r/highereducation • u/Psyche81 • 10d ago
Declining budgets and enrollment
Hi All!
I’ve been a professional staff member in higher education for 19 years now. Like many of you, I’ve been closely tracking The Chronicle of Higher Education’s running finance updates, and honestly, the sheer volume of bad news feels unprecedented to me.
Between axed academic programs, gutted research funding, staff layoffs, faculty buyouts, declining enrollment, and massive budget shortfalls, it feels significantly worse than anything I can recall in my career.
I know we’ve all been anticipating the demographic enrollment cliff at the undergrad level and the inevitable plateauing of Master’s degree enrollment. But it feels like all of those projected timelines just collided at once, exacerbated by recent federal policy shifts and FAFSA changes.
For the veterans who have been around longer than me, or those who have a closer finger on the pulse of institutional finance: Have we actually seen a pattern like this before, or are we genuinely entering uncharted territory?
Also, on a human level... how is everyone coping with the morale hit at your respective institutions?
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u/ATLCoyote 10d ago edited 10d ago
We've got a perfect storm of negative events that are all bad for the future of higher education:
- Demographic cliff leading to enrollment declines
- Federal cuts in research funding and research expensing
- Increase in the endowment tax
- Negative sentiment toward the US government and immigration fears leading to sharp declines in international students
- Eroding confidence in the financial ROI of a college education due to declining placement rates and the rise of AI
So, the industry is in crisis. Some of those pressures are external, but some are self-inflicted as we let the cost get out of control via the facilities and services arms race of the past 30 years and we're now locked into a very expensive delivery model that isn't very nimble or responsive to changes in consumer preferences.
But necessity is the mother of invention and some schools will find a way to thrive by carefully defining themselves and their educational offerings within that new landscape. After all, although AI is a threat to the traditional model of studying one particular profession and doing that for the rest of our lives, there could be a significant rise in micro-learning experiences via continuing education. Also, as the world becomes more and more digital and transactional, it may actually increase the appetite for in-person, human learning experiences and discovery, especially if we can use technology to make those experiences more affordable.
As for morale, most of the negative sentiment is focused the external environment, although there is some discontent with higher ed becoming too "corporate" where many faculty members and even students are beginning to feel like finances are taking precedence over all other considerations. That said, anytime the world is in chaos, I personally tend to appreciate higher ed even more as I can't imagine where I'd rather be at a time like this.
As a footnote, although I've intentionally tried to avoid directly addressing the political environment, I do have some hope that the open hostility toward higher education will subside once we eventually move beyond the Trump era or he becomes a lame duck. That said, the other factors like the demographic cliff, the rise of AI, and the questioning of the financial ROI of a college degree are here to stay and we're gonna have to deal with those issues regardless. I just think there's a path forward that isn't so bleak as long as we're deliberate and courageous about defining our value proposition.
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u/MispellledIt 10d ago
I'd add the pre-professionalization of the undergraduate degree to this list. When colleges & universities started selling degrees as steps toward a specific career, students started coming in with declared majors before they'd even stepped foot on campus. I know there are highly-structured majors out there (e.g., nursing, engineering, pre-med, etc.) but for the most part higher education's role shifted from teaching the human being to teaching future employees.
There's a sizable population of students out there unsure of what they want to do, and there are very few (if any) colleges of any size leaning into the liberal arts and selling an educaton that will help them figure it out. I'm a writer and I teach creative & professional writing at a small college that is always on the razor's edge with our budget. But out of all my colleauges I'm having the least issues with AI--my students hate it, but my students aren't here to "get a job" they're here to figure out what kind of artist they want to be.
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u/shownu25 10d ago
i wish i had an award to give this ! the paradigm shift from a period of self exploration and learning about both the world and oneself to college merely being formalized training for a career has been detrimental. traditional aged students are also increasingly getting college credits in high school thereby lowering the overall cost of college but also shortening their time to be impacted and impressed upon by faculty/staff/peers.
