Statement from UConn-AAUP Executive Committee
January 9, 2026

The Executive Committee of the UConn-AAUP is deeply concerned that the UConn administration is undermining the core educational mission of the University. The administration is pressing for budget cuts and increased workloads without sufficient feedback and vetting by multiple stakeholders. This will cause direct harm to undergraduate and graduate education and research achievements. These changes undermine faculty research and quality teaching.

The administration claims there is a budget crisis, but it both refuses to be fully transparent about its budgetary claims and has not declared a state of financial exigency. UConn had a budget surplus in Fiscal Year 2025. How does that square with the idea that we are in a structural deficit that calls for cuts that eliminate programs critical to the university’s academic mission? UConn has averaged 9% growth in revenue net of tuition discounts. Where is the money going?

Furthermore, we are concerned about the rapid turnover of university leadership positions and what that might signal.

Our request is simple: the administration should switch to practicing full budgetary transparency and respect the collective bargaining process by making proposals on faculty workload and working conditions at the bargaining table. Through the collective bargaining process, faculty can engage on equal terms in decision-making for mutual benefit. Making UConn the best it can be requires substantive interaction and real, respectful give-and-take, not top-down demands and scripted town halls or email blasts laden with corporate jargon.

Right now, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the largest college at the university, is:

1. Cutting funding for doctoral programs disguised under the bureaucratic label of reductions to “Temporary Labor Budgets”
2. Reducing graduate teaching assistants for undergraduate classes
3. Pressing to eliminate smaller academic programs
4. Narrowing the use of course releases and course reprogramming, thereby limiting the range of faculty involvement across the university and increasing faculty workloads

1. Increase class sizes, to the detriment of the engaging, robust educational experiences that students believed they were getting
2. Reduce–for undergraduate students–the high-quality, memorable one-on-one or small group interactions with faculty and graduate teaching assistants
3. Reduce–especially coupled with Federal grant cuts–campus research opportunities for undergraduate students, including, for example, pre-med students seeking research experience in labs that enhance both their skill set and their resume when applying to medical school.
4. Weaken UConn’s longstanding PhD training for future scholars and scientists, a backbone of economic and cultural innovation in Connecticut and beyond
5. Divert faculty from cutting-edge research, intellectual exploration, and applying for sizable grants.
6. Harm a thriving, interdisciplinary academic community that depends on a wide range of research expertise and teaching across the arts, engineering, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.

Faculty have reported some of the following:

1. CIRE* faculty often face new contracts with increased workloads (e.g., a 3–3 teaching** load plus administrative work becomes 4–3 plus the same administrative assignment)
2. Lack of funding to bring external speakers even though a core part of a research university is the exchange of ideas. Such exchanges advance innovative research and build new partnerships
3. Vacant positions not being filled or replaced
4. Lack of basic office supplies and custodial services in some units

The AAUP is dismayed that the UConn administration ignores our own UConn faculty in education, budgeting, accounting, pedagogy, institutional change, curriculum, and subject area knowledge. Instead of turning to these faculty, UConn administrators have chosen to pay large sums of money to hire outside consultants. We urge the administration to reconsider.

Our democracy, our innovative state economy, and our world-class educational system depend on a vibrant UConn with top-notch faculty and full support for their visionary research and creative teaching. UConn-AAUP and its members stand for research innovation, stimulating teaching and mentoring, and shared decision-making. We ask the administration to do the same.