Maryland Institute College of Art faces buyouts, layoffs due to lowered enrollment, president says

Maryland Institute College of Art President Samuel Hoi shared word of layoffs via a letter to faculty and staff Wednesday.

The announcement comes as a result of lowered enrollment for the past three undergraduate classes.

“MICA needs to become leaner and more agile as an educational provider,” Hoi wrote in his letter. “MICA is seizing a challenging moment in its history to do the hard and necessary work of adapting and evolving its model to meet the needs of today’s students and society.”

Hoi said layoffs will start with a voluntary separation program for unionized and nonunionized full-time faculty and staff. If enough people don’t choose to leave their positions, MICA will work with the SEIU Local 500 union to decide layoffs, Hoi said.

No layoffs will take place until June and would be in the first half of summer, Hoi said. Layoffs will not affect the adjunct faculty’s collective bargaining agreement.

Come fall, MICA will restructure its undergraduate programming to bring more efficiency.

“Up to now, MICA’s enrollment has depended on students’ desiring a specialized education usually organized by siloed disciplines,” Hoi wrote. “To be complacent with that reality is to remain marginalized as a niche education provider — and a complacent mindset puts us at escalating risk of unsustainability in an evolve-or-perish higher education landscape.”

Founded nearly 200 years ago, MICA will need several years to bring enrollment numbers back up, Hoi said.