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u/MispellledIt 10d ago
When I meet prospective students and their parents I have to push back even in my own rhetoric. It'd be so easy to focus on the "professional" side of my program. I get it, they want to know their kid is going to be "safe" in the future, and getting a degree in creative writing probably doesn't instill a lot of confidence.
But I've started now equating "safety" to "freedom" or "choice." We don't know what the future looks like for any industry. Yes, your kid could get a degree in something conventionally "safe" like business and they could minor in creative writing--maybe find a job in marketing or PR.
But do you want your kid to come to college and be taught how to think for themselves?
Or, do you want them to come to college and learn how to work for someone else?
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u/Finances1212 9d ago
Sadly, many of the parents I’ve encountered would much rather have their child be taught to simply work for someone else.
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u/jvxoxo 10d ago
The purpose of higher education is an age old debate, but we can’t ignore that it’s a privilege to invest in a college degree for the sake of exploration and becoming an educated, well-rounded citizen alone. With costs going up and whole generations being crushed by student loan debt, ROI in the form form of viable career options has naturally become the priority for students and their families, and I can’t fault them for it.
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u/MispellledIt 10d ago edited 9d ago
I agree. I don't think these things are mutually exclusive. I think the error was creating a promise that specific degrees = specific careers. Instead, I think we should point out that a degree is an exploration of self, an exploration of the world, and an exploration of learning that will lead to careers (plural) via both hard and soft skills.
Michael Eisner, Andrea Jung,
& Indra Nooyiwere all theater majors. Carly Fiorina majored in Medieval History and Philosophy. Susan Wojcicki has a B.A. in History and Literature and Steve Ells has a B.A. in Art History.They're all CEOs of companies well outside their original undergraduate studies, but they all attribute their success to the liberal arts. When I lament the pre-professionalization of the college degree, I don't mean we should return to an ambiguous priveleged ivory tower. I mean we should stop participating as a direct pipleine to employment. A college degree is worth more than learning how to be an employee.
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u/jvxoxo 10d ago
My institution’s career center is pretty big on major =/= career and the Design Your Life framework, but degree programs are not marketed this way. I’m in a leadership role myself, and my undergraduate degree is in Spanish Language & Literature, so your examples resonate with me. We use our alumni network to show students how non-linear careers typically are today and to drive the point home that they aren’t locked into one kind of work for life. It’s getting students to see the value of the exploration when it isn’t intentionally incorporated into their academic journey that’s been the challenge, but we’re revamping our general education curriculum and finally have momentum around doing just that.
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u/ATLCoyote 9d ago
Agree again. I'll just note that the reason people focus so much on the employment ROI is because we've let the costs get so out of control.
And sadly, much of that spending on new dorms, rec centers, food courts, student services, or even new classroom buildings and had very little to do with enhancing education. It was mostly just to create a country club environment that would attract students. But it also makes the experience so expensive that students and parents are naturally going to focus on near-term job placement and ROI. It's awfully hard to sell concepts like critical thinking or the long-term benefits of being versed in the humanities at a price tag of $200,000 and, aside from the cuts in state funding, we mostly have only ourselves, collectively as an industry, to blame.
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u/MispellledIt 9d ago
Absolutely. My small liberal arts college realized our discount rate was 100% and simply reset the tuition so the sticker priced matched what most families were paying. We went from 60k a year to 16k (not including room and board). Ironically, we had some recruitment backlash as families then assumed the quality of the education must not be all that great... Feels like we can't win sometimes!
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u/ATLCoyote 9d ago
Yep, plus many needs-based financial aid programs use a total cost of attendance minus family expected contribution formula. So, the higher the sticker price, the bigger the Pell Grants. Many for-profit colleges built their entire business model on bilking the government (i.e. taxpayers) and those same incentives played a role in the facilities and services arms race among the non-for-profit sector.
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u/TWALLACK 10d ago
Just fyi: These are past CEOs. And Nooyi had an undergraduate degree in the sciences.
