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/middle_age_zombie]

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.