Princeton asked all departments and University units to prepare “separate plans for 5 percent and 10 percent permanent budget cuts to be phased in over the next three years, with some actions to start later this summer” in an email sent to faculty and staff on Monday afternoon — the University’s most dramatic budgetary guidance yet following a tumultuous semester for higher education.
The email, sent by Provost Jennifer Rexford and Executive Vice President Katie Callow-Wright, explicitly acknowledged the potential for layoffs to be part of budget reductions. “Cuts of this magnitude to our budget cannot be achieved without changes to some operations and the associated elimination of some staff positions,” they wrote.
Rexford and Callow-Wright previously said in March that the University would pause most faculty searches until the 2025–26 school year and avoid staff growth, while asking departments and units to find ways to cut down on costs.
Now, they wrote, faculty searches will face “continued limits” next school year, and most staff hiring will be frozen. However, the University is not currently anticipating major reductions in existing staff, Rexford and Callow-Wright said.
“We are not currently planning an across-the-board reduction in staff, and our goal is to minimize layoffs, in part by using unfilled vacancies as a bridge to natural attrition,” they wrote. Some essential positions may be filled after new budgets are approved this summer.
“The entire U.S. higher education community is at profound risk,” Rexford and Callow-Wright warned, citing cuts to federally funded research and a proposed increase on an endowment tax. However, they cautioned that budget plans were still being finalized, and that “the ultimate scope of reductions depends on factors we still don’t know, such as the severity of government cuts to federal research funding and increases to the endowment tax.”
“Princeton is in some ways better positioned for a structural change to our economic model because we are less financially dependent on the federal government than are some of our peers,” they added. “But we are also more exposed, since we rely on our charitable endowment to cover more than two-thirds of our expenses.”
Princeton previously enacted university-wide layoffs during the financial recession in 2009, eliminating 43 positions.
The memo from Rexford and Callow-Wright comes as House Republicans are reportedly mulling a substantial tax increase on large university endowments as part of a major tax bill set to be debated in Congress later this week. The Trump administration also suspended $210 million in federal research grants to Princeton in March.
In response, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 took to several national media outlets to advocate for the importance of federal research funding while maintaining academic freedom for researchers.
Earlier this month, Princeton launched a “Stand Up” campaign earlier this month asking alumni to advocate for higher education. An email newsletter for the campaign sent on Thursday asked alumni to call their representatives to advocate against an increased federal endowment tax.
Unlike some peer institutions, including Harvard and Columbia, Princeton has not yet received any specific demands from the federal government.
Today’s memo also outlined some items that would not be impacted by the planned changes to the budget. While merit-based salary increases are set to return to the “pre-pandemic norm,” Callow-Wright and Rexford wrote on Monday that approved salary merit increases would not be rescinded or reduced.
“Our priorities are to preserve Princeton’s excellence in teaching and research, defend our academic freedom, and maintain the affordability of a Princeton education to people from all socioeconomic backgrounds,” they wrote.
Christopher Bao is a head News editor for the ‘Prince.’ He is from Princeton, N.J. and typically covers town politics and life.
Annie Rupertus is a head News editor emeritus for the ‘Prince’ from Philadelphia, Penn. who often covers activism and campus governance.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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