Presidential (Un)Communication

Jay Bernhardt, president of Emerson College, once again has produced a failure to communicate.

In two weeks Bernhardt has issued three “Presidential Communications.“ Saving the worst for last, he announced in the July 30 proclamation that because of declining enrollment some staff will have to be fired.  Who? How many? How selected?  How much of an enrollment drop? How much money? There were no answers to any of that.  Let’s look at some unaddressed questions:

WHO SHOULD BE FIRED? Bernhardt is aiming at staff.  Not faculty, who directly interface with students, and are difficult to fire because of union and tenure rules. Also not the ballooning administration. Bernhardt is aiming at staff. Not faculty, who directly interface with students, and are difficult to fire because of union and tenure rules. Also not the ballooning administration. In his PR-laden missives July 22 and 28, Bernhardt announced 13 new administration appointees, positions or puffed-up titles. Bernhardt said administrators won’t get a raise this year, but none is being fired. This is in line with the swollen administrative costs at Emerson that have far outpaced increases in instruction and staff. Between 2014 and 2024, the number of full-time NON-instructional staff at Emerson soared 37 percent,  from 438 to 600, according to  surveys by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. The number of full-time faculty grew by 47.

The total salaries paid to management alone ballooned to over $25 million, far leading the category of salaries to other non-instructional workers, the federal surveys showed.

From 2019 to 2023, spending for student instruction grew by $2.5 million, or 6 percent. Spending for institutional support– largely  administration– almost doubled that—to $4.8 million, growing 33 percent, according to reports to the federal agency, outstripping the increases for student services, academic support and instruction.

In 2023, salaries for student instruction took up 44 percent of the school’s budget—a percentage below the mean of similar colleges  and considered “low.” Salary for student services is 16 percent of the budget, and for academic support is 14 percent.  By contrast, institutional support—the administration—comprised 20 percent.

All these numbers add up to a picture of a college administration that has grown fat feeding at the trough of tuition increases and (until Bernhardt’s disastrous arrests of 130 students went viral) growing enrollment.  Management’s  $25 million payroll in 2024 is the biggest pot in non-instruction salaries, why not start cuts there?

What are students getting for this excess?  Do the 13 positions announced by Bernhardt carry job descriptions such as “create smaller classes for students” or  “increase student financial aid” or “help faculty with teaching assistants to provide more hands-on classes?”

No. They come with job descriptions like this:  “integrating career competencies throughout the student experience and addressing career opportunities influenced and disrupted by changing technologies.” Is whatever that means more important than a librarian?

There is much more that Bernhardt did NOT say in his presidential uncommunication,.  Here are some glaring omissions:

• Enrollment: Exactly what IS the decline in enrollment numbers, Jay?  His vague mention of a decline with no specifics is typical of the top-down edict approach of his administration. We face a demographic drop-off, a growing aversion to mounting student debt, and the PR nightmare of Bernhardt’s arrests and free speech crackdown. How about some transparency on the consequences?

• Budget: How much expected shortfall in the budget does the administration see?  They certainly have estimates. Remember  that in the last public financial disclosure, for fiscal 2023-24, Emerson’s revenues were $3 million HIGHER than expenses—a “profit” in the business world. That was helped by a tuition increase of $6 million and $8 million profits from its endowment investments. This year, a 3.5 percent tuition increase already is being collected for 2025-26, and the stock market is soaring.  Are layoffs really needed, or are they just a knee-jerk reaction to show the Board of Trustees that something is being done by their desperation pick for president?

• Foreign students: What is Emerson doing to keep its foreign students? How many have indicated they will not show up in the Fall?  What about protections for foreign students already in the US?  The administration has not said, and has not earned the luxury of “trust us.”

• Anticipatory Obedience: Bernhardt cracked down on free speech by arresting students protesting against his cherished Israel even before Trump re-took office. Bernhardt now hides behind the boogey-man of the Trump Administration to enforce rules that keep the campus quiet and docile, hoping to avoid notice or appease the authoritarian administration.  Why? Emerson has few federal grants at stake. What else is Emerson doing to kowtow to the racist dictates from Washington?

• Reformed protest policy: When Bernhardt and the Board of Trustees issued a unilateral and oppressive policy in August 2024 to further squelch protests on campus, they proclaimed it was an “interim” policy that would be rewritten, one presumed with input from faculty and students.  Since then? Nada. Nothing. The “interim” part of the policy melted away as Bernhardt and his cronies dished out more and more discipline against anyone whose exercise of free speech rubbed them the wrong way. It now appears to be as permanent as concrete shoes.

• Leadership: Bernhardt’s  pronouncements are an orgy of PR pablum. They are filled with references to his administration’s “leadership” and naming new “leaders,”  and groan with claims of  “togetherness” and “shared goals.”  It is cluelessly ironic.  If he has ever taken a management course, Bernhardt should know leadership is earned, not proclaimed. And his administration, with edicts flowing from his locked 14th floor office to a divided and dispirited campus, has not earned it.