Saint Louis University Cuts 80 Positions

What SLU Just Announced

On the afternoon of July 1, Saint Louis University President Edward Feser sent an email to faculty and staff announcing the university would eliminate 80 open positions — 35 in the faculty and 45 in staff roles.¹ Feser's message added that filled positions are also being cut, though the university did not disclose how many active employees would lose jobs.

SLU will also suspend salary increases for the 2027 fiscal year.

The stated cause: enrollment at SLU fell more than 2,000 students — roughly 13% — this academic year. Operating costs continued to rise while revenue contracted, leaving the university with a structural deficit it cannot close through normal budget measures.

The Visa Angle the Headlines Missed

The phrase "enrollment decline" points most people toward the enrollment cliff — the well-documented drop in 18-year-olds caused by falling birth rates after the 2008 recession. But SLU's problem runs deeper than demographics.

International student enrollment at SLU collapsed from roughly 1,300 students in 2023–24 to just over 300 in 2024–25 — a drop of more than 75% in a single academic year.² That is not an enrollment cliff. That is a policy shock: the Trump administration's visa revocations and stricter F-1 processing hit SLU's international pipeline hard and fast. Private universities that used international enrollment as a financial buffer had that buffer removed almost overnight.

This matters when you're comparing private and public colleges. Public flagships have a domestic tuition revenue floor that doesn't evaporate with a visa policy change. Many private universities don't.

What the Sticker Price Isn't Telling You

SLU's tuition topped $53,000 last school year.¹ The average student paid less than half of that.

A discount rate above 50% sounds generous. It's actually a structural vulnerability. A school competing on price rather than selectivity depends on volume to survive. When enrollment drops by 2,000 students, the arithmetic breaks down fast — and the net price calculator becomes the only number worth tracking.

Private colleges as a sector are now discounting tuition by more than 50% on average.³ That model sustains itself as long as enrollment holds. When it doesn't, the institution moves from discounting to cutting — which is exactly what SLU is doing now.

A high tuition discount rate (50%+) can signal financial stress, not generosity. Before enrolling at a heavily discounted private university, pull its IRS Form 990 — all nonprofits must file one and it's public. Look for three or more consecutive operating deficits. That's a red flag with a four-year timeline attached.

Open Positions vs. Layoffs — Why This Already Affects Students

Feser's announcement focused on 80 open positions being eliminated — faculty searches that were underway or budgeted, staff roles that were posted but not yet filled. These aren't mass layoffs in the headline sense. But for students, that distinction matters less than it sounds.

Eliminating 35 open faculty lines means departments that were hiring stop hiring. Courses that were being designed aren't taught. Advisors who were being recruited don't arrive. Class sections get consolidated. That degradation of the academic experience happens quietly, before any press release announces it.

This is one of the things to watch when you're building your college list: financial health is a campus quality issue, not just a "will it close" question. A university eliminating planned hires is a university where the academic environment is contracting.

IRS Form 990 is the fastest due diligence tool most families never use. Search any nonprofit college through IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search, open the most recent 990, and go to Part IX (revenue) and Part X (assets). Three straight years of operating deficits at a school with a thin endowment is a different risk profile than a school running a surplus with 10× annual expenses in reserve. This takes about 10 minutes and tells you what no rankings list will.

The Broader Pattern

SLU is not operating in isolation. A Hechinger Report projection cited by NPR in April 2026 found that more than 25% of private nonprofit four-year colleges — more than 442 schools — are at moderate or significant risk of closing or merging within the next decade.³ Midsize Catholic and Jesuit universities in the Midwest are among the most exposed.

The same forces at SLU — demographic decline, visa policy disruption, aggressive tuition discounting, rising costs — are at work across the sector. This week's SLU announcement follows a wave of cuts that hit Ursinus College, Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the University of Connecticut, and dozens of smaller schools earlier this year.

What to Do If a Private University Is on Your List

1. Get the net price, not the sticker price. The net price calculator on every school's website shows what you'd actually pay. Run it before you apply.
2. Check the 990. Three consecutive operating deficits at a tuition-dependent school is a warning worth taking seriously.
3. Ask about international enrollment trends. Schools that grew by attracting international students and then lost them abruptly are in the most acute financial stress right now.
4. Look at retention rates. Falling retention is an early signal that a school's experience is degrading, often before financial problems become public.
5. If you're an international student, the F-1 visa environment has changed significantly. Schools already under financial pressure from international enrollment losses may have fewer resources to support you through visa complications.

The private vs. public cost comparison has always involved tradeoffs. Right now, one of those tradeoffs is institutional stability — and it's worth putting on the list of things you research before you commit.

Footnotes

1. St. Louis Post-Dispatch. (2026, July). St. Louis University to cut faculty and staff positions due to declining enrollment. stltoday.com. https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/article_6d528176-b782-4a48-b9e1-9aa125cd2773.html ↩ ↩²

2. St. Louis Post-Dispatch. (2026). International student enrollments drop at St. Louis-area universities. stltoday.com. https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/article_fe9b3305-4bd8-43b7-94d4-e7e36dbb79a2.html ↩

3. NPR. (2026, April 13). More than a quarter of private colleges are at risk of closing, a new projection shows. NPR.org. https://www.npr.org/2026/04/13/nx-s1-5777582/many-private-colleges-at-risk-of-closing ↩ ↩²