You asked, we answered.

We heard from so many of you during our Facebook Retrenchment Race to the Bottom— asking what you can do about these policies, looking for contact information for the various boards of trustees, sharing your experiences with retrenchment…

The information wasn’t the easiest to find. But, you have a right to make your voice heard on this and other issues impacting higher education. 

The final five in the Retrenchment Race to the Bottom were Wright State University, University of Akron, University of Toledo, Youngstown State University, and Central State University.  Contact information for the boards of trustees at these universities can be found below.

Central State University Board of Trustees
Central State’s website directs correspondence and communications for the Board of Trustees be sent to Elizabeth Nash, Assistant Secretary of the Board and Office of the General Counsel
Email: enash@centralstate.edu
Phone: 937.376.6629
Address: 1400 Brush Row Road, P.O. Box 1004, Wilberforce, OH 45384
Website: https://www.centralstate.edu/about-csu-administration/board-trustees

University of Akron Board of Trustees
The University of Akron provides the following contact information for its Board of Trustees.
Email: BoardOffice@uakron.edu
Phone: 330.972.7873
Address: Office of the Board of Trustees, 302 Buchtel Common, Akron, Ohio 44325-4705
Website: https://www.uakron.edu/bot/index.dot

University of Toledo
The University of Toledo provides the following contact information for its Board of Trustees.
Email: BOT@utoledo.edu
Phone: 419.530.5660
Address: 2801 W. Bancroft St. MS 946, Toledo, OH 43606
Website: https://www.utoledo.edu/offices/trustees/

Wright State University Board of Trustees
Wright State’s website directs correspondence and communications for the Board of Trustees to be sent to the attention of Daniel Palmer, Secretary to the Board and Director of Government Affairs.
Email: daniel.palmer@wright.edu
Phone: 937-775-2199
Address: 286 University Hall, 3640 Colonel Glenn Hwy, Dayton, OH 45435
Website: https://www.wright.edu/board-of-trustees

Youngstown State University Board of Trustees
Youngstown State’s provides very little information as to how to contact the Board of Trustees directly. As this information was not readily available on its website, it may be best to direct your communication to the attention of Anita Hackstedde, Secretary of the Board via the Office of the YSU President.
Email: unavailable
Phone: 330.941.3000 or 330.941.3101
Address: Tod Hall, 1 University Plaza, Youngstown, OH 44555
Website: https://ysu.edu/board-of-trustees/member-profiles

Cutting Faculty Positions Doesn’t Cut Costs; But Retrenchment Does Decrease the Quality of Education

Retrenchment has become so commonplace that it has been accepted as part of a broader shift in the higher education landscape. But that doesn’t mean that it makes sense.

First, faculty compensation –salaries and benefits—constitutes just 18%-25% of the budgets of Ohio’s public universities. When universities calculate the instructional costs, they typically report them as 55%-65% of the institutional budget. But faculty salaries amount to just a third to half of those reported costs.

At most of our universities, administrative compensation—salaries and benefits—constitute as much or more of the institutional budget as faculty compensation. The salaries of mid-level administrators are generally in the same range as those of faculty with higher ranks and seniority. Upper-level administrators receive salaries much higher than those received by anyone else in our universities—with the possible exception of some football and basketball coaches.

Retrenchment seldom involves upper-level administrators. When administrative cuts are made, it is almost always lower-level support staff whose positions are eliminated. Ironically, in many cases, those lower-salaried positions have actually been reported under the heading of instructional costs.

The major problem with retrenching faculty as a means of addressing budget problems is not only that faculty compensation is a relatively small part of university budgets but also that faculty teaching and research produces almost all of the revenue at our universities.

Just about everything else is supported by instruction and research.

It is a common misperception that intercollegiate athletics produce a great deal of revenue. But in Ohio, Ohio State University is the only public university at which intercollegiate athletics are self-supporting. At the other universities that field football teams, the athletics programs are supported by subsidies from the universities of $20 and $40 million per year.

