Editor’s Note: This is an opinion piece on a hot button issue. If you would like to learn more about the issue that this piece addresses, please feel free to reach out technewseditor@illinoistech.edu.
Writer’s Note: This is an emotion-laden piece, but I did my best to ensure the content within is factual. Finding information has been, frankly, difficult, which is one of the issues I discuss below. However, for a factual recounting of the recent problems at Illinois Tech, see “Illinois Tech is changing, a lot.”
You know, this was supposed to be the start of my eighth year at Illinois Tech. I started at this school back in 2019, before COVID times, and found a fantastic community among my peers in the psychology department, which is part of what led me to stay for my PhD after graduating with my master’s back in 2025. I knew that Illinois Tech was having issues with finances, and I had never really had any faith in the upper leadership of the school, but I still chose to stay because I knew the quality of my PhD here would be amazing (even if I had to pay for that PhD, unlike at other schools).
Illinois Tech’s layoffs decimated my degree program, Industrial-Organizational (IO) psychology. Laying off Scott Morris, the head of the program, who had been with Illinois Tech for over 30 years, and Kristina Bauer, the vice-chair of the program, has left us with no tenured faculty to teach PhD-level courses. I jumped ship immediately. Even though Stuart School of Business is telling us that somehow they can provide us with what we need, the betrayal is simply too much for me. I also have real doubts about the Business School being able to adequately accommodate IO psychology.
Truthfully, even if the school managed to bring back all the laid off faculty, I would not be coming back. I have no desire to provide any more money to an institution run by people who do not seem to care about the students. Especially since I do not have any trust in that money being handled appropriately. This concern is exemplified in how the Office of Student Life (OSL) handled the Student Activity Fund (SAF) last semester. Considering how the Dean of Students takes a bigger and bigger chunk of the SAF each year, and how a huge swath of our student organization funding was denied last semester, it has left me and a lot of other students with questions. When budget items were denied, there were also no reasons given, which struck me as very odd as someone who used to be on the Finance Board. Every time I had to deny an organization something in their budget, I had to list a reason. And when students asked for answers, there was only one meeting that we were given, where OSL provided answers, but since it was only one meeting, a good deal of us were unable to make it. To this day, a lot of us do not know why so much of the SAF was not given to students, despite that being the literal purpose of the Fund. This lack of clarity has led to many students theorizing as to what their money was being used for instead.
In fact, lack of proper communication, in general, is one of the core concerns that students, faculty, staff, parents, and alumni have, with Illinois Tech. Sure, layoffs and restructuring were needed in order to keep the school up and running in any capacity. I won’t argue that. However, the lack of clear written communication about any of these changes is problematic. The restructuring changes were not announced publicly until a couple months after they went into effect, and the announcement by Elizabeth Hudson was wholly tone-deaf and ill-timed. The email was worded as if this is all a grand opportunity, with promises that we will all be able to get our degrees, and also completely ignored the layoffs that the university had just done mere days earlier. While all of us were grappling with losing core faculty and mentors, that email felt like yet another slap to the face. Several of the faculty I spoke to told me that there had been attempts from various departments to reach out to university leadership to provide support and guidance to minimize the risk and harm of the layoffs, but apparently admin did not accept the help, and the layoffs were decided at the top, with no input from department representatives.
New students are also (perhaps, especially) confused. I helped to lead orientation for the new IO graduate cohort, and none of the new students knew what was going on. They had no clue who their advisors are, no clue if their classes would be taught, no clue if staying at Illinois Tech is feasible for them, and none of them who also attended graduate orientation reported learning anything useful at said orientation. I wanted to give them all the answers they needed, but none of us know who is in charge of what anymore, nor do we know if Stuart School of Business is really going to be up to snuff to teach IO classes and provide research guidance to students. As it stands, the leadership of Stuart seems to have only vague answers to our questions, and I have no faith in getting a peep out of the upper admin.
Local media outlets such as the Sun-Times have noted that school representatives have claimed that our current issues are largely the fault of policies from the Trump administration. Namely all the new rules and restrictions making it difficult for international students to get a foothold in America. However, that is only one part of the story, and it is disingenuous to label that as the primary reason Illinois Tech is in this tough spot. Folks who have been at Illinois Tech for a while know that we have been having financial woes for several years, before Trump got re-elected. We struggled during Covid, and then began to have some rebound, but then Illinois Tech was on the struggle bus again in 2023, at least according to publicly available financial data. Notably, this is before Trump got back in office and the current anti-immigration policies were implemented. And, notably, none of this has been discussed with us–the students.
