At this year’s convocation ceremony, USC President Carol Folt announced the university is welcoming 300 new full-time members of its faculty.
USC Provost Andrew Guzman told Annenberg Media that while the significant uptick in hiring is likely part of “the normal ebb and flow,” two factors may have contributed to the high figure: departures during the pandemic and USC’s new sustainability moonshot.
“Everybody can see some ways in which research and teaching on sustainability is important and valuable,” said Guzman. He explained that this fact lends support to new hires as an emphasis is placed on sustainability throughout USC.
A lot of the new hires were conducted on a decentralized basis, Guzman said, meaning that individual schools made decisions about how many people to hire and who those people should be. “The schools have their own budgets and processes in place,” he said.
The large number of new hires was “not informed in any direct way” by last year’s tuition hike or any other recent influx of funding, according to Guzman. He said that the relationship between tuition and hiring is not a linear one.