Dive Brief:
- Syracuse University plans to launch what its top leader called an “administrative portfolio review” of executive and administrative staff roles as the private New York institution grapples with a projected deficit.
- In a message Thursday, Chancellor J. Michael Haynie compared the process to a recent academic portfolio review, which led to Syracuse’s decision to cut 93 programs.
- Over the summer, Haynie disclosed that Syracuse administrators expected to miss their fall enrollment targets, setting the university up for a budget hole for the fiscal year.
Dive Insight:
Syracuse is still in the early stages of designing its administrative review, according to Haynie, who shared few details about what it will entail. He said the university would provide more information as the process design is finalized.
“The intent of this review is to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the executive and administrative offices, units and functions across the University,” he said. He added that it is “important to make sure that our administrative enterprise is sized and organized and resourced for the university we’re building, not the university that we’ve been.”
Around this time last fall, Syracuse stood in relative safety, despite a turbulent year for the higher education sector fraught with upheaval in federal policy and research funding under the Trump administration.
Then-chancellor Kent Syverud noted that Syracuse had dodged much of the painful budget and workforce cuts that plagued so many of its peers. However, he also pointed to a 3.5% enrollment drop in fall 2025, the first the university had experienced in years. “It would be hubris to say that we’re doing better than them because we’re smarter or better,” Syverud said at the time.
By April, university officials announced plans to nix 93 academic programs that had low or no enrollment. The pruning would make Syracuse “more focused, more distinctive and more aligned with student demand,” Provost Lois Agnew said then.
A couple of weeks later, Syracuse offered early retirement packages to around 175 faculty members who teach in programs slated for closure or suffering low enrollment, along with those who worked for the university for at least 35 years.
Then in the summer, Haynie — who took over in May — said Syracuse faced a 1.5% operating deficit but described the university’s fiscal situation as “far from a crisis.”
“It is, however, a signal that we must commit to differentiated academic excellence and to our shared responsibility to the students we serve,” the chancellor said in an August message. “Part of that commitment means knowing how we are going to operate moving forward, and that means remaining true to who we are and what makes our institution distinct, unique and worth it.”
Haynie’s message came days after a Wall Street Journal story that questioned Syracuse’s tuition pricing power compared to some of its peers as well as its underlying ability to attract students.
