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Some institutions have blamed their cuts in part on FAFSA delays, which hurt enrollment.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | John Phelan/Wikimedia Commons | Hampshire College/Wikimedia Commons | Lindenwood University
June was another challenging month for many campuses, requiring a new round of job and program cuts. While many attributed the cuts to declining enrollment, some cited uncommon reasons for the drop in head count. Emerson College, for instance, blamed vitriolic pro-Palestinian protests near campus for driving enrollment down. Emerson was also one of three colleges that pointed to the bungled rollout of an overhauled Free Application for Federal Student Aid as the reason for cuts.
Here’s the latest round of campus cuts announced last month.
Pennsylvania State University
Staring down a budget crisis, Pennsylvania State University saw 383 employees take buyouts as part of a voluntary separation incentive program launched in May. The buyouts, finalized in June, will shrink the workforce at Penn State’s 20 regional campuses by about 10 percent.
The university is also shifting 11 of its regional campuses into four groups, each overseen by a chancellor. Previously each regional or commonwealth campus had its own chancellor.
The buyouts and restructuring come as Penn State seeks to chop almost $100 million from its fiscal year 2026 budget; the latest moves are expected to save the university $43 million. Officials are also conducting an academic portfolio and program review that may prompt additional job cuts.
Emerson College
Emerson College plans to lay off an unspecified number of faculty and staff members due to enrollment declines that President Jay Bernhardt blamed partly on pro-Palestinian protests.
Students at Emerson, like at many institutions across the country, established a pro-Palestinian encampment near campus in May to protest the war between Israel and Hamas and demand that the college divest from Israel, weapons manufacturers and companies profiting off the conflict. Nearly 120 protesters were arrested when police forces swept the encampment.
Now Bernhardt is partly attributing a projected fall enrollment decline to “negative press and social media” related to the protests and arrests, according to an email obtained by The Boston Globe.
In addition to noting that protesters had targeted “yield events and campus tours,” Bernhardt also cited “national enrollment trends away from smaller private institutions” and a “deposit delay” related to this year’s rocky rollout of the new FAFSA.
Some outside observers countered that Emerson’s yield rates have been down in recent years, noting that the college’s sticker price— $54,400 a year, according to College Board data—is fairly expensive. By comparison, the average sticker price at a four-year private college hovered around $41,500 last year.
Emerson did not provide specifics on the number of employees to be laid off or the vacant jobs that will go unfilled. College officials did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.
St. Cloud State University
Broad cuts are coming to St. Cloud State University after officials finalized planned program cuts. Now 92 academic programs and 54 faculty jobs will be cut, the St. Cloud Times reported.
The cuts include 42 bachelor’s and master’s degree programs and 50 minors.
The planned cuts have been in the works for months as St. Cloud State grappled with budget challenges. More faculty jobs are expected to be cut in the future as the university looks to find its financial footing after enrollment plummeted from almost 17,000 students in fall 2012 to 10,420 in fall 2022, according to federal enrollment data.
St. Cloud State also recently faced a budget deficit of more than $14 million.
Lindenwood University
Anticipating an enrollment decline amid the FAFSA challenges affecting campuses across the nation, Lindenwood University in Missouri laid off 14 employees last month, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Another 40 to 50 vacant positions will go unfilled, according to the newspaper.
While Lindenwood president John Porter told the Post-Dispatch that university finances are “strong and stable,” he said the layoffs were part of an effort to cut expenses by 10 percent. The college is also renegotiating vendor contracts and dialing back the air-conditioning in campus buildings, setting the temperature at 78 degrees to save on utility and other costs.
Alverno College
Alverno College declared financial exigency last month, announcing that it is reducing the number of undergraduate majors from 43 to 29 and graduate programs from 25 to 19. Additionally, the college said it will eliminate 25 faculty and 12 staff positions.
The cuts are intended to help Alverno shrink a reported $9 million deficit for the last fiscal year.
Like many institutions in the state of Wisconsin, the small, private, Catholic women’s college has been hit hard by enrollment declines in recent years. Alverno’s head count fell from more than 2,500 in fall 2012 to 1,596 in fall 2022, according to recent federal data.
Keystone College
Facing severe financial issues and considered in danger of “imminent closure” by its accreditor, Keystone is cutting jobs and programs in an effort to keep its doors open.
The college announced last month that it will cut 29 faculty and staff jobs and drop three programs: chemistry, forensic biology and child and family studies. An unspecified number of vacant positions were also eliminated.
The cuts are expected to save the struggling private institution in Pennsylvania $3.5 million.
Keystone has reportedly been seeking a strategic partner to help it move forward. In his announcement about the restructuring, President John Pullo made vague reference to a partnership already in the works.