The most egregious lack of communication, in my opinion, is President Echambadi’s abrupt dissolution of the President Student Advisory Committee (PSAC) a few years ago. This committee consisted of student leaders throughout the school who were brought together to discuss current issues with the President and advise him on what students wanted or needed. Echambadi dissolved it. All he had to do was sit and even pretend to care about us for a few hours each semester, but he refused to do that. Truthfully, I think that it’s a little strange how I, despite being a member of student government for a year and the Editor-in-Chief of TechNews for three years, never once got to speak with President Echambadi. Very few students ever got a chance to speak with him, with his primary communication with us being mass emails and pre-recorded videos. This does not exactly inspire faith in the President and the university. The layoffs Illinois Tech is suffering from right now also were, seemingly, handed down from his office, alongside the offices of other high-ranking administrators at the school.
It is especially concerning to me as someone who has been here since before Echambadi became president. I have been here long enough, and have been active enough in student life, to have watched the school change under his leadership. Bringing in new administrators that he’s buddies with. Not showing up at student events but showing up at Starbucks to get coffee for rich potential donors. Implementing Coursera, which he has close connections with, even though it is costing the school a lot of money. Opening up a campus in Mumbai that literally no one asked for or wanted. Seriously, why did we open up a campus in India when the school can barely take care of the students here at the main campus? Why did we spend all that money on Coursera when the school was struggling to find professors or to fill classes? Neither of these massive and costly decisions seems to have been made with Illinois Tech’s students in mind, and now that is money down the drain when the school was already in dire straits.
Now, Illinois Tech’s accreditation is on the line (see notice from the Higher Learning Commission on page #), and leadership has not provided us with any real guidance or clarity on what the future looks like. In fact, it feels like they would rather ignore the impending problems and act as if everything is all fine and good. Between the lack of communication from admin, the omission of discussing the changes during orientation, and the insufferably cheery promises of business as usual, it feels like we are all being gaslit into thinking things are fine when they are most definitely not. There is no apparent support for those of us trying to leave the school, which is especially problematic for international students who risk being forced to return home if they try to go elsewhere. With the school at risk of losing accreditation, leaving now is probably the best idea, but we are stuck with no support, no teach-out plans, no visa help for international students, and no accountability from Illinois Tech in the leadership’s part in the current mess. Regardless of why the layoffs happened, the fact that there has been nary an apology for uprooting the lives and careers of 163 people and their students is despicable. I feel especially bad for my fellow PhD students who’ve lost their advisors, thesis committee, and dissertation committee members and now are at risk of losing everything.
As I applied to various other schools and told folks what had happened, most people could not find any words other than “horrible.” “It’s so horrible they would do that to you,” and “I feel so horrible for all those faculty and their students.” And, yeah, it is pretty horrible. Doing this so close to the beginning of the school year, without warning, without providing us with support or plans, without taking accountability for the harm caused, without transparency… what a horrible, despicable thing to do.
I have spent the better part of a decade at Illinois Tech. I have given this school money, time, blood, sweat, and tears. I have juggled multiple degrees, multiple jobs, and multiple student orgs at once. I have worked on campus and volunteered, giving my time and energy to help other students and make Illinois Tech feel like home to them. I have worked tirelessly for this school and its students as have so many others. The students who go to conferences and spread Illinois Tech’s name. The students who run student orgs to give the student body a fun and comfortable campus experience. The students who volunteer to help at events and mentor incoming students. The students who chose to come back to Illinois Tech for another degree, despite knowing its many issues. The students who worked with admin to advocate for students even when it felt like admin refused to listen or care. All of that work and time met again and again with an apathetic leadership until now, the biggest middle finger to students in recent history.
Why has there been zero acknowledgment from President Echambadi and Provost Hudson that these layoffs will, and currently are, harming students? Either Illinois Tech’s leadership simply does not care, or they are truly too blind to see that people are getting completely screwed over right now. No matter what it is, Illinois Tech’s leadership has failed us completely.
My heart goes out to all the faculty who were laid off. The faculty who remain will be forced to pick up the slack. The students negatively impacted by these layoffs. The families of the faculty. To all the people who found joy and community at Illinois Tech before it was stripped away.