COVID-19 Impacts on Geoscience Academic Departments: Budgets, Staffing, and Fall 2020 Plans

Date updated: 2020-06-12
Data Brief 2020-007
Written and compiled by Leila Gonzales and Christopher Keane, AGI, June 2020

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This data brief provides insights from early study responses about the impacts from COVID-19 on geoscience academic departmental operations, specifically budgets, personnel, and plans for the Fall 2020 term. Nearly half of responding departments are expecting budget cuts between 5% and 20% for the next academic year, and nearly one-tenth of responding departments reported that they expect cuts of greater than 20%. Fewer than half of responding departments provided input about personnel impacts. Responding departments most frequently reported multiple impacts, often a combination of furloughs of staff and faculty and salary reductions. Salary reductions was the most commonly reported impact, followed by staff furloughs.

We examined and combined responses from academic department heads and chairs, students, and faculty regarding institutional plans for Fall 2020. Combining responses allowed us to examine a larger landscape of institutional strategies. As institutions are now more widely making decisions for Fall 2020, this topic will be reexamined over the coming months for a full picture and to see if institutions altered original plans.

To date, nearly half of institutions represented have not yet announced plans for the Fall 2020 term. Just over 40% of responding institutions plan to re-open in Fall 2020 with in-person classes and restrictions such as class size limits, social distancing, and other strategies such as lower student density or altered schedules. Although there was a quick shift by all institutions during the Spring 2020 term to conducting all courses online, less than 10% of institutions report that they will conduct all courses online for the Fall 2020 term.

We will continue to provide current snapshots on the impacts of COVID-19 on the geoscience enterprise throughout the year. For more information, and to participate in the study, please visit: www.americangeosciences.org/workforce/covid19

Funding for this project is provided by the National Science Foundation (Award #2029570). The results and interpretation of the survey are the views of the American Geosciences Institute and not those of the National Science Foundation.