Wintersession is dead. Some student employees and program staff have been laid off. The current meal swap system will be decommissioned starting next fall.
Amid an increasingly uncertain fiscal and political environment, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 announced in his annual “State of the University” letter that budgetary and operational changes would unfold over several years, following departmental budget cuts and a hiring freeze implemented last year. He added that these budgetary constraints will at times require “targeted, and in some cases, deeper, reductions over a multiyear period.”
The University recently lowered its long-term endowment return expectations from 10.2 percent to 8 percent annually, and an endowment value of $11.3 billion lower than past forecasts was predicted for the next decade. At the same time, the Trump administration has passed higher taxes on large college endowments, frozen research funding, and targeted diversity programs and other key pillars of higher education.
Against this backdrop, University units have cut programming, employee benefits, and library hours. These are just a few of the changes made through several rounds of budget cuts beginning in Spring 2025. This tracker documents some of those decisions as they unfold, as well as the parts of campus life most affected by these changes. It is not a comprehensive accounting of every financial adjustment the University is making, but rather a running timeline of notable cuts — especially those that are student-facing.
