This is one of the things that prompted me to post this. My partner and I finished our PhDs a couple of years ago and have been lucky enough to snag teaching appointments, but most of the people in our cohorts are still looking or have already left academia. I have always been blunt with undergraduates and advise them to apply to PhD programs only if they can’t see themselves doing anything else.
It’s pretty wild to see people with multiple books, active research projects, major fellowships under their belts, etc. get rejected from every job they apply to. That would’ve gotten you tenure at a good school 30-40 years ago, and now it’s often not sufficient to get even a one year position somewhere.
But that won’t make much of a dent in the budget. The real money is in those tenured positions that come with full benefits. The adjuncts and part-time lecturers are cheap labor. You can easily hire a few to teach those intro courses.
Ithaca’s tenure track Spanish faculty appears to have 2 with tenure (professor, associate professor) and 3 without (assistant professor). That is in addition to 2 lecturers. Could they cut the department back to just the 2 with tenure?
Depends how much they want to save. The cheapest route is to cut everyone but the 2 lecturers. You can always hire another adjunct or two if needed. Tenure and Tenure-track are far more costly.
I wouldn’t be so quick to assume majors and minors in the School of H&S, including those having been discussed here, will be at all harshly impacted by cuts. These departments serve as the institution’s back bone. Associated H&S faculty occupy a number of roles in multiple and mutually beneficial programs across schools (HSHP, Park, etc). A professor may be a member of a department but teach in many areas. The numbers in one of the websites cited above could be interpreted as deceptive, since seemingly weak department may have relatively few majors but an incredible number of minors.