In the mid-2010s, a study conducted at Ohio University revealed that students at Ohio’s public universities are, in effect, subsidizing intercollegiate athletics with at least $1,000 to $2,000 of their tuition per year.

Retrenchment means that students are getting even less for their tuition dollars that are actually supporting instruction. For full-time faculty are generally replaced by multiple part-time or adjunct instructors. Without undervaluing the efforts of these adjunct instructors, they generally do not have the credentials that full-time faculty have.

Because adjunct faculty either have other full-time employment or teach, by necessity, at several institutions, they are not generally on campus outside of class time and specific office hours. This limited availability means that students do not receive the mentoring that is often a very key component of their educations, particularly if courses in their majors are not being taught by full-time faculty.

Likewise, because adjunct faculty either have other full-time employment or teach, by necessity, at several institutions, they generally do not have the time or the resources to sustain active research and scholarship. And because a university’s academic reputation is largely defined by the research and scholarship that its faculty members produce, the value of the degrees that students earn is eroded when full-time faculty positions are cut and replaced with part-time positions.

Full-time faculty are annually evaluated on the quality of their teaching, their research and scholarship, and their service. Without undervaluing the efforts of administrators and support staff, most of the service to community groups and professional organizations is conducted by full-time faculty. This service establishes professional relationships of value to the universities as institutions and, more importantly, of value to the students who will reside in and contribute to those communities and engage with other professionals in their fields.

In sum, retrenching full-time faculty to compensate for overspending in other areas is the equivalent of a corporation investing in stock buybacks instead of in its core products and services—and then pegging executive salaries and bonuses to the stock price. This sort of practice may account, at least in part, for the fact that the average lifespan of the corporations on the S&P 500 has been between 15 and 20 years over the past decade compared to 67 years in 1960. The common political talking point has been that our universities need to be run like businesses. But our universities are not businesses. They are, instead, public institutions, and no one would want to replace or even reconfigure them every 15-20 years.

Another side of retrenchment is the elimination of programs with few recent graduates. On the surface, this seems like a commonsensical approach, but it actually reflects a simplistic notion of curricula.

If one examines in detail the recent reductions in majors at several Ohio universities, one finds that the elimination of a large number of majors results in surprisingly small numbers of faculty positions and course offerings being eliminated. This seeming incongruity is actually quite easily explained. The faculty members teach the courses for other higher-enrolled majors, but the low-enrolled majors reconfigure requirements to give students a broader variety of majors (and minors) from which to choose. So, despite the appearance of smart business management, eliminating most of the majors was not actually saving the universities much money, but they were, instead, simply eliminating options available to students. Many of the faculty retrenched ostensibly in conjunction with these large reductions in majors have actually had nothing to do with the eliminated majors.

It’s time for policy makers to invest in what matters most–faculty, instruction & learning.

A college degree–and all of its benefits–didn’t always cost this much. Since around 1980, tuition and fees have increased far faster than inflation. At the same time, policymakers in Ohio and Washington, D.C. reduced grant aid and shifted toward student loans, placing more of the financial burden directly on students and families.

This shift reflects a broader ideological change. Higher education was once viewed as a public good worthy of public investment. Beginning in the 1980s, it was increasingly treated as a private commodity—something individuals should pay for themselves. As public funding declined, students and families were forced to borrow to make up the difference.

The irony is striking: many of the same voices that championed the shift from grants to loans now point to the debt from those loans to question whether students are getting their money’s worth. It’s a losing-and false- argument since study after study has shown that people with a bachelor’s degree earn significantly more, about $1 million more over the course of their career, than those with only a high school diploma. Yet, policy makers in Ohio and D.C. stopped funding higher education and told working families to figure it out—using loans and amassing debt to go to further their education.

If we’re serious about value, we need to focus on and invest in what actually drives student success.

