Students at the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the Viterbi School of Engineering told the Daily Trojan that they struggled to meet with advisors and register for classes in time due to major layoffs in both schools last fall. 

“It’s pretty tough,” said Jacob Tang, a junior majoring in aerospace engineering. “I understand what [advisors] are going through, but at the same, the way Viterbi and USC as a whole has been addressing these advisors is pretty terrible.”

In October 2025, Dornsife laid off 162 employees, including “nearly all” of the advising staff, according to an email sent by Dean James Bullock. Those advisors were given priority to fill 115 new roles arranged in three clusters.

Viterbi laid off all 57 student advisors, and said it would consolidate the staff after a reapplication process, according to Annenberg Media. These layoffs were part of the over 1,000 USC employees laid off since July 2025 as part of a strategy to address the school’s $251 million budget deficit in Fiscal Year ’25. 

In Spring 2026, Dornsife required students who had completed zero to 64 units to complete mandatory academic advising appointments before they could register for classes for the next semester. Viterbi requires all undergraduate students to attend advising meetings. 

After last semester’s layoffs, several students in both schools said they could not meet with their advisors at the end of the fall semester and during the spring semester and were not able to register for classes on their assigned date in the Spring 2026 semester. 

Lindsey Whalen, a sophomore studying biology,  said she had been working with her assigned first-year advisor for months to create her course schedule, but when that advisor was laid off, Whalen said she wasn’t told. 

When she went to make an advising appointment in October, there was just a list of advisors. When she tried making an appointment, she said all the advisors on her Advise USC portal were booked for the entire semester. 

In the spring semester, she said she attempted to make another appointment, but had issues getting in touch with advisors, and at one point even met with an advisor who said they couldn’t lift her registration hold because they were a specialized minor advisor.

She said she kept emailing and was finally able to make an appointment after her registration had passed.

Tang said the advising process was “unfair,” since there were thousands of students in need of appointments, but only a few advisors. 

Along with being a student, Tang works full-time at an internship, so he couldn’t go to any drop-in advising sessions because they were during his work hours. Advisors canceled appointments multiple times, and Tang said he finally met with an advisor on April 10, two weeks after his registration date.

“Our students should expect to receive clear, accurate guidance that supports their academic planning, registration and overall progress toward degree completion,” Viterbi wrote in a statement to the Daily Trojan. “We encourage any student who has experienced challenges or requires additional support to contact [email protected] so we can ensure they receive prompt assistance.” 

Another Dornsife student, Lucca Salazar, a junior majoring in political science, said she also didn’t get an appointment in time for registration. Salazar had just changed her major to political science in the Spring 2026 semester, and she said it made her registration process especially “uncertain.” 

“The two advisors from each department that I’d built up a relationship with, and they knew my story and why I wanted to change my major and were there to support me,” Salazar said, “tThey weren’t on the Advise USC page anymore, and now there were one or two strangers I’d never met.”

She said that it took a long time for USC to update her academic records to show what her new degree requirements were. Along with this, she said she wasn’t added to the political science department’s email list to receive information about events. She said there were issues “recognizing her in the system,” and she didn’t have help from advisors to solve it.

“Once you actually meet with the advisors, they’re fantastic … They try to be as understanding as they can,” Salazar said. “My problems of registration, [such as advising] holds, [my] major change, they all got solved once [I got to] see them.”

Harold Waters, associate dean of undergraduate/ student advising for Dornsife, wrote in a statement to the Daily Trojan, that students could meet with an advisor, attend virtual drop-in advising or submit courses through an online form for review. Waters also wrote that more academic advisors had been hired in early April, and that Dornsife advising will be fully staffed in the coming weeks.

“This larger team will offer more opportunities for students to engage fully in academic advising both before and during registration periods,” the statement read.

Salazar said she wished the University would acknowledge the registration issue and take steps to solve it, for both students and advisors.

“It definitely says something about the institution,” Salazar said. “You don’t even really hear USC addressing the fact that this is a problem.”