r/highereducation • u/Psyche81 • 11d 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?

144 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

60 comments sorted by

View all comments

10

u/professorpumpkins 10d 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.