Dive Brief:
- DePaul University on Friday laid off 114 staff members, senior leaders of the Catholic nonprofit said Monday.
- The reductions, representing just under 8% of the Chicago university’s staff, come as DePaul tries to resolve a $12.6 million shortfall in its fiscal 2026 budget, driven in part by declines in international enrollment.
- “Supporting our students and providing an excellent education remain our top priority,” the senior leaders said Monday. “We want to emphasize that university leaders worked to minimize cuts to the student experience, including on-campus employment.”
Dive Insight:
In late September, the same group of leaders — President Robert Manuel, Provost Salma Ghanem and CFO Sherri Sidler — warned the DePaul community that budget cuts loomed.
They described “massive disruptions to our enrollments” that the university had not forecast, including a precipitous 62% year-over-year drop in enrollment of new international graduate students. Officials attributed the decrease to “challenges to the visa system” and “declining desire for international students to study in the U.S.”
The loss came amid nationwide drops in fall 2025 international student enrollment following the Trump administration’s aggressive policies around immigration and foreign students.
On top of the international enrollment collapse, DePaul’s continuing fall undergraduate enrollment declined by about 300 students compared to last year, according to institutional data. Students’ financial need has simultaneously increased, adding roughly $7 million in unexpected institutional aid to the budget.
In October, the officials said that the university was coming up short of its planned budget by nearly $13 million. That gap, plus the 2.5% operating margin the university is targeting in the short term, meant the university would need to cut $27.4 million from its budget, according to the leaders. Long-term, DePaul aims for a 4% margin to maintain financial health and be able to reinvest in the university.
To find savings, DePaul officials froze hiring, trimmed executive pay, reduced retirement contributions for senior administrators and skipped merit pay increases for faculty and staff. But those measures still left a $16 million gap. The senior leaders warned that the remaining shortfall would be filled through “operating expense reductions and staff eliminations.”
For staff let go last week, DePaul is providing them with severance packages based on years of service, as well as career counseling, health insurance subsidies and other resources, the leaders said.
“The last several weeks have been some of the most difficult our community has ever experienced,” the leaders said. “These decisions were extraordinarily difficult, and leaders across the university did not make them lightly.”
DePaul’s enrollment has declined in recent years, though not as significantly as many of its peers in the private nonprofit world. Between 2018 and 2023, fall headcount declined by 4.9% to 21,348 students, according to federal data.
