College Staff Cuts Just Hit a Decade High

A wave of college staff cuts quietly hit campuses between November 2024 and November 2025, and new data confirms it was the steepest single-year drop in at least a decade.

CUPA-HR released workforce figures this week showing full-time non-teaching staff at colleges declined 6.6% in 2025 — reversing several years of growth, including a 6.5% increase in 2024.¹ The drop in part-time staff was sharper: a 23.9% decline, following a 21.1% surge the year before.¹ The Hechinger Report described it as the largest drop in noninstructional employees in at least a decade.²

Budget pressure is driving the cuts. Enrollment declines and disruptions to federal research funding have squeezed operating budgets at public and private institutions alike, and non-teaching staff are typically among the first positions to be eliminated or left unfilled when revenue falls short.³

The Headline Number Understates the Problem

The 6.6% full-time drop is real, but the part-time figure is where the deeper impact lives. Many campus offices rely on part-time workers to handle peak demand — financial aid processing in the fall, registration rushes, advising weeks before midterms. A 23.9% cut in that workforce does not disappear evenly across the calendar. It concentrates exactly when students need the most help.

The pattern also highlights a disruption cycle: part-time staff jumped 21.1% in 2024, only to fall 23.9% in 2025. That kind of swing is not a managed reduction. It reflects institutions expanding to handle enrollment pressure or federal aid volume, then cutting when budgets tightened — leaving students in the middle of the churn.

Faculty Grew While Support Staff Shrank

Here is the detail that most coverage has underplayed: tenure-track faculty headcount rose 7% over the same period, the biggest increase for that group since at least 2016.¹

That combination — more courses, fewer support staff — creates a structural squeeze. More students are enrolling in more classes, but the people who process financial aid awards, schedule advising appointments, handle disability accommodations, and manage registration logistics are fewer in number. The counseling wait times crisis that emerged earlier this year is one symptom of this same pattern.

The CUPA-HR data covers November 1, 2024 to November 1, 2025. Budget cuts accelerating in 2026 — including continued federal research funding disruptions and enrollment declines — are not yet reflected in these numbers. The staffing situation on campuses today is likely worse than what this data shows.

What This Means When You're Actually on Campus

For current and incoming students, the practical impact shows up in specific places:

Financial aid offices. Fewer staff processing appeals, verification requests, and disbursement questions means longer response times, especially in September and January when aid packages are live. If you have an aid question, start early — don't wait until a payment deadline is 48 hours away.

Academic advising. At many schools, advising load has increased even as headcount dropped. Getting an appointment in the first two weeks of a semester can take two weeks to schedule. The campus life orientation guide covers how to get advising figured out before the rush hits.

Disability services and accommodations. Accommodation requests often have a processing backlog. File early — the rule of thumb is four to six weeks before the semester starts, but at understaffed offices, earlier is better. See how to request accommodations in college for the process.

Registrar. Transcript requests, enrollment verifications, and registration errors are slower to resolve when staff are stretched. Build a buffer on anything with a deadline.

Before registering at a college, ask specifically how many full-time academic advisors are on staff and what the average student-to-advisor ratio is. The national benchmark is 300 students per advisor. Many schools are well above that. A 500-to-1 ratio means you will not be getting proactive advising — you have to initiate every contact yourself, and appointments will often be weeks out.

Using This When Choosing a College

The CUPA-HR data covers institutional averages across 936 schools. The variation within that sample is wide. A large research university that recently laid off facilities staff is a different situation than a small liberal arts college that cut its entire marketing department. The staff reductions that affect students most are in direct-service departments — advising, financial aid, registrar, career services, disability services.

When comparing colleges, ask for the actual staffing ratios in those departments, not the aggregate numbers. Common App and the net price calculator tell you about cost; staffing ratios tell you about support. Our guide on how to choose a college covers what questions to ask that schools don't always volunteer. And if you're weighing a small college versus a large university, staffing ratios are one of the sharper differentiators than the brochure numbers suggest.

For broader context on what's been driving campus cuts, see our coverage of the college budget cuts and enrollment decline wave hitting institutions this year.

What to Do Now

1. At your current school: Identify your financial aid contact, academic advisor, and disability services coordinator before you need them urgently. Get your name in their system early in the semester.
2. If you're choosing: Ask each school's financial aid and advising offices for their average response time and staff-to-student ratio. Compare those numbers directly.
3. If you have a pending request: Follow up after five to seven business days, not two weeks. Understaffed offices lose track of requests. A polite follow-up email gets you back to the top of the pile.
4. If you're applying: Factor campus support resources into your college evaluation — not just academic rankings. Support quality matters for completion rates as much as selectivity does.

Footnotes

1. Higher Ed Dive. (2026, October). Colleges made deep staff cuts while adding tenure-track faculty last year. Higher Ed Dive. https://www.highereddive.com/news/colleges-made-deep-staff-cuts-while-adding-tenure-track-faculty-last-year/828447/ ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. Hechinger Report. (2026, October). College non-teaching staff fell more than in any year in at least a decade. The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/?p=118197 ↩

3. Washington Times. (2026, October 20). AI reversing increases in higher education administration for the first time in decades. The Washington Times. https://washingtontimes.com/news/2026/oct/20/ai-reversing-increases-higher-education-administration-first-time ↩