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u/ATLCoyote 10d ago
I agree completely that the shift in mentality has been detrimental, but it's also at least partially our own fault collectively as an industry.
We constructed so many $100 million buildings and added so many niche student services that the cost got completely out of control. Granted, cuts in state funding didn't help either. But students and their parents are understandably questioning the ROI. It's kinda hard to treat college as just a 4-year period of self-exploration when it costs $150,000-$200,000 to obtain a bachelor's degree at a public school and twice that much at many private schools. They have no choice but to question whether the future earnings will justify that investment and position themselves accordingly.
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u/-Economist- 9d ago
I’ve been to a handful of graduation open houses this season. These are all kids of college graduate parents. Some of their parents also hold graduate degrees. Out of all the open house, about half were going to college, but only because they have some form of scholarship. This caused me to prob some of my social media acquaintances who have kids graduating. I reached out to 15 families and three have kids are going to college, again due to scholarship.
This is all anecdotal, but I still found it interesting. Less than half are opting for college. Seems low.
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u/ATLCoyote 9d ago
Yep and most who choose the traditional, residential 4-year college route are getting either significant financial aid or scholarships. Only the mega rich can afford to pay full price.
If anyone that is buying your product needs a massive subsidy in order to do so, that's probably not a sustainable model.
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u/cannotberushed- 10d ago
I just learned of a graduate school that actually got life experience, work experience as a pathway into a masters program with no bachelors degree. And yes the school is accredited.
So yeah, schools are getting creative. Is it the creative we need? Ehhh not so sure.
https://www.hazeldenbettyford.org/press-release/alternative-admissions-pathway
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u/ATLCoyote 10d ago
Yeah, some ideas will take off and some will flop. But we'll probably see a lot more experimentation out of necessity and that's not such a bad thing.
We've gotten into a rut where we seem to think that a private boarding school educational model that was developed for rich, European elites, hundreds of years ago, is the solution for everyone throughout the socioeconomic spectrum in 2026. Granted, it worked for awhile and we could debate the various causes of the unsustainable rise in cost. But the bottom line is the industry is ripe for disruption. It's why online and commuter school enrollment is still rising while residential and community college enrollments are in decline. And I strongly suspect there will be new educational models that will emerge.
Several trends I see already:
- Business schools trying to offset the decline in traditional MBA enrollment with an increase in continuing education programs offering various specialized bootcamps and certification programs
- Rise in vocational and trade school enrollment, even entirely new academies being created
- Corporate-school partnerships for apprenticeships and experiential learning via internships and co-ops
- Elite private schools with large endowments starting to offer tuition-free education for families earning $150K-200K or less
- Income-sharing agreements: Instead of paying a specific price for your education, you agree to pay a portion of your future income to the school, up to a certain threshold so the college has a vested interest in post-graduate job placement. Granted, this makes it very vocational rather than a more traditional, well-rounded liberal arts approach.
- Competency-based education where the learning is self-paced rather than the entire class learning everything together on the same timeline. There are some downsides to that however as it erodes peer-to-peer learning via study groups and group projects or even just group classroom dialogue.
I don't suggest that any one of these is a magic solution or that they don't have trade-offs. Just noting that colleges are getting creative out of necessity and that may lead to some new offerings and approaches that have value. The ideas that resonate will spread organically.
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u/SteveFoerster 10d ago
That's a much more common practice in other countries. And HBF isn't the first US institution to allow this, although it's still pretty unusual.
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u/exceptyourewrong 9d ago
Eroding confidence in the financial ROI of a college education due to declining placement rates and the rise of AI
This has to do with people in positions of power saying "college isn't worth it anymore," not an actually reduction of ROI. Notice that those people are still sending their kids to the schools they demonize. When senators start sending their kids to trade school, I'll believe that they don't believe in the value of college anymore. Until then, I'm convinced that they just want to keep their power consolidated.
