Tag: Cut

Morgan State says cut the cameras, stop the presses

Sourcing is one of the most foundational skills any journalist learns. But at Morgan State University, the student press is effectively barred from speaking to faculty or staff without prior approval. In other words, for student journalists writing about their own university, basic sourcing is banned unless exceptions are made at the whim of an administrator.

MSU has historically encouraged media to coordinate requests for such interviews through its Office of Public Relations and Strategic Communications. But on Nov. 13, OPRSC Director Larry Jones escalated the university’s suggestion into a demand in an email to the school community, specifically targeting student media with new requirements.

Now reporters from The MSU Spokesman, BEAR TV, and WEAA 88.9 FM must clear all interviews involving the university or its operations with the OPRSC. Even more astonishingly, the same rule applies even if the interview request doesn’t directly relate to university matters, but nonetheless occurs on campus.

Journalism doesn’t come with a permission slip.

The new directive didn’t stop there. Any filming not sponsored by the university that takes place on campus is now subject to a “comprehensive review and approval process” by the university’s communications office.

FIRE’s Student Press Freedom Initiative teamed up with the Society of Professional Journalists to remind MSU of the student press’s rights to speak to sources and report on campus-related news. It should not have to be said, but journalism doesn’t come with a permission slip.

Questions unasked

The plain language of MSU’s policy prevents student journalists from merely asking school-affiliated sources to answer questions, even though such requests are themselves protected expression. The policy suppresses this speech before it can even occur — a textbook example of prior restraint, which the Supreme Court has called “the most serious and least tolerable infringement” on free speech.

A university afraid of questions is a university afraid of answers.

Questions unasked are questions unanswered. Faculty and student employees, who would speak in their private capacity on topics of public concern, have the right to share their views. If public university employees don’t present themselves as representing the university, and are speaking about newsworthy issues, their statements are generally protected speech. MSU can tell employees not to speak on behalf of the university, but it can’t issue a blanket ban on employees’ ability to speak with the press. Now, however, faculty and staff cannot offer their own opinions in response to a student media request.

These restrictions are rarely valid, which is why many of the colleges and universities that SPFI has contacted have rolled back such policies. But MSU is not one of them, at least not yet. And this is really not a good look because a university afraid of questions is a university afraid of answers.

B-roll blackout

MSU pulls campus filming into its restrictive policy, too. Both professional and student newsrooms across the country gather video footage to support their storytelling, a practice that is increasingly common due to the widespread availability of smartphones and social media. B-roll, or supplementary video footage used to add context to a story — such as an establishing shot of the university campus or a scene of students studying in the library — cannot be filmed at all if the shots include any of MSU’s outdoor areas, at least not without OPRSC approval. The same goes for filmed interviews.

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But breaking news doesn’t wait to happen until an administrator has reviewed and approved a film request. Open, outdoor areas of a university are generally public fora, where student expression is at its most protected. Instead of enhancing students’ newsgathering or teaching them how to be better reporters, the school is instead delaying, if not outright suppressing, multimedia journalistic efforts along with faculty interviews.

By targeting the student press specifically, MSU is sending a clear message that it doesn’t want its student journalists addressing questions about important campus issues to those most personally affected by them. That message runs counter to the very fundamentals of journalism. The result, possibly by design, will be that many stories will likely die on the vine for lack of sunlight. And even for those that survive, they’d better not include video footage unless an administrator signs off first. That’s not media policy. It’s message control.

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January 6, 2026
Christian Brothers University to cut 16 faculty jobs
Dive Brief:
- Christian Brothers University plans to cut 16 full-time faculty positions at the end of its spring semester as it tries to balance its “operating budget and position CBU for transformation,” Interim President Chris Englert said in a public message this week.
- Englert specifically noted the Catholic nonprofit was not eliminating any academic programs and “students will be able to complete their declared majors with minimal disruption.”
- Earlier this month, the Tennessee university announced that its accreditor had lifted its probationary status after two years after it made major cuts to reduce its deficit.
Dive Insight:

Christian Brothers has undergone a long and at times painful restructuring as it tries to right its finances.

In fall 2023 — as it faced as much as a $7 million deficit — the institution declared financial exigency, a process that distressed colleges invoke that allows them to lay off tenured professors and wind down programs.

