College Budget Cuts Aren't Slowing Down

If you read our earlier coverage of the college budget cuts wave, you know this trend predates 2026. What's different now is the pace — and the kinds of schools being hit.

What Happened This Week

Ursinus College (Collegeville, PA) laid off 26 full-time and 10 part-time employees on June 2 — 15% of the 1,406-student school's nonfaculty workforce.¹ The cuts are part of a $10 million budget reduction the college has been working toward all year. Ursinus had already eliminated 29 full-time faculty positions — nearly a quarter of its faculty — earlier this academic year. Enrollment has fallen 11% over the past four years, and the college still has roughly $2 million more in operating costs to trim.

Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences laid off three divisional administrative deans on June 2 as part of a restructuring aimed at closing a $365 million structural deficit.² The three eliminated roles oversaw Sciences, Social Sciences, and Arts and Humanities. Harvard retained McKinsey & Company at a cost of $250,000 to develop the cost-cutting model. The restructuring could ultimately affect up to 25% of FAS staff. The deficit stems in part from the excise tax on large endowments enacted through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — even a $57 billion endowment doesn't absorb that without consequences.

The University of Connecticut disclosed that doctoral programs across multiple departments will admit smaller entering cohorts this fall.³ UConn faces a $134 million combined budget gap — state appropriations are expected to fall more than $110 million below prior-year levels, and federal research funding has dropped an estimated $95 million. Those federal research funding cuts have been spreading through public flagship universities all spring.

Muhlenberg College (Allentown, PA) was also flagged this week by its faculty union as facing a $10 million deficit with potential layoffs under consideration.

— Ursinus College's nonfaculty workforce, June 2, 2026 — after already cutting nearly a quarter of its faculty earlier this year

Why This Is All Happening at Once

The pressures are different at each school but cluster around three drivers:

Enrollment declines. Fewer 18-year-olds are graduating from high school than in the peak years. Schools that over-hired during the 2020–2022 enrollment surge are now contracting. Small private colleges in crowded regional markets — Ursinus sits in one of the most competitive higher-ed markets in Pennsylvania per Chronicle analysis — are absorbing this the hardest. If you're weighing small colleges vs. large universities, financial stability deserves as much attention as campus feel right now.

Federal funding pullback. UConn's $95 million federal research shortfall is not unique. Research universities that built budgets assuming consistent federal grant revenue are now recalibrating, and the downstream effect is smaller doctoral cohorts, fewer research assistantships, and faculty non-renewals.

The endowment tax effect. Harvard's situation illustrates something counterintuitive: having a large endowment no longer guarantees budget stability when Congress imposes an excise tax on that endowment. Even well-endowed private universities are restructuring.

What It Actually Means for Students

The first fear is usually: "Will my program get cut?" That's real. But the less visible effects matter just as much.

When support staff gets cut, the people who help you sort out financial aid holds, transfer credit disputes, advising bottlenecks, and registration problems are gone — replaced by longer wait times or automated systems that don't understand your specific situation. If you've ever used the financial aid appeal process, you know how much a knowledgeable person on the other end of the phone matters.

For anyone planning to apply to doctoral programs, UConn's cohort reduction is a concrete signal: research universities under federal funding pressure are limiting how many PhD students they can fund. If you're planning for graduate school, factor in that program capacity is shrinking at schools exposed to federal research cuts.

Signs a school may be under financial stress: three or more consecutive years of enrollment decline, recent program or department eliminations, notable faculty departures, layoff announcements, or heavy dependence on tuition as the primary revenue source. Any one of these alone isn't alarming — two or more together warrant a real look before you commit.

What to Check Before You Enroll

When you're evaluating a college, financial health should be part of the checklist alongside academics and campus culture. A few specific things to research:

• Enrollment trend over 3–5 years. The National Center for Education Statistics publishes this for every accredited school. Flat is fine; consistent decline is a signal.
• Revenue dependency on tuition. A school that gets more than 75–80% of its revenue from tuition has little cushion when enrollment dips.
• Recent program and department cuts. Search "[school name] program cuts 2025 2026" before you deposit.
• Publicly reported outcomes. Graduation rates and labor market outcomes are required disclosures. Schools under financial stress often cut career services early.

If you're trying to choose between schools and one of them has announced cuts in the past 12 months, that's not an automatic disqualifier — but it's a real question to ask the admissions office directly.

If You're Already Enrolled at a School Making Cuts

Transferring is not automatically the right call, but it should be on the table. The question to ask is whether the resources you're specifically counting on — your program, your advisor, your financial aid office — are in the parts of the budget being cut or protected.

The federal FAFSA deadline is June 30, 2026. If you're reconsidering your enrollment for the fall, that's 23 days to act.

Footnotes

1. The Philadelphia Inquirer. (2026, June 1). Ursinus College lays off 15% of nonfaculty staff. The Philadelphia Inquirer. https://www.inquirer.com/education/ursinus-college-layoffs-president-gundulf-graml-20260601.html ↩

2. The Harvard Crimson. (2026, June 2). FAS to lay off high-level administrators in staff restructuring. The Harvard Crimson. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/6/2/ads-laid-off-fas/ ↩

3. The Chronicle of Higher Education. (2026). The U. of Connecticut could be the next public flagship to face big cuts. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-u-of-connecticut-could-be-the-next-public-flagship-to-face-big-cuts ↩