Dear Marquette University Community, 

You have likely seen the news: Marquette leadership has announced another round of significant budget cuts. In a recent email to campus, they wrote: “We believe Marquette will be best served by reallocating resources to invest strategically in what we do best.” 

So what does Marquette do best?

We know that the best thing about Marquette is the transformative Jesuit education we offer. That exemplary instruction has been well-recognized:

• Marquette ranked #19 in the nation in undergraduate teaching, according to US News and World Report. 

• Marquette ranked #16 in the nation for community service based on a study by the Princeton Review. 

• US News and World Report designated Marquette an A+ school for B students, a measure of the added value of a Marquette education. 

Faculty do the teaching, research, and service that make a Marquette education possible. Yet in the past decade, repeated financial crises have threatened our ability to fulfill our core educational mission.

These financial crises are the result of mismanagement by Marquette leadership. They date to the 2010s’ “M12” initiatives, which failed to generate millions in revenue and led to cuts and firings in 2019. They continued during COVID-19, when Marquette leaders used a global health emergency as an excuse for further cuts, firings, and restructurings. Most recently, our leadership’s financial missteps spurred a $9M budget shortfall in January 2024. A March report by the University Academic Senate’s Budget Committee pointed to leadership’s irresponsible financial decisions, including a mandatory 3% “set-aside” that shifts funds from the operating budget to cover underfinanced new construction projects, like the $80M Wellness and Recreation Facility (Budget Report, footnote 21; page 15).

Now Marquette’s leadership is imposing $31M in budget cuts by 2031. In two recent FAQs, they described the cuts as funding the same “non-negotiable” 3% set-aside cited in the budget report, plus other strategic “re-investments” (pages 4, 5). $31M in cuts will mean program closures and likely job losses, even among tenured faculty. Cuts will also mean that overworked and understaffed units will be stretched even thinner. This is not a recipe for preserving the value of a Marquette education. 

Faculty and staff have had little say in any of these budget decisions. To plan the new $31M cuts, Marquette leaders chose a Steering Committee three days after announcing the cuts, without consulting faculty or their representatives in the University Academic Senate (whose president signed off on the cuts without informing the rest of UAS). Committee members must sign non-disclosure agreements. This rushed, secretive process also ignores the Faculty Handbook’s shared governance procedures, which require academic program changes to be approved by UAS and the University Boards of Undergraduate or Graduate Studies. Instead, faculty and staff have only been asked to give input on where to cut.

While we appreciate the good-faith efforts of Steering Committee members as well as members of University Academic Senate, we find this process unacceptable.

 Our students choose Marquette because they want a transformative Jesuit education, grounded in the liberal arts, focused on the whole person, and committed to improving the world. They choose us for our dedicated faculty, excellent academic programs, caring campus community, and strong sense of mission. But we can’t deliver this education if we are understaffed, overworked, and exhausted. We can’t do our jobs if we’re always being told to do more with less. And if we can’t do our jobs, our students will stop choosing Marquette.

We are Marquette. We safeguard the academic mission of this university. And we have a better vision for this budget plan. 

We call for the following changes in the process: 

1. The Steering Committee chairs should commit in writing to allowing the University Academic Senate to appoint a number of members equivalent to 50% of the Steering Committee’s seats plus one seat (50% +1); 

2. The Steering Committee chairs should eliminate the requirement that Steering Committee members sign non-disclosure agreements, to ensure transparency;

3. The Steering Committee chairs should adopt as a decision-making criterion the avoidance of firings, forced retirements, or contract non-renewals, either via program closures or otherwise; and 

4. The Steering Committee chairs should commit to abide by these Faculty Handbook provisions on shared governance: only the University Boards of Undergraduate and Graduate Studies can make recommendations on “curricular matters such as credit hour and substantive content changes to the Core of Common Studies, on new degrees or majors, and on discontinuance of degrees or majors,” then forward them to UAS for approval (page 30). 

We want our future Marquette to honor the transformative Jesuit education our students came here to receive. To preserve that future, faculty need a real seat at the budgeting table.

Signed,