Public universities in the Midwest are raising prices for out-of-state students, as Florida schools consider making the same move for the first time since 2012.
Cornell and Duke are among the colleges weighing layoffs. The University of Minnesota is cutting hundreds of jobs, even as undergraduate tuition soars as much as 7.5 percent.
Just as America’s colleges are preparing to welcome what could be the largest freshman class in the nation’s history, political and economic forces are unleashing havoc on higher education budgets. Schools are grappling with meager upticks in state support and topsy-turvy economic forecasts, and Republicans in Washington are pursuing federal budget cuts and threatening tax hikes.
Students and employees from coast to coast are poised to feel the squeeze. Although the exact consequences will vary by school, administrators are warning that many students may have to pay more, professors may lose their jobs, programs could vanish and support services could shrink.
The turmoil is not limited to any one type of university or college, or any one state. A day before Michigan State University trustees opted for tuition increases, a California State University campus minutes from the Pacific Ocean announced that it was trimming its work force.
“If you’re a student or family looking to go to college this year, all of the numbers are going in the wrong direction,” said Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, who described the mood among higher education leaders as “dark but resolved.”
The Trump administration’s efforts to reduce research funding are siphoning cash from many campuses, sometimes by hundreds of millions of dollars. But that is just one factor contributing to higher education’s financial crunch. Colleges, like businesses and households, are facing greater costs for wages, supplies, utilities and other expenses.
Their income sources are not always keeping pace. In Nebraska, the state government’s contribution to the university system will rise roughly 0.6 percent, far below the 3.5 percent increase that the Board of Regents had sought to account for inflation. But regents saw the increase as a modest victory.
Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican who wanted the state to have “the courage to say no, and to focus on needs, not wants,” had originally urged a 2 percent reduction.
“We will need to continue to reduce spending and make increasingly difficult choices to ensure fiscal discipline,” Jeffrey P. Gold, the University of Nebraska’s president, told regents before a vote on Thursday to impose cuts and increase tuition. Students who enroll at the flagship campus in Lincoln are poised to pay about 5 percent more.
In neighboring Kansas, only one of the state’s six public universities did not propose a tuition increase for the coming school year. And University of Oklahoma leaders just raised tuition again, too.
The White House rejected accusations from some college administrators that the federal government is partly to blame for tuition increases and other budget moves.
“Any school that scapegoats the administration’s policies of cutting waste, fraud and abuse to justify raising already astronomical tuition costs is failing American students in an effort to score political points and fatten its coffers,” Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said in a statement.
He added: “If these higher education institutions were serious about lowering costs, they would cut the bloated salaries of their faculty and stop wasting money on useless programs that do little to advance education.”
Some schools are more reliant than others on federal money, especially research institutions, and leaders on many of those campuses have cited the administration’s tactics as they have reworked their budgets. But public institutions are also sometimes facing significant resistance in statehouses, and recent rises in inflation have put new demands on campus finances.
College leaders across the country have sometimes sought to defend new tuition increases by noting correctly that their prices had stayed relatively steady in recent years. Others point to the number of scholarships and grants they offer, which routinely drive costs well south of the sticker price, and say that many students are ultimately paying less than in the past.
In Minnesota, students are set to pay more for less.
State leaders maintained stable support for the University of Minnesota — a decision that university officials considered an effective budget cut, given inflation. And questions are swirling over how much additional declines in federal money could worsen the university’s financial outlook.
Tuition at the Twin Cities campus will rise by at least 6.5 percent. But the university is also pursuing cuts of 7 percent. Academic units have been asked to come up with millions of dollars in “reallocations” that could lead to program changes and fewer materials in the Law Library, among other things. More than 350 jobs could be eliminated.
“Making these kinds of cuts here is new to us in Minnesota,” Rebecca Cunningham, the university’s president, said during a board meeting on Wednesday. “It is unfortunate, but indeed we are not alone.”
They are not. The University System of Maryland’s chancellor, Jay A. Perman, bluntly told employees in a video this month that the schools would absorb a 7 percent cut for the coming fiscal year.
“A 7 percent cut simply can’t be achieved on every campus in a way that doesn’t touch any of our people,” Dr. Perman said.
Private universities often say far less about their finances than public institutions, but similar signs of immense strain are emerging.
Duke University is seeking about $350 million in cuts, amounting to roughly 10 percent of its budget. In a video message this month, Duke’s president, Vincent E. Price, said the university was trying to sort out proposals from the federal government “that have quite dire implications for the university.”
He added there was “sadly, no scenario in which Duke can or will avoid incurring substantial losses of funding due to these policy changes.”
The university has imposed a hiring freeze and developed buyout plans, but Dr. Price said that Duke would “likely” resort to layoffs.
The school is among the wealthy universities that could face a higher endowment tax under a Republican plan working its way through Congress. Many schools that would be hit hardest were already reeling.
Harvard, which has clashed bitterly with the Trump administration, is urgently seeking contributions from donors and has been making cuts, partly because billions of dollars in its endowment have restricted uses. And in a statement on Wednesday ominously titled “a message on financial austerity,” leaders at Cornell, which also has a substantial endowment, described a dire landscape.
“The spring semester was unlike anything ever seen in higher education,” school officials wrote, noting, among a long list of federal cuts, the burden of rising inflation along with “rapidly escalating legal expenses.”
To manage the financial pressures, school leaders said they “anticipate involuntary reductions in head count.”
But Dr. Mitchell, the American Council on Education president, and a former president of Occidental College, emphasized the range of schools that were facing financial headwinds.
“This isn’t just the Ivies, and this just isn’t the result of headline freezes on big research projects,” he said. “This reflects more uncertainty in the basic economy.”
Some universities are making more modest adjustments for now, and approaches vary even within single systems.
Public university trustees in Tennessee will soon vote on a proposal to raise in-state tuition by 3 percent at outposts in Chattanooga, Martin and Pulaski. The state’s flagship university in Knoxville, however, is not looking to increase tuition, though it is seeking a slight bump in mandatory fees.
Some university leaders are depicting their budget moves as catch-up efforts.
In Florida, where the state university system’s board voted this week to empower schools to increase out-of-state student fees, one presentation noted that some schools had not raised those prices in about 20 years.
But lawmakers in Florida have in recent months expressed worries about higher education spending. And academic leaders in many places are preparing for sustained troubles that could compound.
“As difficult as the situation is right now, we know it could get even worse as Maryland braces for the full financial impact of federal layoffs and funding cuts,” Dr. Perman, the Maryland system chancellor, said.
As the year goes on, he added, “it’s possible more cuts will be necessary.”
Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education.
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