped by over 30%, and partially due to these decreases, BSU has found themselves in an $11 million budget hole. Computer science and philosophy, which Hoffman says have less than 20 students each, are the two programs being cut.

The university wanted to make it clear that any student in these programs will be able to finish their major. According to Hoffman and past expenditure numbers provided to us by BSU, between the years of 2018 and 2023, the percentage of the school’s budget that goes to instruction has dropped from 40.6% to 37.8%.

“The rest of the university does cost money,” said Lunt. “So for us to be at 37, heading to 35% of expenditures would be on instruction, we are well outside the industry standard.”

“One of the ways we look at it is we look at how much proportion of our spending goes to instruction or to academic support to help our faculty,” explained Hoffman. “As a percentage of our total expenditure, that is going down. But we’ve actually increased how much we are spending on instruction by about $2,000 per student.”

The new proposal will bring 2026’s projected budget to within $400,000 of a balanced budget rather than the current several million dollar deficit.

The university has two sources of funding, with about half of it coming from the state and grants and the other half coming from students and tuition.

“I would like to see the state give us appropriate funding instead of putting it on the backs of students,” Lunt said.

“We need state support. As a public institution, that is critical to our future,” stated Hoffman. “And so we’ll be working to make that case because Bemidji State and of [Northwest Technical College], it is a strong value proposition for our students and for the businesses and industries in northern Minnesota.”

One point of contention is that while the percentage allocated towards instruction has been going down, other resources such as auxiliary and athletics have risen. In an opinion piece published by the Bemidji Pioneer, Lunt said that he is not against spending money on buildings, sports teams, or administrators. What he is not okay with is sacrificing degree opportunities for his students while “the institution fails to contain its other costs.”

“Over the last six years, athletics has almost doubled the revenues that they have brought in for our institution,” Hoffman said. “Now, they’ve also had significant increases in expenditures. But it is a great source of revenue for us as an institution. It’s also 85% of our media impressions that we receive as a university are connected to athletics.”

Even though Professor Lunt will be let go in May, he says that he wants to spend his remaining time at the school trying to make everything as balanced as he can for the future.

“I fully respect the hard choices that our leaders have to make,” he added. “We are running out of stuff to cut in instruction. Academics is always the thing they cut. Unfortunately, it’s often easier to cut teaching faculty than it is to ask hard questions about other expenses at Bemidji State. My goal is for us to ask some hard questions and then have legislative leaders and local leaders join us in asking those questions.”

According to President Hoffman, these 14 faculty cuts, along with the 20-plus positions eliminated last year, are bringing the staff-to-student ratio back to what it was pre-pandemic. He also noted that for the first time since 2017, enrollment is in the positives, with an overall 3.5% increase.