[ironman1478]

It seems like it's just poor management. I understand they are not product lines, but a university has bills to pay. They have to pay people salaries, benefits, maintain those builds, labs, libraries, etc. The money to do that has to come from somewhere and in the hard times, the fields with the least likely chance of generating revenue to keep the university afloat will see hits. It seems like the university though has put itself in the hard times by taking on a large amount of debt: https://chicagomaroon.com/43960/news/get-up-to-date-on-the-u.... It seems like its less malicious and just risk taking gone wrong.

It's not that different in the corporate world. Lots of companies make bad bets that then lead to layoffs, but not always in the orgs that actually were part of the bad bet. I've seen many startups take on too much risk, then have to perform layoffs in orgs like marketing, recruiting, sales, HR, etc. even if those orgs weren't responsible for the issues that the company is facing.