Greetings from an unusual winter storm in the Washington, DC area. I’m writing this after two weeks of some snow, lots of ice, and very low temperatures for the area (circa 10-25 °F). Fortunately we didn’t lose power nor suffer any property or bodily damage.
Today’s post is one of my semi-regular surveys of cuts to higher ed. I’ve been scanning for institutional closures, mergers, and staff/program cutbacks for several years. My goal is to collect evidence of such reductions, assembling them in one spot for public access. (Previous posts from 2024: March 1, March 20, March 28, April, May, June, July, September, November. From 2025: February, June, July, August, October.)
My focus in these posts is American higher education, mostly due to reasons of time. I have touched on other, closely related nations at times.
I’ve divided what follows into institutional closures, mergers, cuts, and potential cuts to come, with some reflections at the end.
1 Closures
Martin University (Historically Black University*, Indiana) “paused operations” in early December, then let all staff go a couple of weeks later, then announced it would close in January.
No sign of closing on homepage so far.
California College of the Arts (private, San Francisco) will close next year, and Vanderbilt University (private research, Tennessee) will purchase its grounds. Vanderbilt will then create the “California College of the Arts Institute at Vanderbilt.”
Eastern Nazarene College (private, Massachusetts) closed in 2025. A complex plan involving teach-out to several colleges, turning parts of the campus into private housing, and selling other parts to an alum fell through.
(At the end of 2025, Inside Higher Ed reflected on 15 nonprofit colleges and universities which closed that year.)
2 Mergers
Pomona College (private, liberal arts, California) and Claremont Graduate University (private research university, also California) are in talks for a merger – specifically, for the former to acquire the latter. It sounds like a delicate negotiation:
On the table is a deal that would turn CGU into a legal subsidiary of Pomona. This would not mean, according to CGU, that Pomona would subsidize its operations. Rather, Pomona would provide strategic guidance while helping it explore options for new financial models, investment management and additional revenue.
“CGU and Pomona would remain distinct institutions with separate admissions, academic programs, faculty, and degrees,” CGU said on its FAQ page. “Each school would continue to serve its own students and maintain its own educational mission.”
Likewise, Pomona President Gabrielle Starr said in a statement Thursday that “Pomona’s liberal arts undergraduate mission must and will not be turned aside by any agreement with CGU.”
They are both part of the Claremont Colleges consortium. It’s unclear how a merger would impact that alliance.
3 Campuses cutting programs and jobs
Rider University (private, New Jersey) laid off 30 full time professors in December. I can’t tell how many are tenure-track or tenured. The university then offered to re-hire those people as adjuncts, “with more than a 70% pay cut and no benefits.” Rider then raised $2 million in donations for a student assistance fund.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (public research) will close six area studies centers. They include(d) the African Studies Center, the Carolina Asia Center, the Center for European Studies, the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies, and the Institute for the Study of the Americas. The rationale looks like cutting expenses.
DePaul University (Catholic, research, Illinois) announced it would lay off 114 staff, or “7% of its full-time and part-time employees,” just before winter break. (archived). The rationale: “financial headwinds due to a significant drop in international graduate student enrollment, an increased demand for financial aid, and the rising costs of benefits.”
Earlham College (private liberal arts, Indiana) announced it would end 109 positions. According to a local account, “[a]bout 41% of the total positions being reduced are teaching faculty roles.” The reason: addressing a structural deficit. including those of staff, non-tenure-track faculty, and tenure-track faculty. According to earlham.edu/faqs a mix of broader trends (they cite demographics, tariffs, inflation, COVID) and the failure of internal investments to pay off are to blame.
An Earlham philosophy professor, Ferit Güven, has been writing a Substack on this story for months. Güven also hosts other authors, including a recently graduated student who wrote about the college endowment, and an Earlham historian‘s summary of impacts on some specific faculty members.
Christian Brothers University (Catholic, Tennessee) will terminate 16 faculty. That’s around 19% of the full-time instructional staff, according to Wikipedia. The reason is persistent financial struggles driven by declining enrollment. The university declared financial exigency in 2023.
Regents of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (public, land grant research university) will cut four programs. They include: Earth and atmospheric sciences; educational administration; statistics; textiles, merchandising and fashion design. Some number of faculty and possibly support staff will lose jobs, but it’s unclear how many.
An apt photo: UNL regents during a public meeting.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (private research university) cut back its libraries, library services, and librarians. According to the Boston Globe, “Three of MIT’s five physical libraries will be shuttered or significantly altered within the next two years, and 12 library employees will see their positions eliminated, in addition to four unfilled roles in the department.” Additionally, the campus is “scaling back its purchases of print books and its paywalled journal subscriptions, opting instead to provide more articles to students and staff on an on-demand basis.” The drivers here are federal pressures in the form of research support cuts and a bigger endowment tax.
