The cuts amount to $16 million in savings, according to a university press release, leaving Portland State with $19 million to pay.
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Portland State University President Ann Cudd announced Tuesday that the university will close two departments and lay off 34 full-time faculty members and two full-time faculty members as part of its plan to address an estimated $35 million budget deficit over the next two years. Its student union, the PSU-American Association of University Professors, has negotiated with management in recent months to reduce the number of layoffs and has said it will continue to push back against the cuts.
Two departments slated for closure in the “interim plan”—university studies, Portland State’s general education department, and dispute resolution—will be closed, Cudd said at a news conference Tuesday. Some faculty jobs will be moved from the Portland campus, which offers international students the opportunity to study abroad at Portland State, as well as teacher licensure; leadership, learning and mentoring; history; philosophy; and international departments of languages and literature. In addition to the full cuts, three faculty positions will be made part-time. Of the 36 faculty and academics who will be laid off, eight are employed.
The last date of employment of the affected teachers will be June 15, 2027; The laid off education professionals will end their careers on Dec. 15, 2026.
The university first sent out pink slips to 52 faculty members and academic specialists — 12 of whom have already been hired, according to the union — in May as part of its interim plan to address the shortage. In accordance with Article 22 of the PSU-AAUP contract, each affected department is allowed to introduce another program to reduce costs in its system without attempting to lay off. University officials began negotiating with the union on July 6.
“I give thanks to everyone who stepped up and stepped forward during this process, whether it was providing creative solutions, rethinking their retirement plans or working for the best outcome for the future of Portland State,” Cudd said during the press conference. “We made these decisions guided by our future and focused on our strategic plan and our main objective to support students to follow their dreams and achieve their goals for a better life in their families and communities.”
The cuts amount to $16 million in savings, according to a university press release, leaving Portland State with $19 million to pay. Cudd said the university will eliminate that number by making “reductions in a variety of other ways,” including eliminating vacant positions.
“We haven’t identified the full $35 million. We’ve been given two years to do that,” said Cudd. “There have also been other retirements outside of the faculty ranks … and we’ve made other cuts. Although, of course, a large part of our budget is personnel.”
The union has not finished fighting the finals. Members are asking Portland State students, staff and community members to write to the Portland State Board of Trustees and urge them to “reject the controlled decline” of the university and “fight for funding.” At a news conference following Cudd’s Tuesday, Bill Knight, president of PSU-AAUP, said it was “very sad” that the president “is not willing to fight for the positive growth and transformation of the university.”
“This ‘final plan’ is only one step in a much larger plan, including those faculty members named in the final plan—their positions may still be saved,” Knight said. “We can still find change and solutions that will bring out those opportunities.”
Union leaders have pushed the university to seek special funding from the Legislature, which Cudd said Monday he has no plans to do.
“It’s a challenging time for Oregon’s budget, there’s no escaping that,” he said. “So we don’t believe we should expect a really big increase.”
Southern Oregon University, which declared a financial emergency in 2025 amid a $12.5 million budget shortfall, received help from the state, but “we believe that’s a real emergency,” Cudd said.
“We have a railroad—but a short road—to deal with our problems on our own terms, to make our strategic plans based on the needs of students, the needs of staff and so on, that we can assess and respond to,” he said. “So we believe that this is the time when we have to take action, and that if we don’t take action now, our future, our financial future, will have serious problems.”
On July 17, 17 elected officials in Oregon wrote to Cudd and the Portland County Board of Trustees asking them to freeze the layoffs and “join teachers, staff, students, and our offices to support increased funding for Portland County in January.”
Union leaders also criticized the university for not investing more in marketing to help boost the university’s enrollment, which has fallen by a third over the past 14 years, Cudd said in May. Portland State “invested only 17 percent of the budget for marketing, recruiting and enrollment that most universities of our size have,” Knight said.
Cudd said marketing will be a priority going forward.
“We plan to do that next year. We will carefully track that and make sure it’s linked to measurable metrics that will drive enrollment gains,” he said.
