The New School announced plans to lay off 15% of its full-time faculty and staff by mid-June, a move driven by a projected $48 million deficit and a 20% enrollment decline since 2021. The cuts are part of a broader workforce reduction strategy that has already included voluntary buyouts. The restructuring will disproportionately affect the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, which are undergoing major mergers and program discontinuations, while the Parsons School of Design faces fewer cuts.
The situation highlights a crisis in higher education, particularly for tuition-dependent art and design institutions. Faculty express that the administration's framing pits colleges against each other, positioning the more marketable Parsons as a "golden goose" at the expense of liberal arts and critical theory programs. This approach, critics argue, hollows out the interdisciplinary thinking that defines the school's mission and creates a destructive hierarchy between creative practice and research, destabilizing the entire educational community.