The University of Southern California is laying off 65 information technology workers at its Viterbi School of Engineering, hitting web developers, network engineers, programmer analysts, software engineers, computer services consultants, program directors and distance education operations engineers. The school says the cuts, which will unfold between November 4 and December 3, are part of a restructuring of its IT operations amid the university's broader budget crunch.
USC began sending layoff notifications the week of August 31, according to the Los Angeles Daily News, which reported that USC's Melissa Gerdes-Leonard filed a letter with California's Employment Development Department on September 1 notifying the state of the layoffs, as required for mass reductions under state and federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification laws. Gerdes-Leonard said the restructuring was due to necessary budget reductions, the newspaper reported. The Cal/WARN Act requires covered employers to give 60 days' advance written notice to affected staff and state workforce officials, according to the California Department of Industrial Relations.
A Second Round of Cuts Within a Year
This is not Viterbi's first brush with mass layoffs. In October 2025, the school laid off all 57 of its student academic advisors, forcing them to reapply for just 44 consolidated, lower-paying positions as part of earlier deficit-reduction measures, according to the Daily Trojan's historical reporting. The Daily News also reported that Viterbi laid off 55 professors, academic program directors, adjunct and clinical instructors, and student services advisers last year, part of 259 jobs USC cut across the university in fall 2025 alone.
Those advising cuts had real consequences on campus. Student course registration at both Viterbi and the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences was severely delayed during the Spring 2026 semester after Dornsife cut 162 employees and Viterbi eliminated its 57 advising slots, with students reporting missed registration windows, according to a report cited in campus coverage.
Leadership Turnover Compounds the Turmoil
The IT restructuring also comes just months after a change in Viterbi's deanship. Yortsos's term as dean expired on June 30, 2026, with an interim dean starting July 1.
At the university level, Beong-Soo Kim was unanimously elected USC's 13th president on February 4, following a seven-month stint as interim president during which he oversaw systemwide austerity measures and staff reductions, according to the USC Office of the President. Kim had said in February that USC was on track to generate a roughly $30 million operating surplus for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2026, according to the Daily News. Hoodline previously reported on Kim's elevation following brutal cuts that had already claimed more than 900 jobs across the university.
The Numbers Behind the Deficit
USC had an operating deficit of more than $230 million as of fall 2025, and the university laid off nearly 1,000 people throughout the system last year, per the Daily News's reporting. The university currently employs 23,942 faculty and staff plus 9,632 student workers, with the faculty and staff count down by about 500 from the previous year's total, the newspaper reported.
Independent credit analysts remain wary despite the administration's projected turnaround. S&P Global Ratings affirmed its “AA” revenue debt rating for USC on March 17, but maintained a negative outlook, citing ongoing pressure from operating deficits and thin financial resources relative to operating expenses, according to S&P Global Ratings.
Tuition Keeps Climbing as Staff Shrinks
The layoffs land alongside another year of rising costs for Viterbi's graduate students. USC Viterbi has published graduate engineering tuition information for the 2026–2027 academic year.
Budget pressure has spread well beyond Viterbi's classrooms and server rooms. University-wide cuts have also hit Keck Medicine, including the announced closure of the labor, delivery and NICU units at USC Verdugo Hills Hospital, according to Daily Trojan reporting published September 10. The strain has also fed labor organizing on campus: in March, the National Labor Relations Board authorized a union election for roughly 2,500 non-tenure-track research, teaching, practitioner and clinical faculty at USC, as Hoodline reported in its piece on the NLRB union vote win.
Potential changes to state law, including Senate Bill 951, may add another layer of scrutiny to cuts like these. Any effect on future rounds of tech layoffs remains unclear.
