Another Wave of Faculty and Program Cuts Is Hitting American Universities. Here's Who's Cutting What — and Why It Won't Stop.

"Higher education's new financial crisis has begun," Michael T. Nietzel, former president of Missouri State University, warned in Forbes, "and it may last a long time." The latest round of announcements across American campuses suggests he was right — and that the crisis is deepening faster than most institutions anticipated.

In just the past two weeks, a fresh wave of faculty layoffs, program eliminations, and institutional restructurings has swept across public and private universities from Oregon to New York. The causes are familiar by now: declining enrollment, stagnant state funding, rising operating costs, and the mounting pressure of federal research funding cuts pursued by the Trump administration. The scale, however, is becoming harder to ignore.

Portland State University: 19 Departments on the Chopping Block

Portland State University is the most dramatic case in this latest round. On March 9, PSU President Ann Cudd announced the university is formally entering retrenchment — a structured institutional downsizing process — to address a projected $35 million deficit that must be closed by the end of the 2026-27 school year.

In a letter to the PSU American Association of University Professors faculty union, Cudd identified 19 academic departments facing reductions or elimination. Three departments face outright closure: University Studies — the university's interdisciplinary general education bachelor's degree program — Conflict Resolution, and the Portland Center study abroad program. Departments facing significant reductions include History, Philosophy, Economics, Criminology and Criminal Justice, Public Administration, Politics and Global Affairs, and World Languages and Literatures.

The math behind the crisis is unsparing. PSU has shed 23% of its students since 2019, a collapse the university attributes to pandemic-era community college declines and safety concerns in downtown Portland. University documents estimate the $35 million deficit represents roughly 220 full-time positions.

PSU Faculty Senate president Matt Chorpenning put the human cost plainly: "I've talked to several colleagues who are pretty certain that they're not gonna have a job in a year. These kinds of worries drive down morale across campus at a time when it's already pretty catastrophically low."

The announcement comes just weeks after PSU was ordered by an independent arbitrator to reinstate 10 non-tenure-track faculty it had unlawfully laid off as part of an earlier $18 million budget-cutting effort — a ruling the university complied with while making clear it still intends to pursue deep restructuring. The final layoff plan is expected to be completed in June.

Southern Oregon University: On the Edge of Insolvency

Nearby Southern Oregon University came even closer to the edge. SOU leaders announced in recent weeks that the institution would not be able to cover its payroll by February 2027 — a timeline of financial insolvency almost without precedent at a functioning public university. Oregon lawmakers moved quickly, approving a $15 million emergency bailout in the state's short session.

Even with the bailout, SOU President Rick Bailey warned in a message to campus that "sobering choices" remain ahead and that the $15 million only resolves "cash-flow issues through June 2027." Oregon's higher education coordinating agency has already recommended the possibility of institutional mergers as a longer-term solution for the state's most financially fragile universities.

The New School: 30 Programs Restructured or Closed

On the opposite coast, The New School in New York City — a private research university known for its progressive arts and social science programs — is implementing a plan to close, overhaul, or merge approximately 30 academic programs or majors, while pausing nearly all admissions to doctoral programs. The university cited a confluence of pressures: upcoming changes to student loan programs, changes in visa policies, an increase in the endowment tax, and ongoing research funding negotiations — plus rising legal, insurance, and benefit costs that are increasing faster than revenues.

Earlham College: 109 Positions Eliminated

Earlham College, a private liberal arts college in Indiana, announced it is ending 109 positions to address a structural deficit — with approximately 41% of those cuts falling on teaching faculty. The institution attributed its crisis to a combination of demographic pressures, pandemic fallout, inflation, and the failure of internal investments to pay off. The cuts include staff, non-tenure-track faculty, and tenure-track faculty positions.

A February Tally That Sets a Grim Baseline

Inside Higher Ed's accounting of February alone counted more than 300 jobs cut across American colleges and universities in a single month, including multiple tenured faculty positions. Among the notable cases:

New Jersey City University laid off at least 151 employees — including 33 faculty, 24 of whom had tenure — as it prepares to merge with Kean University. Idaho State University eliminated 45 positions including 12 faculty roles, while also merging some schools and departments. Union College in New York laid off roughly 40 employees — essentially all of its dining staff — after missing enrollment goals for two consecutive years. Hiram College in Ohio laid off 22 staff members due to enrollment declines. Napa Valley College in California — a Hispanic-Serving Institution that lost designated federal dollars after the Trump administration declared HSI programs unconstitutional — laid off 16 workers and closed 17 vacancies.

The Federal Funding Factor

Beneath the enrollment and state-funding storylines runs a third and increasingly consequential cause: the Trump administration's sweeping cuts to federal research funding. President Trump's preliminary fiscal 2026 budget includes a nearly $18 billion reduction in NIH funding compared with fiscal 2025, and a $5.1 billion reduction for the National Science Foundation since fiscal 2024. Federal funding for university research and development totaled $60 billion in fiscal 2023. Those dollars do not disappear cleanly — they support graduate student stipends, postdoctoral salaries, laboratory staff, and the indirect cost recoveries that fund libraries, facilities, and administrative operations.

At the University of California system and Princeton University, hiring freezes have already been announced in anticipation of federal funding reductions. The University of Pennsylvania asked its campus to reduce certain expenditures by 4% in the coming fiscal year, citing upcoming student loan program changes, visa policy shifts, the endowment tax increase, and ongoing research funding negotiations.

Meanwhile, 31 universities have cut ties with The PhD Project — a nonprofit that helps racial minorities earn doctoral degrees — after the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights investigated the organization and pressured institutions to sever partnerships. Politics, in other words, is now a direct driver of academic personnel and program decisions alongside the financial pressures.

What It Means for Students

For students currently enrolled at institutions undergoing restructuring, the practical implications are immediate. Departments identified for elimination may not be able to offer the courses needed to complete existing degree requirements. Faculty whose positions are eliminated may leave mid-advising-relationship, disrupting research, thesis supervision, and mentorship. Morale collapses affect the quality of the educational environment even for students in programs that survive cuts.

Bryan Alexander, a higher education futurist who has been tracking campus closures and cuts in real time, has named what he calls "the queen sacrifice" — the willingness of financially distressed institutions to cut tenured and tenure-track faculty, the most protected and symbolically significant positions in academic life. When institutions begin making those cuts, he argues, it signals that the financial situation has passed the point where incremental solutions are possible.

That threshold has been crossed at an increasing number of American campuses. The question is no longer whether the restructuring of American higher education will be significant. It is how many institutions — and how many students — will be caught in its path.