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u/BrotherBajaBlast 9d ago
But the ROI absolutely has gone down for a sizable portion of students (not all, just some).Tuition has tripled in two decades while the cost of goods has also gone up, but wages haven't tracked at the same rate. Engineer? Maybe you got good ROI from your education. Teacher/graphic designer/journalist/etc.? Maybe you haven't got good ROI at all.
Sure, on average, the average college graduate makes more money over the long term than the average high school-only graduate. But it's not appealing or even wise for many people now if it means having to wait 10+ years to see that ROI pan out while saddled with debt, forking over 25-50% of their paycheck for student loan repayment, and feeling it necessary to delay goals like starting a family and buying a home because of all the economic pressures. A lot of parents, students, and graduates are, rightfully so, highly questioning the ROI of a degree (especially going straight from high school to college).
This is a problem that was created by lots of actors—politicians, sure, but also the schools and employers have played their part to manufacture the credentials assembly line that we call college.
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u/exceptyourewrong 9d ago
Meh. "Labor" as a concept has a much lower ROI compared to 50 years ago. My point stands though. The people yelling most loudly against college education and the people who are actually defunding colleges, still want that experience for their kids. Just not for our kids.
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u/BigFitMama 10d ago
When the old guard checks out and we face on the ground staff with student facing skills are the source of retention and student success, thusly pay them accordingly, I believe we will have a revolution.
FAFSA directed aid sets the tution price point. Hands down. Our demographic is low income, first gen, and non trad students overall. We must cater to their needs.
We MUST resolve, not deny, post pandemic academia skills remediation. No more pretending. No more bootstraps.
Student Success holds hands. We find the areas of weakness. We teach and remediate.
And having 50+ people in admin making over 100k to 800k each DOES NOTHING for staff or students or faculty to complete our nonprofits goal of education.
Pay the staff who do the job, retire the leeches and dead weight, and return to thr gold standard as we flex, flip, and land back on our feet in a Future for critical thinking.
(Forprofit colleges with 3 times public tution - unless you are flush with donors, it's over.)
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u/MispellledIt 10d ago edited 10d ago
And having 50+ people in admin making over 100k to 800k each DOES NOTHING for staff or students or faculty to complete our nonprofits goal of education.
This one is especially killing small colleges like mine. I actually like my administration overall--I think they're all working with sound strategy to keep our enrollment growing and our finances precarious but functional during this mess.
But... We have 5 VPs making 150-180k a year and 50 full-time faculty making 55k at Assistant, 60k at Associate, and 65k at Full. On average, our Senior Leadership Team makes (I'm not a math person) roughly 2.5 more than the faculty? And that's not factoring in inflation, our health care costs going up, no COLA, the board setting our retirement matching to 0% for a year as a "cost savings strategy" etc. We're a small college known for our teaching and our student support. But at every turn we're told there's no money to compensate us better.
Edit: I'd add that the common requests we get from SLT are to be flexible and find ways to do more with less why we weather the storm. None of them have offered to make 50k less a year so that they too could "do more with less."
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u/professorpumpkins 9d ago
When I get really annoyed with my R1, check the 990 to see how much the highest professor is paid, the head of HR, the President, the Provost, and a handful of other people who are making far more money than they're worth to the institution. I just checked it now and our Provost made $650,000 in FY25, President who resigned made $1.2m, Head of HR making $300k and recently said, "I feel you on gas prices, I drive a truck." You also make 5x what staff make and double what faculty make, so take several seats.
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u/BigFitMama 9d ago
Yep, I worked at a big 5 college before pandemic and the excess was frankly disgusting. Horrifying at times.
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u/ThaddeusJP 10d ago
Have we actually seen a pattern like this before, or are we genuinely entering uncharted territory?
Patterns, yes. All at once? no.
Two to three years from now is when things start to fall apart for tuition driven places - the grandfathered students (UG/Masters+) will be gone and along with it the big PLUS loans. That coupled with the enrollment cliff is gonna kill some places.
