Dive Temporary:
- Confronted with an “unsustainable compounding deficit,” George Washington College is freezing hiring and will lay off workers down the highway, the personal Washington, D.C.-based establishment mentioned in a neighborhood message Tuesday.
- The hiring freeze applies to positions funded immediately by the college and is about to final not less than till Oct. 1. GWU additionally plans to overview massive procurement contracts, in the reduction of on capital spending, and tighten budgets for journey, occasions and leisure, amongst different strikes.
- Regardless of earlier budget-tightening measures, senior college leaders mentioned 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, comparable to services, utilities and different overhead, to federal grant awardees. Whereas federal courts have paused or struck down these strikes at 4 federal businesses, they’ve created deep monetary uncertainty for a lot of universities.
The officers additionally pointed to “important adjustments within the total federal analysis panorama,” which has huge implications for the college, a significant nexus for federal grants. In fiscal 2024, GWU spent a complete of $471.6 million in federal grants from a wide selection of federal businesses and different grantors.
Together with analysis funding disruption, officers pointed to a slowdown in visa processing and President Donald Trump’s current transfer to ban or limit 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, in line with 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 huge slashes to federal company workforces, in addition to normal monetary uncertainty amongst American customers.
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 huge 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 progress averaged 6.1% from fiscal 2022 via 2024 whereas bills grew 6.8%.
“Whereas this distinction won’t appear important, its cumulative impact is an unsustainable compounding deficit,” they mentioned.
That price range hole resulted from pre-Trump structural challenges within the larger schooling 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, in line with 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 now not be seen as momentary.”
College leaders in April introduced a pause on merit-based wage will increase and a 3% price range lower throughout models. However the challenges have solely deepened since then.
Now officers intention for deeper price range cuts for fiscal 2026, “which we acknowledge will possible result in some reductions within the variety of employees and sure school positions, a step we’ve tried to keep away from however can not any longer,” they mentioned Tuesday.
