Dive Brief:
- The University of Maine is bracing for staff and faculty layoffs as it tries to close a projected $19 million budget gap, senior leaders said Thursday.
- Options to limit staff and faculty layoffs will be “pursued aggressively” as the university prepares its fiscal 2028 budget, the leaders added.
- Along with cost cuts, the university aims to increase undergraduate retention and certain types of enrollment by 1% each to boost revenue, while hiring in areas of need.
Dive Insight:
As UMaine tries to close its budget hole, the public institution’s academic affairs unit is taking on roughly half the burden by committing to reduce its base expenses by $10 million, President Joan Ferrini-Mundy and Provost Gabriel Paquette said in a university message.
Measures include permanently nixing 20% of vacant positions within academic affairs as well as reducing instruction budgets, consolidating course sections and trimming some additional compensation areas. Over time, UMaine might also increase course seat limits and close “underenrolled” programs, the leaders said.
The university had already planned to cut 20% of vacant jobs institutionwide. If it increased that projection to 40%, it would boost overall budget savings by $1.5 million, according to Ferrini-Mundy and Paquette.
On the revenue side, UMaine aims to boost enrollment of first-year and transfer students, as well as tuition-paying graduate students and “adult degree completers” for fall 2027. If successful, the enrollment increases together with the hoped-for retention boost would yield $2.2 million, the leaders said..
Meanwhile, UMaine officials also plan to meet with system and state leaders and its endowment foundation to “identify opportunities for increased support,” said Ferrini-Mundy and Paquette.
In explaining the university’s budget predicament, the leaders cited “demographic and other enrollment pressures” that have weighed on revenue. Expenses have also grown faster than tuition revenue and state appropriations.
In an April budget presentation, UMaine administrators said that the institution is "acutely sensitive to enrollment and retention fluctuations.” They used a hypothetical scenario where a drop of 100 out-of-state students in one enrollment cycle would lead to a loss of $7.2 million in revenue over the four years those students would presumably have attended.
The university has indeed faced several years of enrollment declines. Between 2021 and 2025, fall headcount dropped 8.2% to 10,644 students, according to institutional data.