Faculty are the foundation of higher education. They teach, mentor, conduct research, connect students to careers, and shape the intellectual and professional growth that defines the college experience. More than 90% of students report turning to faculty for guidance—clear evidence that faculty-student relationships are central to student success.

And yet, faculty are not where most tuition dollars go.

Faculty salaries and benefits typically account for just 18–25% of public university budgets in Ohio—and roughly one-quarter to one-third nationally. Despite this relatively small share, faculty compensation has grown slowly compared to tuition. Between 1990 and 2000, for example, tuition at public four-year institutions rose 48% (adjusted for inflation), while faculty compensation increased by only 4%.

At the same time, colleges have made choices that move resources away from instruction.
Administrative staffing has surged. Since the late 1980s, the number of full-time non-academic professional staff has doubled at public universities and grown by more than 40% at private institutions. Today, faculty are a minority of full-time staff, with administrative roles often outnumbering faculty positions by as much as 3 to 1.

Institutions have also increasingly replaced full-time, tenure-track faculty with lower-paid, part-time adjunct instructors. Today, about 40% of faculty positions are part-time. While this shift may reduce costs in the short term, it often comes at the expense of student support, continuity, and educational quality.
Meanwhile, colleges continue to invest heavily in amenities and large-scale projects designed to attract students—from luxury housing to multimillion-dollar athletic facilities. These spending priorities reflect competition for enrollment, but they raise an important question: are institutions investing in what matters most for student learning?

Even as sticker prices can overstate what students actually pay—and have even declined slightly in inflation-adjusted terms in recent years—the long-term trend remains clear: students are paying more, borrowing more, and shouldering more risk.

If we truly care about affordability and student outcomes, we need to realign our priorities.

That means reinvesting in faculty—the people most directly responsible for student learning and success. It means strengthening full-time teaching and mentoring, not replacing it. And it means asking hard questions about administrative growth and spending choices that do little to improve educational quality.

Higher education is an institution, not a business and college is not just a product—it’s an investment in an individual AND in advancing society’s collective future. And at the center of that relationship is faculty. If we want students to succeed, faculty cannot remain a shrinking priority in a growing budget.

The 2026 Ohio Conference AAUP Board of Trustees elections will be held electronically from March 15-March 31, 2026. Each member who is in good standing, which includes being current on their dues, will be emailed a ballot from BallotBoxOnline, the secure voting platform OCAAUP has used in past years.

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CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT

Name: Dr. Gretchen McNamara

Institutional Affiliation: Wright State University, Senior Lecturer of Music, Trombone and Music Education

Why do you want to serve on the OCAAUP Board of Trustees the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University professors?

For over a decade I have been actively involved in my faculty union, the American Association of University Professors. I became a member and involved in leadership from the very beginning of the Non-Tenure Eligible unionization efforts at Wright State in 2012. I became intimately and immediately aware of the power of our faculty union, and while it is not usually easy work, it is good work. I am ‘good trouble.’

I am running for President of the OCAAUP, a position I have held for four years, to continue the work of higher education advocacy in the state. The Ohio Conference is the largest and most successful AAUP state conference in the country, and I like the work it will take to keep it that way. Union leadership requires strong communication and organizational skills, both of which I possess. It requires thoughtful responses to head on attacks and an ability to reason. Given the current state of higher education in Ohio and the ongoing political attacks, there is no more important time to be actively involved and to continue to lead our conference. It is with confidence and commitment that I’m running for re-election.

Bio: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-tH6iwtUFYA4-iCi1_QrP9QdhX1f2euT/edit

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CANDIDATE FOR SECRETARY

The candidate for this position withdrew their nomination very recently. According to the OCAAUP Code of Regulations, it was past the deadline for other potential candidates to be considered by the Nominating Committee and added to this ballot. As such, the committee will put out another call for nominations and a special election will be held for the position of Secretary. Look for more information on this in the next few weeks.

