Dive Brief:
- Boston University plans to lay off 120 staff members — about 1% of its employees — and eliminate another 120 vacant positions, senior leaders said in a community message Monday.
- Another 20 positions will undergo an unspecified schedule change. The moves are part of a 5% overall reduction to the university’s budget, the leaders said.
- The austerity measures come as the private Massachusetts institution tries to adjust to federal research cuts and other government actions under the Trump administration. “This is a day of loss for all of us,” the officials said. “Yet, it is also a necessary step in ensuring our future.”
Dive Insight:
Boston University entered 2025 in relatively strong financial shape. Despite the many headwinds in the higher education sector, the institution ended its previous fiscal year with reserves of nearly $200 million on top of an endowment worth over $3.5 billion.
But even so, its reserves fell short of targets due to rising operating costs and the troubled rollout of a digital student information system, President Melissa Gilliam noted in December. Lower graduate enrollment also led Boston University to miss its overall revenue targets for master’s programs by $38 million.
The university was looking to become more disciplined and detailed in its budgeting as it wrestled with inflation and changing demographics, common troubles for higher ed in recent years. And then President Donald Trump retook office in January.
Since then, the Trump administration has taken a chainsaw to federal research funding and put dozens of colleges, including Boston University, on notice over what federal officials claim are failures to protect Jewish students from harassment.
Boston University has much to lose under a federal funding shakeup. In fiscal 2024, its total sponsored grant revenue topped $579 million, 67% of which came from federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and National Science Foundation. Grants made up 22% of all revenue for the year, again with most of that coming from the federal government.
As an early response to shifting financial tides, the university froze merit salary increases this spring. Officials warned at the time that more changes would be necessary.
In their layoff announcement Monday, Boston University’s top leaders — including Gilliam and Provost Gloria Water — described uncertainty around “the full extent of potential challenges to our core mission of teaching, learning, and research.”
But they also sounded a hopeful note. “While more uncertainty and challenges may come, we are optimistic that creativity and openness to new models will enable us to meet the current moment and our future,” they wrote.
The university is far from alone. A slew of large institutions, both public and private, have announced workforce and other cuts in recent weeks as a means of adapting to federal disruption and other challenges. Among them are Brown, Stanford and Temple universities, as well as the universities of Connecticut, Nebraska and Minnesota.