The University of Texas-Austin (public research) is closing a series of units, including its Center for Teaching and Learning, the Office of Community Engagement, the Office of Undergraduate Research, and a student advising center. As a result UT is laying off “more than 20 people,” according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The rationale is unclear.
In Canada, more layoffs continue as that nation massively slashed international student numbers. The Conestoga College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning (public, Ontario) is laying off 400 staff and faculty across four campuses.
4 Impending or likely cuts
The University of Pennsylvania (private, research) asked the campus to “further reduce certain expenditures by four percent in the coming fiscal year.” The reasons given:
upcoming changes to student loan programs; changes in visa policies; an increase in the endowment tax; and ongoing negotiations related to research funding. In addition, legal, insurance, and benefit expenses that are shared across the University continue to increase faster than revenues, adding to ongoing budget pressures.
The New School (private research university, New York) is engaged in cutting back some programs:
administrators have started to implement a plan to close, overhaul or merge about 30 academic programs or majors; pause nearly all admissions to doctoral programs; and offer buyouts or early retirement to what professors say is about 40 percent of the full-time faculty.
The Oklahoma State University system will end nearly 70 academic programs across its five campuses. Additionally,
Almost 200 of the programs flagged for review will continue under action plans “to boost enrollment and productivity.” Planned changes include updating curricula, implementing strategies to improve enrollment and collaborating with other institutions.
The reason: to improve campus productivity.
The president of Iowa’s Association of Independent Colleges and Universities told that state’s legislature that granting community colleges the ability to award bacherlors’ degrees would harm private baccalaureate campuses. President Gary Steinke states that “[w]ithout any question and without any doubt and without being hyperbolic or anything else, if House Study Bill 533 should pass, some of our private colleges will close.”
San Francisco State University (public research university; in California State University system) is offering more faculty and staff early retirement incentives.
Washington University in St. Louis (private, research, Missouri) asked “[t]enured faculty aged 60 or older with five or more years of experience… to consider retiring .”
Hellenic College Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology (“private Orthodox Christian liberal arts college and seminary,” Massachusetts) is considering selling some land to a development company. The institution has faced financial challenges over the past decade.
The University of Wisconsin system (public, 21 institutions) is implementing a new metric to measure academic program viability, which might lead to cuts. The metric “flags programs with an average of 15 or fewer juniors and seniors enrolled annually in a three-year span.”
Northpoint Bible College (“private Pentecostal Bible college and seminary… Massachusetts”) faces an accreditation challenge. The Association for Biblical Higher Education’s Commission on Accreditation required Northpoint to demonstrate its fiscal stability. On the secular side, “[i]n February 2024, the college was put on [Massachusetts]’ public watchlist of institutions that are financially unstable and/or at risk of imminent closure,” according to MassLive.
George Washington University (private, research; Washington, D.C.,) paused some PhD program admissions for the 2026-2027 academic year. According to IHE, “[t]he Ph.D. programs affected are in clinical psychology, anthropology, human paleobiology, political science and mathematics.” Further,
Two faculty members told Inside Higher Ed that the university was also slashing the total number of Ph.D. packages across all departments within the Columbian College of Arts & Sciences. GWU did not respond to a question about those additional cuts.
Siena University** (Franciscan, New York) ran up an unexpected debt when a donor failed to deliver on promised funding for a new building.
Northeastern University (private research, Massachusetts) cut discretionary budgets for its College of Social Sciences and Humanities very steeply, with reports of more than 70%.
In Canada, Fanshawe College of Applied Arts and Technology (public, Ontario) offered faculty and staff retirement incentives. Algonquin College of Applied Arts and Technology (public, Ontario) is closing 30 programs, including:
Sustainable architectural design. Horticultural industries. Apprenticeships in horticulture techniques. Manufacturing engineering technician. Pathways to Indigenous empowerment and aboriginal general arts and science. The college points to its new Indigenous studies program instead. Applied museum studies. Design foundations. Journalism. Music, media and film foundations. General arts and science, except English for academic purposes. Music industry arts. Illustration and concept art. Bachelor of culinary arts and food science, specifically honours. Bartending. Business development and sales. Its hospitality program in hotel and restaurant operations management. Tourism, specifically travel. Law clerk. Event management. Financial services. Paralegal. Pre-health pathway to certificates and diplomas. Pre-health pathway to advanced diplomas and degrees, specifically at its Ottawa campus. Recreation and leisure services. Fitness and health promotion, though it will continue online. Business in Pembroke. Business fundamentals in Pembroke. Computer programming in Pembroke. Environmental management and assessment in Pembroke.
No word yet on how many faculty and staff positions will end as a result.