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CANDIDATES FOR AT-LARGE MEMBER—PRIVATE INSTITUTION

There are two nominees for the position of At-Large Member-Private Institution. OCAAUP members will vote for one person when voting opens on March 15, 2026.

Name: Liz Klainot-Hess

Institutional Affiliation: Capital University, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Criminology

Why do you want to serve on the OCAAUP Board of Trustees the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University professors?

My name is Liz Klainot-Hess and I have been an Assistant Professor at Capital University for the last 3 years. Prior to that I taught at two other private colleges in Ohio – Denison and Kenyon. I have always been heavily involved in the labor movement, starting in high school, and was the co-chair of the UW-Milwaukee Graduate Assistants union while in my Master’s program. I also wrote my dissertation and several articles about the unionization of contingent faculty and the problems faced by these faculty and currently have a book on the topic under review. 

I think unions and labor advocacy groups are now more important than ever, especially with the threats facing both unions and universities/colleges. One thing that makes the private colleges in Ohio different from the other Ohio colleges is that tenure-track faculty cannot unionize. At the last state meeting I noticed that there were only representatives from two private schools (including Capital) and three advocacy chapters in attendance. I would like to encourage more Ohio private colleges to get involved in AAUP activities and attend the annual state meeting. It would also be great to have some specific programming or activities specifically for private colleges and advocacy chapters. I also think it is important for the AAUP chapters at Ohio private colleges to begin to collaborate with each other.

Bio: https://elizabethklainothess.com/

Name: Rosemary O’Neill

Institutional Affiliation: Kenyon College; Professor of English and Chair of Gender and Sexuality Studies

Why do you want to serve on the OCAAUP Board of Trustees the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University professors?

I started an advocacy chapter of the AAUP at Kenyon College in 2023 after years of feeling frustrated about the loss of faculty voice in decision-making in my institution. Our chapter has only gotten more energized as austerity-driven cuts and political pressures bear down on our school (like so many others). What started as a core group of less than ten members has grown to a chapter of over forty.

On the OCAAUP Board of Trustees, I look forward to representing the perspectives of private college faculty and increasing collaboration among Ohio’s SLACs on labor issues. It has always been illuminating for me to compare notes with other AAUP chapters at Ohio private colleges, and I hope to formalize this in some way in the years to come through a SLAC caucus and/or programming specifically for chapters at SLACs. 

Bio: https://www.kenyon.edu/directory/rosemary-oneill/

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Thank you to all the nominees for their willingness to serve in these positions!  

Students, Faculty, Staff Deserve Better; Board of Trustees Must Engage Them In Next Presidential Hiring Process

Attribution: Jennifer Tisone Price, Executive Director, American Association of University Professors-Ohio Conference

“The students, faculty, and staff of the Ohio State University deserve better. Better looks like respecting colleges and universities as institutions of higher education; not running them like businesses. Better looks like focusing on providing quality, affordable education. Better looks like investing in instruction, learning, and programs to support students. Better looks like improving faculty to administrator ratios. Better looks like standing up for education rather than bowing down to powerful special interests, big donors, and politicians.

This is OSU’s third president since 2020. If the university wants to do better with the next one, it must have a transparent hiring process that honors shared governance which includes the input from faculty. Shared governance isn’t just a bureaucratic nicety. It’s how universities stay honest.

OSU needs a president that prioritizes education, supports students, respects faculty, and values diversity. When faculty have a voice in hiring and curriculum, students win. Faculty don’t just teach the curriculum — they are the curriculum. No one understands what students need in the classroom better than the people standing in it every day. Faculty must be meaningfully engaged in the hiring process if OSU is going to do better and continue to hold itself out as a top-tier university.

Carter’s administration boasted about bringing in revenue and silencing faculty and students. What did we get with that approach? A president stepping down because of an inappropriate relationship and peddling access to leadership for personal gain. A conservative think tank professor assaulting a reporter. The board of trustees needs to do things differently. They can start by showing they value the voices of faculty and students.”

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