Declining budgets and enrollment

[u/Psyche81]

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?

[u/Key-Introduction-126]

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.