5 Reflections
I’ve written reflections on these kinds of stories before, and dread repeating myself. If you like, scroll up to the top of the post and check the priors out. For now, let me add some more:
Inside Higher Ed*** considered some of these cuts. They counted 300 jobs cut in December, after 9000 for all of 2025. They found federal pressures responsible for a significant portion, and I agree. The Trump administration’s multi-level campaign against academia has drawn blood. (I document this campaign in a YouTube series.) I fear we’ll see more of this in the rest of 2026, so long as the administration continues its work and as Trump pays attention to the topic.
What I’ve been calling “the queen sacrifice” is clearly in play. That’s when a campus cuts tenure-track and especially tenured faculty, either by declaring financial exigency or by ending/reorganizing programs. Most of the cuts are to other populations, but the tenured are not immune. It’s harder to track adjuncts getting cut or simply not re-hired, because such stories get little press, due to the structural marginalization of that population.
Programs falling under the knife tend to be in the humanities, still, but not entirely. Note the wide range of afflicted departments. Much is due to a given campus’ micropolitics and situation.
Note the presence of religious schools in this list. Private schools in general are not immune, but I wonder to what extent religiously-affiliated institutions suffer from America’s decreasing religious belief and identity.
Again I say: while I wrote about these stories with an emphasis on statistics, these are all stories about human beings and damages to human lives. Let me share just one individual’s story, from Rider University:
Vincent Toro, now an adjunct English professor, was a full-time faculty member before getting laid off and agreeing to return in spring 2026 to “volunteer” to teach.
“I could choose to just collect unemployment and not help the school this way, but I know that it needs professors to teach those classes in order to keep going, and the students need the consistency of working with professors that are already mentoring them,” Toro wrote to The Rider News on Jan. 6.
Toro is set to teach a 200-level introduction to creative writing class and a 300-level playwriting class in the spring semester. After previously receiving a salary of $80,000, Toro said his salary as an adjunct will be less than $10,000 for two classes.
“I am doing this because I mean it when I say that I always, always put students first.”
I’ll close with requests. First, let me know if this kind of documentation is useful to you. And is this the best format? Second, as I start preparing the next one, please share any such stories. You can do so in the comment box below, or reach out to me privately if you prefer.
Take care, everyone. This is a rough time for higher ed, and looks likely to be hard for the near future. Be safe and help each other as best as you can.
*Interesting note from Wikipedia: “It was the only predominantly Black institution (PBI) of higher education in Indiana. (It is excluded from the designation Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) because it was founded after the cut-off date of 1964.)”
**Siena only changed its name from College to University a few months ago.
***IHE is moving to a paywall now.
(thanks to Colby B., Nathan Greenfield, Karl Hakkarainen, Tom Haymes, Peter Shea, George Station, and Ed Webb. Thanks as well to Georgetown’s hard-working inter-library loan office.)
Lots of good information but brutal nonetheless. Expect the situation to only deteriorate from here. Very few young folks these days are willing to enter the student loan trap for four years (or more) at a diploma mill–especially since the price completely outpaces inflation. Also, the BS jobs in society are beginning to get axed.
Good points, Philip. I’m very concerned we’re pitching down into decline.
Bryan, I wonder what you mean by “decline;” and Philip, I wonder what you mean by “deteriorate.” As I read this article, the word that kept going through my head was “contraction”: a system built to serve 21 million students is now shrinking to serve 19 or 18 or 17 million. From the 30,000-foot view, these changes seem evolutionary and not revolutionary. Colleges are still operating, states are still subsidizing public institutions, students are still taking out loans to fund their educations, even though there are fewer of them. I am sure there is a tipping point somewhere, but I see it ahead of us instead of surrounding us. And maybe we are actually seeing the same thing — the same numbers mean “deterioration” or “decline” while I am just calling it something else. Either way, I’d be interested to know why you’re reaching a different conclusion.
Decline: contraction is one word I often use. I’ve said “market correction” but gotten pushback for it. The point: a mix of fewer campuses, students, employees, programs, also a smaller physical footprint.
Again, looking ahead, we have to be open to possibilities. This one seems likely.
Thought you’d like to see this one: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/brock-university-layoffs-9.7077506
Oh, good catch, Kristy. Crediting you in next post.
“Siena only changed its name from College to University a few months ago.” This may be the saddest sentence in the piece.
What timing!
University of Texas at Austin is closing its American Studies department along with several gender and ethnic studies and language departments, folding them into a single “department of social and cultural analysis.” Like the earlier closure of their teaching and learning center, this does not appear to be driven primarily by budgetary concerns.
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/02/12/texas-ut-austin-consolidate-race-gender/
As a MA/PhD grad of American Studies there, this is beyond devastating.
JV, I’m so sorry.
I suspect cuts might occur through this part: “The university has begun a curricula review to determine which majors and minors to continue offering under the two consolidated departments.”