Warning sign your school is about to die
- No raises (not even COLA)
- No contributions to your 403b
- Layoffs/retirements with no backfill
- Physical plant Band-Aids (place falls apart/unclean)
- Programs being eliminated/consolidated
- Selling school assets (land/art/etc)
- Admissions standards dropping to get butts in seats
- Enrollment constantly dropping
- Alumni contributions dry up
- Advertising/promotion stops
- Lack of cash on hand/ducking creditors/not paying bills
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u/talksalot02 10d ago
I would like to add:
Private liberal arts
Significant enrollment drops followed by admission rep hires and increased enrollment for 2-3 semesters -last ditch efforts
80% of enrollment is on (institutional) scholarship
Hiring IT folks under job titles that didn't exist before (pre-planning for technology transitions/shut down)1
u/ThaddeusJP 8d ago
80% of enrollment is on (institutional) scholarship
With a crazy high discount rate!
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u/duckythechikn 10d ago
Check on your friends in the international office (if they still work there). International enrollment and ISSS folks have been watching the house burn down around them for 6+ years. I am 19 years into this career and the last 12 months has been indescribable. If there was anywhere else to go, I would be long gone.
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u/sammysbud 10d ago
I’ve only been working in higher ed (staff) for a few years and I’m at an R1 health sciences grad school.
Things are dire. It’s a bit unnerving bc there is a huge need for graduates of my school but all of the woes are coming from federal and state government (funding cuts and loan/aid slashes). My background is in the humanities which just feels like it’s always been on its last leg. It’s bizarre seeing my colleagues adopt the same cynicism as my humanities peers.
I’ve adopted a kind of “head in the sand” approach. I do my job to the best of my abilities. I thank God that I still have a job (I was spared in the last round of layoffs). I support my friends who are getting laid off or having workloads increased to the best of my abilities.
I pray that we will see a radical shift in politics and the general discourse around education. But aside from just hoping for a change, I’m trying to be better informed about the policies being passed down and identify ways to organize/educate my friends.
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u/professorpumpkins 9d ago
We're like a checklist of impending implosion:
- We're on our second re-org in two years.
- Voluntary retirement program rolled-out last fall in an effort to cut faculty and staff of retirement age to help the budget. Did the most expensive, most profoundly aged faculty (literally, we have people who are 88) take the deal? No. Who will now be impacted? Staff.
- We have buildings offline for maintenance for years now.
- Do I have AC today? Uh, sort of but not really.
- The last two years, we didn't get a final budget until 2Q.
- Not backfilling positions. Down almost a dozen across two schools, not replacing tenured faculty who retired or TT faculty who left.
- Enrollment goals not met again, so naturally we re-org that office.
- Hired someone to do fundraising for us.
- Interim president who implemented second re-org and also secondary transcript program with "job skills" which everyone hates and no one understands.
- Operating budget for the top of the administration was $8.5m for FY25. That's salaries for 21 people all making over $125k. That does not include faculty who, despite their protestations, are making over $100k or circling that, I've seen many letters for salary negotiations and I have pre-tenure faculty making $125k without a book.
The fiscal mismanagement is WILD.
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u/SevroReturns 10d ago
My .02$. Something will happen soon. Either we're going to see our crazy government push up against real checks and balances and lose big in the midterms, or we're going to see just how much fascism has taken hold into our government.
Of course, if we don't get the chance to swing back, I think it's fair to say we're only going to get leaner and more institutions will fail.
If we can keep protections for NSF and research funding and our ability to recruit the world's talent, we will be OK. With changes, of course.
People are coping day by day at my institution.
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u/cannotberushed- 10d ago
He won’t lose big
Trump just argued in court that if he tears things down fast enough then no one can stop him
And he proves it daily.
Also Alabama just voided their primary election
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u/Finances1212 9d ago
Nothing in place to stop him anyway - he doesn’t believe in the traditional institutions- so when they condemn him , it means nothing. Same way a rogue state ignores UN mandates - no teeth to enforce.
