Delaware County Community College Moves to Cut Counseling

Delaware County Community College shocked faculty and staff when it warned its entire counseling department of layoffs set to take effect this summer. College leaders argue they need the cuts to shrink a budget gap, but counselors are fighting for their jobs, arguing their services can’t be outsourced.

The college notified its 14 full-time counselors in early April that their roles would end June 30. The news came just days after the college slashed 43 positions, including 22 part-time counselors, 15 administrators and support staff, four part-time librarians, and two executives, according to college administrators. The two rounds of cuts would leave no counselors on campus.

The college’s faculty union is bargaining with campus leaders in hopes of saving counselors’ jobs. (Full-time counselors count as faculty at DCCC. All but three of the 14 hold tenure.) The college extended their layoff date until the end of July to make time for the negotiations.

“We’re still hoping that we can find a win-win solution that satisfies the college’s financial concerns while also continuing to support the students at the same level that they have been supported, and of course, keeping the faculty in place,” said Stacy Cartledge III, an English professor and president of the faculty union, the DCCC Association of Higher Education.

The college’s plans worry counselors, who say they’re responsible for everything from academic advising to career counseling and mental health care on campus.

“The best way to describe it is we kind of do everything,” said a counselor who has worked at the college for a decade and requested anonymity. “We form relationships with our students that go from day one all the way through graduation and sometimes even beyond that.”

Financial Troubles

College leaders, however, insist the institution has no choice but to trim its budget.

They’ve taken other belt-tightening measures in recent years, including closing two Delaware County centers, though the college also opened a new center in March.

“It is my sincere hope that, though this moment is painful, it will ultimately mark a turning point in how we are able to confidently support our student population for decades to come,” the college’s president, Marta Yera Cronin, said in a statement about the college’s budget challenges.

Elizabeth Wood, the college’s executive director of marketing and communications, told Inside Higher Ed in an email that DCCC has struggled with deficits for multiple years, caused in part by declining enrollments since 2015. The college was hard hit by the demographic cliff, a drop in the number of traditional-age students, plus the COVID-19 pandemic and rises in inflation, she said. The layoffs are expected to save several million dollars.

The decision to cut counselors was made “not with the intention of dismantling counseling services currently provided to our students,” she said, but “to scale efficiency, reduce administrative costs due to budget constraints, and to expand student access.”

Wood argued the college can continue to take care of students’ needs through other departments and programs, including disability services and its CARE Team, an interdisciplinary group that manages student mental health crises. College administrators have also alluded to plans to outsource counseling to an outside vendor or subcontractor but declined to share further details until after the bargaining process.

“While the outsourcing of counseling services would be a different model than the College’s current model, the College is committed to providing counseling services that will support the needs of all students,” Wood said.

Fears for Students

But counselors and their advocates doubt outsourced counseling would serve students well.

“We do not know what services will look like should this come to pass,” Cartledge said.

Counselors also see themselves as an integral part of the CARE Team and noted that demand for crisis management services has grown in the last five years; referrals to the CARE team increased about 900 percent since 2021.

One counselor, who’s been at the college for 20 years, emphasized that it’s hard to imagine a replacement for counselors “embedded into the community,” who are accessible to students day-to-day, some of whom attended the community college themselves.

“We are helping students navigate their complex lives,” said the counselor, who asked to remain anonymous. “Community college students [in particular] are facing such difficulties in their lives, and they’re coming to school to better their future. [The role] my colleagues play is the biggest part of retention and persistence at this institution.”

The college hasn’t sufficiently addressed “how will this be in the best interest of our students?” they added. “That’s the No. 1 thought in my mind.”