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Does your university/college have a faculty hiring freeze?

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT (ORIGINALLY POSTED JUNE 18)–MORE INFORMATION WELCOME

I have been posting periodically about the Trump war on higher education, which has led to a number of faculty hiring freezes that I have heard about:  the University of California system, Northwestern, for example.  Please post here about hiring freeze announcements at your higher education institution (you can post anonymously, but include a valid university email address, which will not appear–if you can link to a source, even better).

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23 responses to “Does your university/college have a faculty hiring freeze?”

  1. Scott Altman

    USC (So. Cal not S. Carolina) has a hiring freeze for staff and a "hiring curtailment" for faculty.
    https://we-are.usc.edu/2025/03/24/update-on-uscs-financial-planning-and-resilience-efforts/

    Reply
  2. Ian Dunkle

    University of Southern Mississippi froze all hires in the middle of campus-visit season (good time to have left).

    Reply
  3. anon

    The University of California (all ten campuses) has implemented a "system-wide hiring freeze." https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/employee-news/president-drake-on-the-university-of-california-financial-outlook/

    Reply
  4. Dean C. Rowan

    True, but the implementation plan at Berkeley, for example, includes a number of exceptions: https://hr.berkeley.edu/talent-acquisition/staff-hiring-resources/2025-hiring-freeze

    Reply
  5. Anon

    Staff hiring freeze, compensation freeze, and "limitations on faculty hiring," which we've been told amounts to a freeze, at Emory University: https://president.emory.edu/communications/2025/03/05-03-navigating-uncertainty.html

    Reply
  6. Amir

    Yes, while UC faculty hiring will be more limited, all the UCs have similar plans as Berkeley. see:

    https://chr.ucla.edu/employment/hiring-actions-2020

    https://provost.uci.edu/2025/03/19/uc-irvines-approach-to-systemwide-hiring-freeze/

    Reply
  7. Jason Yackee

    UW-Madison seems to have a soft TT faculty hiring freeze across the largest school, Letters and Sciences, though campus communications are never very extensive or clear. They eppear to be only authorizing new TT hires that fit within a handful of subject-matter-based cross-campus hiring clusters called "RISE" (the priority of our outgoing Provost). Honestly, they should freeze all hires, as we were all asked to model 5% and 10% budget cuts for the upcoming year.

    Reply
  8. David Shoemaker

    Just yesterday our President and Provost(s) at Cornell said this: "Hiring on all campuses will remain restricted for the 2025-2026 academic year." Informally, in Town Hall meetings, the Provost has said that, while there's no official "hiring freeze," we will instead be engaged in (only) "strategic hiring." There was also this euphemistic way of describing upcoming layoffs: "While we will make every effort to downsize by attrition, we anticipate involuntary reductions in headcount across the university."

    Reply
  9. John Martin Fischer

    In addition to the UC system, I believe the Cal State Univ. system also has a hiring freeze.
    There are some exceptions to the UC freeze (like in my freezer when I don't manage to close the door all the way), but very few. Also, we are awaiting the finalized Calif budget, which is supposed to be signed by Newsom by June 25. Given the budget (which might or might not be cut 3 to 8 percent), the university system and particular campuses will need to figure out what do do going forward.

    Reply
  10. John Schwenkler

    At Illinois, the latest relevant update from the administration says that we do not face a hiring freeze, but "colleges, institutes and administrative units have been advised to focus hiring and investments on mission-critical activities and to postpone other initiatives. As a result, hiring next year will be slower than it has been in previous years."

    Additionally, "The university's budget and resource planning team monitors financial changes carefully and evaluates their potential implications for the university’s budget. The university has taken several strategic steps since spring 2024, including:

    -Slowing the growth of central administrative spending and reallocating funds toward top institutional priorities
    -Requiring centrally budgeted administrative units to self-fund certain expenses and initiating a budget reduction process for FY26 and FY27
    -Advising colleges and units to focus new hiring to mission-critical roles
    -Restricting new spending by central administrative units to essential initiatives only
    -Reviewing and reprioritizing nonrecurring central funding commitments to identify at least $50 million in potential savings"

    Finally, there are no plans for furlough days or buyouts.

    Link: https://federalupdates.illinois.edu/?utm_source=federalupdatesnewsletter&utm_medium=email

    Reply
  11. Anonymous

    In Louisiana, all state agencies falling under the governor (which includes public higher education) are in a hiring freeze at least until end of FY 2025.

    https://lailluminator.com/2025/04/02/hiring-freeze/

    Over and above adopting a hiring freeze, the University of New Orleans is in a delicate financial situation that has required furloughs and consolidation. The state legislature has opted to move UNO back into the LSU system in an effort to improve UNO's financial solvency.

    https://louisianaradionetwork.com/2025/01/17/uno-to-furlough-employees-due-to-budget-deficits/

    https://www.wdsu.com/article/louisiana-uno-lsu-transfer/65014404#:~:text=The%20University%20of%20New%20Orleans%20is%20transitioning%20to,years%20due%20to%20low%20enrollment%20and%20funding%20issues.

    Reply
  12. Anon

    Johns Hopkins has a hiring freeze – unsurprising, given how dependent we are on federal grant funding.

    Reply
  13. stanford

    Stanford just announced in a campus-wide email that call "for a $140 million reduction in the allocation of university general funds to support operations." (Med school still TBD). Re: faculty hiring:

    "The most difficult part of these decisions is that they will require some reduction in staff positions, not all of which can be accomplished by eliminating open positions. Stanford has incredibly talented and dedicated staff, whose work is essential to every aspect of the university. The university has benefits and compensation programs to support transitions in cases where layoffs are necessary, but there is no getting around the impact of such decisions.