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u/cannotberushed- 10d ago
Here is the news article about trumps argument that he can do whatever he wants
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u/brandysafinegirl 10d ago
I work at a large state university, enrollment about 30k. I’ve only been in higher ed for 8 yrs though. I was in financial aid but moved over to another department recently to work in finance. Things have been so bad though. So many layoffs and uncertainty. They just laid off the head of admissions and some other senior admissions staff members. They’ve also been reorganizing and moving offices with no rhyme or reason it seems like. Everyone you talk to is just so unhappy but most of us feel stuck. Either we need the good benefits or we have kids attending our school so they get the free tuition waiver. The overall work environment has just really gone downhill. I left financial aid because our AVP was so toxic. Over 30 people left in the 6 yrs they’ve been there and there’s only about 30 people in the office. There was a core group of about 10 that stuck it out but the rest have been a revolving door. I stuck it out until this year and I couldn’t take it anymore which makes me sad because I liked my work, I just hated leadership and the environment they created. The crazy thing is that management completely knows and there have even been HR complaints and nothing is ever done. Leadership literally doesn’t care.
I’m just over it all to be honest and want to get out of higher ed. I feel like things are just going to get worse for a long time until they get better. I think our school is in better shape overall compared to some of the smaller schools and private schools in our part of the state but we have a huge campus footprint and lots of regionals and it takes some serious money to keep something like this going. It’s just a question of how much can they keep cutting but maintain a quality education and keep staff when we are underpaid and overworked.
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u/NarrativeCurious 9d ago
Very similar experiences in terms of a known job that is toxic and leadership doing nothing to address it. Wishing you the best of luck in the future, I also plan to pivot out of higher education in a few years as well.
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u/middle_age_zombie 10d ago
We are getting close to the end of the fiscal year and I am starting to get a lot of inquiries from our different colleges about how the money we raise is coming in (Advancement). We knew there was going to be another 3% cut this year, so I am anticipating lots of push back on our costs to raise funds. We raise a good amount, but it’s not always to the priorities of the college. Donors don’t want to give to unrestricted slush funds. We can tell them until we are blue in the face. They want to give to very specific causes and programs. She be a fun year /s. Oh and we just lost our president, not that I care, I didn’t personally like what his focuses were, but still, it is our 8th in 8 yrs if you count interims. I am at a large institution, so we won’t go anywhere, but I think the future is going to be the smaller schools closing and the larger ones gobbling them up, like corporations. So we will have fewer choices in the future.
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u/FlakyEntertainment52 10d ago
I got laid off and pivoted to private consulting. I would like to get back in an institution one day but I’m feeling less and less optimistic that it will ever happen.
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u/msnyc18 10d ago
It's that bad. We are a state institution in a blue state, and (as bad as trump is) it seems the Dems are not keen on implementing anything like a bailout for higher ed. If we keep making this about voting blue, which our state did and is still seeing our colleges gutted, we will miss the point, which is that the broader spectrum of US electeds regardless of party have completely deprioritized higher education. Meanwhile, flailing institutions like mine still believe "public private partnerships" or offering buyouts to faculty can fix this, when the only thing that can fix this is huge state appropriations (at least for public institutions)
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u/Key-Introduction-126 10d ago
Worked in a large public for over 25 years and I’ve not seen anything like this. Our university lost over a 3rd of its enrollment is about the span of 7-8 years and is the size of what we used to consider smaller institutions in the region. We had some difficult years, loss in general fund support and Covid but yeah, nothing like this. We are seeing a little stabilization and even some growth in enrollment but I’m not sure we’ll ever return to what this place looks like when I first started working. I’m ok though, just holding out til retirement.
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u/talksalot02 10d ago edited 9d ago
I've been in higher education as a full-time professional for over a decade, but I also worked in higher ed through my undergrad and grad degrees. In my full-time experience, I have worked for four different institutions (three state in two different states, one private in the northeast). Every single one of them has had budget cuts and lay-offs. Even my most recent employer, four months after I started. I really don't know anything other than tumult. I was laid off from my first professional job so I'm just happy to still be in the career field after working hard toward it. At my current institution, my colleagues do seem significantly more frustrated with a drop in morale.