“As Keystone prepares to successfully navigate a path forward with our strategic partner, we needed to better align our expenses with our anticipated revenues while being honest with ourselves with respect to the academic programs in which we can excel,” Pullo wrote.
He did not identify the partner.
Concordia University Ann Arbor
With financial challenges raising questions about its long-term future, Concordia University is shifting the majority of the academic programs at its Ann Arbor campus online.
Of 53 on-campus academic programs, all but seven will go online, MLive reported. Additionally, Concordia Ann Arbor’s 26 athletic programs will be discontinued after the 2024–25 season.
The move comes amid financial challenges for Concordia University at its home campus in Wisconsin as well as the one in Michigan. Though enrollment has been falling in Wisconsin and climbing in Ann Arbor, officials have noted that they share financial challenges, and in April they announced 24 job cuts across both campuses. Amid speculation of closure or separation, university officials said that Ann Arbor doesn’t generate enough revenue to exist as a stand-alone institution.
Concordia president Erik Ankerberg said, “Continuing these programs in Ann Arbor beyond the upcoming year is not feasible,” given the existing financial challenges for the two campuses.
However, some have questioned the wisdom of cutting sports, including Ann Arbor athletic director Lonnie Pries, who told MLive that 70 percent of students participated on sports teams.
“I don’t think this will help [Ann Arbor] not close, because I don’t think it was ever in risk of closing in the first place. We totally understood there had to be adjustments. Yes, it’s going to cut down on cost, but it’s also going to cut down on 70 percent of your students that are enrolled,” Pries said.
University of North Carolina at Asheville
Grappling with a $6 million budget deficit, the University of North Carolina at Asheville is eliminating four academic programs, Chancellor Kimberly van Noort announced last month.
The programs targeted for elimination are ancient Mediterranean studies, drama, philosophy and religious studies. UNC Asheville is also shrinking the languages and literatures department by dropping concentrations in French and German. Over the last few years, the targeted programs and concentrations have averaged a combined annual total of about 25 graduates.
If the changes are approved by the UNC System Board of Governors, faculty job cuts will likely follow, though Van Noort did not provide any details about who is at risk of layoffs.
Gwynedd Mercy University
After losing more than a quarter of its student body in the last five years, Gwynedd Mercy is shrinking from three to two schools and laying off some staff members, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Ten full-time employees will lose their jobs, a Gwynedd Mercy spokesperson said.
The university enrolled 3,056 students in the 2018–19 academic year, but that number dropped to 2,165 last fall, according to enrollment figures reported by the Inquirer. Though many small, private Pennsylvania colleges have struggled—University of the Arts and Pittsburgh Technical College both announced closures last month—an Inquirer analysis found GMU in strong financial health, buoyed by the sale of real estate assets in recent years.
Yet Gwynedd Mercy president Deanne H. D’Emilio told the newspaper that the university needed to be proactive in dealing with its enrollment challenges.
“We are intelligently dealing with the challenges we are facing. We have a very clear vision and plan on how to move forward and we are seeing positive momentum on that plan,” she said.
West Virginia University
The West Virginia University Board of Governors voted last month to discontinue five majors at WVU extension campuses in the cities of Beckley and Keyser, West Virginia Watch reported.
Majors to be discontinued at West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Beckley are aviation management, chemistry and mathematics. WVU Potomac State College in Keyser will lose majors in recreation, parks and tourism resources, and wood and science technology.
The cuts are part of a sweeping “academic transformation” at WVU that began last year when the university dropped more than two dozen majors and eliminated nearly 150 faculty jobs.
Harrisburg University
Financially squeezed Harrisburg University of Science and Technology has laid off three faculty members. The cost-cutting move comes as the institution located in Pennsylvania’s capital city struggles with debt, Penn Live reported.
In May, the university noted in a financial filing that it had failed to make a $1.2 million payment on debt issued for a building project. University officials told Penn Live then that no layoffs or program cuts were planned as Harrisburg navigates debt payments and recent budget deficits.
Cornerstone University
Cornerstone University did not renew contracts for six professors amid a reorganization that will see 18 academic programs combined, officials told local TV station WOOD. The small Christian institution in Michigan will also expand certain programs such as nursing, engineering, computer science and others.
Four faculty members have reportedly been added as part of the program expansions.
Hampshire College
Hampshire College is pausing retirement contributions and enacting yearlong pay cuts for senior leaders due to financial strain caused by low enrollment and FAFSA delays, Mass Live reported. The move comes after Hampshire faced the prospect of closure just five years ago.
Though President Edward Wingenbach recently said that Hampshire had made a financial turnaround since 2019, it appears FAFSA challenges have created complications for the small, private liberal arts college in Massachusetts. While enrollment for the incoming class is reportedly flat, Hampshire College is accepting applications through the summer, meaning it could still grow.
