The San Francisco Art Institute has laid off nine tenured faculty members in the latest in a series of cutbacks aimed at stemming the institute’s cash-flow problems.

The financial crisis and credit crunch have hit the institute particularly hard, said Bob Gamboa, a spokesman. Lenders have been stingy since 30 percent of its endowment disappeared last fall in the stock-market crash. Since then, the institute has taken a number of belt-tightening measures, including a blanket salary freeze for nonunion faculty and staff members, compulsory furloughs during semester breaks, and a 25-percent pay cut for senior administrators.

Mr. Gamboa said the institute had approached the faculty union to negotiate across-the-board salary reductions to avert layoffs, but the two sides had been unable to agree on a plan. The nine fired professors were chosen with an eye to seniority and to how essential they were to the core curriculum, he said. —Steve Kolowich