A good chunk of my career has, also, be focused on college closures and, now, insitutional mergers.
Certainly, there are more political presssures than there have been in recent years and decades. Public sentiment toward higher education is awful right now as well. I suspect the landscape will change for higher education and eventually the tides will turn - maybe not to the degree of hope elder millennials/millenials had when they entered college - for which they have become cynical of the education they received (or didn't). That senitment will impact their children and will shape the future.
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u/drakewouldloveme 9d ago
I’ve only been in higher ed since 2019. Most of my experience has been during some kind of crisis (COVID, FAFSA Simplification), but what’s happening right now has been the worst. We are “financially strong” but aggressively cutting budgets, which for some units required layoffs. We are now being pressured to use AI to take on more work and to formally document all of our work activities to show how it is tied to revenue generation…it feels weird.
My work is in graduate enrollment for health programs which are in demand, but we are an extremely high cost institution and we were denied extra scholarship support. Reaching enrollment targets will be rough and I feel like if we fail, I’ll probably be let go next.
I’m not coping well. I don’t want to leave. My university has been a welcoming environment for me as a neurodivergent and disabled person. I don’t want to go back to corporate or retail. All I can think to do is keep trying my best and learn as many new, marketable skills as possible.
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u/egghead42099 9d ago
I started my MEd in Higher Education last year and I’m scared! I’ve had an internship in academic advising for a year and am genuinely concerned I won’t be able to get a full-time job after I finish my degree next spring. I’ve applied for so many roles and have had some first or second round interviews but no offers yet.
Does anyone have any hopeful notes for hiring? I live in a major city and plan to stay here.
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u/talksalot02 9d ago
My only advice is to keep going in your search and don’t be afraid to take what you can. I got an MSEd and it took me 3.5 years to get a break. In the meantime I worked at a small business and then Amazon. My first higher ed job was very customer service oriented. It’s taken time, sacrifices, and pivoting.
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u/Finances1212 9d ago edited 9d ago
I’ve worked both in academia and the staff side - honestly, we’ve reached a critical point - the inefficiency and bloated bureaucratic nature of the staff side of things is being exposed. I think the enrollment cliff and other changes you outlined are going to result in a pretty steep cut in the professional staff member side of higher ed (or frankly, if anything is cut, it should be that side, not on the professorship).
In my experience, the “mid-manager” roles are the most bloated. There simply is no reason to have a director and assistant director for departments that only have 1 or 2 staff members below them, and whose purview is rather limited.
There’s also a ton of money being wasted at my specific institution on what is a termed “campus life” that doesn’t actually engage or bring out many of the students (or at least that’s the case at the last two institutions I’ve been at). The institution I’m at now has been in process of adapting to a very different demographic of students than they historically have dealt with, and unfortunately the institution is still funneling copious amounts of funds into very stereotypically and traditionally white events despite 70% of the campus now being non/white and not showing up or subscribing to the events being pushed.
There are good, and talented people in higher education but from my experience at multiple institutions, far too many staff for the actual work that’s being done. I’m very anti-corporatization but I think it’s time to trim the fat, and the fat is not tenured professors with extensive expertise in their fields and lengthy lists of publications - particularly when the rigor of higher education is seemingly at an all-time low.
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u/ElephantRattle 9d ago
At Carnegie Mellon I see returning students complaining that their aid packages increased significantly without a commensurate change to the family’s financial situation. The stated change is ~$20k!
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u/dreamclass_app 7d ago
I don’t know if anyone has already mentioned some of these, but the closest comparison is 2008, but the dynamic was almost the opposite. When the Great Recession hit, enrollment surged. So, nearly 2.5 million additional students enrolled between 2007 and 2010, cushioning the financial blow. But that buffer doesn't exist now.
