Small private colleges, public universities cut jobs, programs to close budget gaps

Dozens of regional public and private colleges have eliminated jobs and programs this summer to close budget gaps as enrollment and tuition revenues shrink heading into the fall semester.

The cuts include private Brandeis University in Boston purging 60 staff jobs to shore up a $2 million deficit and public Western Illinois University trimming more than 70 staff positions and closing a building to offset a $10 million shortfall.

Some flagship public systems have also tightened their belts: Trustees at West Virginia University voted in June to eliminate five majors at two branch campuses. Penn State University in May offered faculty contract buyouts to help trim $94 million, or 14.1%, from its budget starting in July 2025.

The economizing follows several years of downsizing in higher education. Long-term declines in birthrates, rising costs and dwindling job prospects for liberal arts graduates have forced a growing number of second-tier colleges to merge or close.

Academic insiders say the latest cuts have fallen hardest on low-enrollment humanities programs, support staff and boutique sports such as tennis that administrators have deemed costly luxuries in a contracting market.

“The first programs to go are typically the humanities, especially the arts and foreign language, because they tend to be the programs with the least number of students majoring in them,” said Anna Sillers, a data analyst specializing in college spending at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a liberal arts advocacy group.

Several public colleges have closed their diversity, equity and inclusion offices to head off Republican-led reductions in state funds. On Tuesday, the flagship University of Missouri at Columbia became the latest to eliminate a DEI office and administrator job.

The moves have sparked pushback on some campuses where unionized employees have threatened to walk out as students return to classes in a few weeks.

At Western Illinois University in Macomb, members of the WIU Chapter of the University Professionals of Illinois Local 4100 plan to march Tuesday at a board meeting where trustees will present their proposal to cut humanities courses.

“We’re trying to save WIU,” Merrill Cole, a queer studies professor and the union’s president, said in an email. “We are concerned that after approving deficit budgets for five years, the WIU Board of Trustees has decided to attempt to balance the budget in six months, without sufficient attention to the damage being done to the institution and without fully accounting for the losses in revenue their speedy and ill-advised cuts will cost.”

WIU spokesperson Alisha Looney said in an email that the school is doing what is necessary “to evolve and innovate by attracting new markets of students.”

“Like many institutions across the country, Western Illinois University is adapting institutional expenditures, operations, services, and staffing to reflect the changing population and student needs,” Ms. Looney said.

According to the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, the U.S. has 1,754 private nonprofit colleges and 1,892 public colleges.

Hundreds of others have closed or merged in recent years, with the pace accelerating this year as federal pandemic relief funding expired.

Gary Stocker, who founded College Viability to evaluate campuses’ financial stability, estimates that 40 out of 200 struggling private colleges will close in the 2024-25 academic year even after cutting their budgets. He expects the closings to displace 40,000 to 50,000 students.

“The rate of closures will [at least double] this fall and into next spring,” said Mr. Stocker, a former chief of staff at private Westminster College in Missouri. “The financial outlook does not get any better until there is more of an equilibrium between the supply of college seats and the demand for those seats.”

He noted in an email that poorly endowed liberal arts schools with high acceptance rates, low graduation rates and high tuition discounts are the most likely to shutter.

According to campus insiders, administrators often delay budget cut announcements until summer vacation to minimize faculty and student pushback. Other recent cutbacks include:

• At the end of May, the private arts school Columbia College Chicago announced it would lay off 70 staff members and administrators and purge another 32 vacant positions out of 1,410 employees.

• Mount Holyoke College, a private women’s school in Massachusetts, said it would no longer sponsor its winning tennis team due to a need to reallocate funding.

• The private University of Lynchburg in Virginia cut 40 staff members in June and pledged to lay off another 40 faculty members over the next three years as it closes 12 undergraduate and five graduate programs.

• Private Lindenwood University in Missouri eliminated 14 employees and several vacant positions as part of a move to cut 10% of its budget.

• Talladega College, a historically Black private school in Alabama, said on July 12 that it would dismantle its gymnastics program after one season due to a lack of resources.

• The public University of North Carolina System Board of Governors last week approved a sweeping elimination of low-enrollment liberal arts degrees at UNC Asheville and UNC Greensboro. The cuts include drama, philosophy, religious studies, French and German at UNC Asheville, and anthropology, physics and religious studies at UNC Greensboro.

Meanwhile, employers in recent years have removed four-year degree requirements for jobs that traditionally drew liberal arts graduates. Studies show a growing share of emerging tech industry careers will also not require the degrees.

College officials said their cutbacks have targeted staff and programs that served declining shares of students.

Brandeis University cited graduate program enrollment declines for its cutbacks before fall classes start.

“Brandeis is addressing both long-term budget challenges and long-term structural issues,” said spokesperson Julie Jette. “Some changes going forward will involve greater academic and administrative collaborations and more sharing of university resources.”

In Chicago, federal data shows Columbia College’s enrollment dropped from 12,127 students in fall 2009 to 6,646 in fall 2022. The school’s most popular majors traditionally included visual and performing arts, communication and English.

“To address challenges it faces, Columbia is changing its structure and offerings to better fuel student success and meet employer expectations,” the college said in an email.

University of Lynchburg spokesperson Heather Bradley said an internal review found 95% of all students concentrated in 21 majors. Of the other 31 majors the school offered, including recently purged programs in music and diversity strategies, some had just one or two students.

“This is not sustainable, nor is it responsible,” Ms. Bradley said.

Adam Norris, a spokesperson for the public University of New Orleans, said “several consecutive years of enrollment declines” made cuts necessary after the school exhausted its $4.5 million in COVID-19 relief funds.

“Federal pandemic aid helped the university fill the gaps in recent years, but that aid is gone,” Mr. Norris said. “So now the university must right-size its budget and align its expenses with its revenues.”

Other factors hurting four-year colleges include surging trade school enrollments over the past year. Higher education groups say high school graduates in sparsely populated rural areas have become less likely to sign up for bachelor’s programs at nonselective schools as they have considered the alternatives.

“There’s a lot of concern these days about student debt loads and more students are going to be looking at the return on investment,” said Tom Harnisch, vice president for government relations at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, which represents state agencies overseeing public colleges. “Inflation has gone down recently, but that’s a factor as well.”

According to conservative analysts, many rural families have been turned off by coursework in race and gender ideology that mocks their values without leading to a good job.

“As higher education has gravitated towards [liberal ideology], a great many students have looked elsewhere for what they should do after high school,” said Peter Wood, president of the right-leaning National Association of Scholars and a former associate provost at private Boston University.

Conservatives have also flagged inefficiencies in the federal student loan system and decades of administrative hiring outpacing enrollment growth.

“One hopes that any colleges making cuts will focus on administrative bloat and the programs with the worst outcomes for students,” said Michael Brickman, an adjunct fellow specializing in higher education at the American Enterprise Institute. “Unfortunately, few colleges are held accountable for such results and instead may be incentivized to preserve cheap-to-administer programs that do not necessarily serve students well.”

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This post appeared on The Washington Times on August 1, 2024.