Dive Temporary:
- Confronted with an “unsustainable compounding deficit,” George Washington College is freezing hiring and will lay off workers down the street, the non-public Washington, D.C.-based establishment stated in a neighborhood message Tuesday.
- The hiring freeze applies to positions funded immediately by the college and is ready to final at the very least till Oct. 1. GWU additionally plans to evaluate giant procurement contracts, reduce on capital spending, and tighten budgets for journey, occasions and leisure, amongst different strikes.
- Regardless of earlier budget-tightening measures, senior college leaders stated the outlook for the upcoming fiscal yr has deteriorated since April. Officers plan to current a full fiscal 2026 price range to the college’s governing board in early September.
Dive Perception:
Of their announcement, college President Ellen Granberg, Interim Provost John Lach and different officers cited political, financial and demographic challenges which can be exacerbating GWU’s price range pressures.
On the coverage entrance, they pointed to the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to restrict funding for oblique analysis prices, reminiscent of services, utilities and different overhead, to federal grant awardees. Whereas federal courts have paused or struck down these strikes at 4 federal companies, they’ve created deep monetary uncertainty for a lot of universities.
The officers additionally pointed to “vital adjustments within the general federal analysis panorama,” which has huge implications for the college, a serious nexus for federal grants. In fiscal 2024, GWU spent a complete of $471.6 million in federal grants from a big selection of federal companies and different grantors.
Together with analysis funding disruption, officers pointed to a slowdown in visa processing and President Donald Trump’s latest transfer to ban or prohibit journey from 19 nations. They described these adjustments as “constraints on our skill to enroll worldwide college students.” In 2024, GWU enrolled 3,661 worldwide college students, based on institutional knowledge.
Furthermore, the college, with its deep ties to the D.C. space, is starting to see home enrollment impacts from the Trump administration’s large slashes to federal company workforces, in addition to normal monetary uncertainty amongst American shoppers.
Much more strain on graduate enrollment may come amid the elimination of Grad PLUS loans and caps on whole pupil borrowing, introduced on by the large price range invoice handed by Republicans and signed by Trump final week.
However GWU had monetary challenges earlier than Trump took workplace. As Granberg, Lach and different officers famous, income development averaged 6.1% from fiscal 2022 by 2024 whereas bills grew 6.8%.
“Whereas this distinction may not appear vital, its cumulative impact is an unsustainable compounding deficit,” they stated.
That price range hole resulted from pre-Trump structural challenges within the increased training world, together with rising prices and declining grasp’s diploma enrollments.
Between 2018 and 2023, GWU’s whole fall graduate pupil enrollment declined 9.2% to 14,181 college students, based on federal knowledge. The officers pointed to declines in worldwide pupil enrollment, which started on the college earlier than Trump’s latest journey bans and “at this level can not be considered as non permanent.”
College leaders in April introduced a pause on merit-based wage will increase and a 3% price range reduce throughout items. However the challenges have solely deepened since then.
Now officers goal for deeper price range cuts for fiscal 2026, “which we acknowledge will doubtless result in some reductions within the variety of workers and sure college positions, a step now we have tried to keep away from however can’t any longer,” they stated Tuesday.