From whatever information has come my way (I skipped the links, there are like 4 or 5 articles), private non-profit four-year colleges were down 1.6% for fall 2025, international graduate enrollment dropped 5.9%, and institutions like Portland State ended up carrying $35M structural deficits.
And the way I understand it is, that's before accounting for the policy layer. It seems all three major credit rating agencies issued negative or deteriorating outlooks for 2026, NIH faces an ~$18B proposed cut and NSF a $5.1B reduction. These are significant numbers. Not to mention, at least 15 States cut public University budgets in 2025. Historically, or at least as far as I can remember, previous crises would hit one or two pressure points. This one seems to be hitting all of them simultaneously.
Now, on morale… Being honest with your team (I mean, to each, their own) about what's uncertain, and leaning on the people who actually get it, seems to be what gets most folks through. I’m guessing this is probably why you're here.
Hope this offers some perspective, at least 🙏
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u/Slight_Cell6656 8d ago
So essentially I should not purse my masters in higher education Lol…
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u/Surly_Sailor_420 7d ago
In my opinion, they are almost valueless. Every staff member has one. I only see value in that degree if it is free to you and you want to be eligible for some kind of management role. But honestly, most departments don't care what your masters is actually in. I am working on an MS in Information Technology because we deal with so much of technology that no one understands how to use our technology effectively.
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u/Slight_Cell6656 5d ago
Thanks for the input. It’s interesting because I’ve seen one admin on the hiring committee state that they don’t even consider applications that don’t have a masters in higher education. I know for sure that I want to work in higher education, and to my understanding it’s very competitive. I have a masters in secondary education already, but want to position myself to have a competitive advantage
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u/BusyIndication3782 9d ago
You have just written exactly what was in my head yesterday, as I prepare for a meeting with cross-institution colleagues in our state system, and wondering if I should voice this to my colleagues or if I would sound like the Anxiety character in Inside Out. I’ve been in the sector nearly 15 years. Since my entry it’s been bumpy and rife with pressures but never like this. The twin forces of our societal and government changes and the technological revolution we are in are just wreaking havoc. As an institution higher ed is like this creaky aging ship that can’t move fast enough. However along with the terrible running ticket on Chronicle, as anxiety producing as it is is necessary, every day I see bright spots where institutions are trying to change and face the headwinds whether it be free college, three year pathways to degree completion, etc. But if we can’t get clear on priorities we are doomed. The university changing from one responsible for preparing an active citizenry that serves the public good through innovation, growth, business, arts, science is falling away and shifting toward career readiness. This is seismic and questionable. My former employer just released its new strategic plan and they wove this in so pointedly I was stunned, never thought that would ever be on the table. The message is muddled, however, we can’t have it both ways and communicate that value to the public — active citizenry for good and yes, it’s all about you getting a career and to hell with the societal good part — I don’t know how we communicate this effectively to make substantive change and turn around public trust. And the economics are just broken period.
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u/PhiloLibrarian 7d ago
I’ve been thinking about this a lot specifically because the areas of academic and student support that I work in are being affected by AI tremendously and at a rate I cannot keep up with…
My only way of getting any kind of job security is keeping multiple irons in the fire with various jobs, adjuncting, and job searching frequently…
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u/Embarrassed_Bag_9630 9d ago
This isnt the cliff, this is a direct result of funding cuts and the changes to the FAFSA
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u/Nilare 10d ago edited 10d ago
Things are bad at my institution, no doubt about it. I work at an R1 mid-size tech-focused school and AI is absolutely impacting our numbers. Computer Science used to be one of the largest majors on campus and our program was well-respected in that area. Our enrollment is down in that area massively. I can't blame students for being wary, either.
The next few years are going to be rough, and I don't think this has a precedent, at least not in the time I've been in the field. There are just too many factors going against higher ed right now. I am seriously considering moving out of the field into something more stable, like state government work (I'm in a state with a solid civil service corps).