    The budget plan includes a number of additional elements. We will focus capital and facilities spending on the most critical and/or externally funded projects. The staff hiring freeze continues. We expect faculty hiring to continue, although the pace may be somewhat slowed. We are planning a modest salary program for faculty and staff to reflect cost-of-living increases."

    Reply
  14. Steven Gross

    A clarification of the previous post: Johns Hopkins has a *staff* hiring freeze.

    My understanding is that it’s expected that faculty hiring this up-coming academic year will be limited, but that there will be faculty hiring.

    Reply
  15. Colin Marshall

    The University of Washington has a freeze on tenure-track and teaching-track hiring within Arts and Sciences for the coming year.

    They're also planning on firing dozens of department-level staff (the people who actually make things work). Originally, the plan was to fire many more staff members, but they walked that back after widespread opposition from faculty and students.

    Like many UW faculty, I'm skeptical of the need for the freeze and the layoffs (while recognizing that our financial situation is dire). UW just announced that they've raised half the funds for a new, $60 million "Welcome Center." The Board of Regents also just approved a huge loan for UW Athletics, bailing them out of a budget deficit. So there appear to be alternatives that our leadership has chosen not to pursue.

    Reply
  16. Dean C. Rowan

    More on Stanford here: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/stanford-budget-cuts-layoffs-140-million-20398845.php

    Reply
  17. Jonathan Kramnick

    The article someone inaccurately describes the dilemma that Stanford and other super wealthy universities are facing. The Senate version of the bill reduces the endowment tax from 21% to 8%, a number much easier to live with (obviously).

    Reply
  18. sahpa

    Funds raised through donor gifts for a Welcome Center can't just be redirected toward general operating expenses, and, in my experience, virtually all (sizeable) private donations to universities are raised by, and therefore tied to, specific initiatives. So this feels more like a potshot than a take informed by an appreciation of how university budgets actually work. (Common, I must admit. Usually faculty can afford to do this because their intended audience are other like-minded faculty, who will just nod along in approval.) I don't know enough about the Athletics loan to speak to that.

    Reply
  19. Colin Marshall

    Sahpa: I believe you misinterpreted my post. My comment was not a potshot, and I'm well aware that funds dedicated for one purpose are locked in.

    The point – which I suspect holds for many other universities – was instead about UW's fundraising priorities. We face a financial crisis at the state level (in addition to the federal crisis) that has been years in the making. Yet, by UW leadership's own admission at a recent 'town hall,' they have made no any serious attempt to raise private funds for core operations. Nor do have they indicated they will so going forward.

    If that also involves a misunderstanding, then I invite you to contact me directly. Like many faculty, I'd much rather not have to think about these things, but I do care about getting the facts right.

    Reply
  20. Alex

    This is a bit removed from the main topic of hiring freezes, but I wanted to follow up on what you, Colin and sapha, were discussing. My university (in the UK, not US) also has rejected efforts to fundraise in support of core operations despite familiar budgetary pressures. I've found this mystifying (as it sounds like you maybe do too, Colin). When I had a departmental management role a few years ago and pressed our fundraising office on this very point, the response I got was that raising funds for core operations "would never work" — and I was unable to get any further elaboration beyond that. I was just curious if you or any other readers with experience of this area of university business might shed some more light. It seems like many of our universities are facing fairly unprecedented circumstances and so perhaps a new approach might be worth trying. Maybe there is some creative way to make it more plausible to raise funds for core operations. To me it seems at least worth trying… but I'm just an academic and management is not my day job. Thanks!

    Reply
  21. Daniel Kaufman

    My department (at Missouri State) was merged with Political Science before my retirement in 2023 (before Trump 2.0), and my line was taken away, so they have fewer tenure-track lines now and no longer have their own Dept Head (as Political Science is 3x the size). Whether they would retain their current number of lines in the face of another retirement is entirely uncertain and I think unlikely. It seems to me that the admin's plan is death by slow starvation.

    Reply
  22. Dean C. Rowan

    I'll take a stab, based not on genuine experience, but on hearsay from organizational leadership. Core operations aren't sexy. You can't hang a plaque on them. Nobody wants their name affixed to a box on an org chart, e.g., the Dean C. Rowan Audit and Compliance Unit or Brian Leiter Office of Procurement. Additionally, donors are queasy about funding what should at the very least be sustained by the organization itself, its very purpose for existence. I'm sure there are exceptions, but generally I take this to be the case. Matters are different in the case of small non-profits. I was a trustee for many years at San Francisco's Playwrights Foundation, a tiny operation on a shoestring budget that does remarkable work in the arts, thanks to the dedication of its staff and board. Setting aside its annual festival and other for-fee events, its core operations are almost entirely funded by donation, such that fundraising itself becomes a core operation.

    I grant that there's a wide space between building naming rights and grassroots accumulations of small donations. As you suggest, perhaps a little creativity–and a sense of humor–could break the pattern. See, for instance, https://www.dailycal.org/archives/mens-room-named-after-uc-berkeley-professor-falik/article_2acaf374-3e1e-5aa1-ab6c-f9b7f2a0e2fa.html

    Reply
  23. Vicky L Brandt

    In reply to Alex (#20) and Colin above: indeed, it is possible to raise funds for core operations. I know a few faculty with a talent for building relationships with wealthy donors, and they take pains to educate them about how universities/academic institutes actually operate and what they need. One colleague I know well has raised multiple millions for an endowment for a research institution that she founded and directs; the institute is well set to weather the current crisis. I think most faculty would rather outsource such work to development officers and focus on their own concerns. This is understandable, but as Max Weber wrote, "politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards."

    Reply

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