In doing so, the university cited a “consistent decline” in undergraduate enrollment since the 2018-19 academic year and a failure to meet its first-time freshman goals for fall 2023. Between 2018 and 2023, undergraduate fall enrollment declined by just over 30% to 1,204 students, according to federal data.

In October 2023, the university cut several high level-administration positions to reduce its deficit by $1 million.

By December 2023, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges put Christian Brothers on probation over concerns about its financial stability and governing board practices. Later the same week, the university eliminated 28 faculty positions through both layoffs and cutting vacant roles. It also nixed a dozen programs with low enrollment, including English, history, ecology and engineering physics.

By last fall, the university sounded a more optimistic note. Leaders said it was poised to come off probation with SACSCOC after increasing its first-year student enrollment and reducing its budget deficit by nearly half to $2.5 million in May 2024.

It took another year for Christian Brothers to officially come off probation. In a Dec. 9 message, Englert described the event as an “important milestone for our institution and a direct reflection of the dedication, hard work, and integrity demonstrated by our faculty, staff, and trustees.” At the same time, he noted the university would have to remain academically and financially strong to stay in compliance.

Englert repeated that sentiment this week when announcing the further faculty reduction. He also framed the cuts as a step toward a faculty-to-student ratio target of 12-to-1, as well geared toward long-term financial stability and “ongoing academic alignment efforts and in response to shifting enrollment patterns.”

The university is still struggling with maintaining its enrollment, with its student body falling by roughly a third from 2024 to 2025, according to the Daily Memphian.
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December 19, 2025
Some Colleges Cut Diversity Essays, But They Remain Popular

Two years after the Supreme Court banned the use of race in college admissions decisions and in the wake of the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion, colleges’ use of diversity- and identity-related supplemental essay prompts is patchy.

After a boom in prompts about applicant’s identities, several universities have scrapped the essays entirely for the 2025–2026 admission cycle. Still others, especially selective universities, have kept the prompts, saying they are the best way to get to know their applicants.

Kelsea Conlin, who oversees the college essay counseling team for College Transitions, an admissions consulting firm, identified 19 colleges with optional or required diversity essays last admission cycle that either had dropped or reworded those prompts this year.

“I’ve seen very few colleges that still require students to write about diversity; the prompt may still be on their application and students have the opportunity to write about it, but it’s an optional essay,” she said.

Diversity-related essays often ask students to describe how they’ve been shaped by their community, culture or background, sometimes prompting them to describe how those identities will bring something new to a campus. Others ask students to discuss or reflect on issues like diversity, social justice or antiracism more broadly.

In the majority opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, Chief Justice John Roberts said it was acceptable for students to continue discussing race in their essays: “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”

The following application cycle, several colleges introduced diversity-related essay prompts to their applications, according to research by Sonja Starr, a law professor at the University of Chicago; Conlin also said she observed a surge in these essays in the 2023–2024 application cycle.

But this year, the Department of Justice issued guidance warning institutions against using “proxies” for race in admissions and hiring, and described requirements for applicants to “describe ‘obstacles they have overcome’ or submit a ‘diversity statement’ in a manner that advantages those who discuss experiences intrinsically tied to protected characteristics” as examples.

“The administration basically says, … ‘if you are letting the desire for a diverse campus influence your policies in any way, that is just as unconstitutional as taking the individual applicant’s race into account,’” Starr said. “I think that’s a wrong reading of the law.”

Still, she said she’s not surprised institutions may be wary of maintaining essay questions overtly related to identity, considering the harsh actions the administration has taken against colleges it disagrees with.

“There’s all kinds of ways the federal government can really make it difficult for universities,” she said, pointing out the slew of funding the administration has cut or frozen over the past ten months. “[Some institutions], I think, are just trying to at least stay out of the administration’s way.”

Simplifying the Process

Several institutions told Inside Higher Ed that they cycle out their essay prompts regularly, so the change from last year’s diversity question was par for the course. Others said they eliminated their supplemental essay requirements altogether, in an effort to make the application process less strenuous.

The University of Washington, which removed a supplemental essay asking prospective students to describe how their background and the communities they are involved in would contribute to the campus’s diversity, told Inside Higher Ed in an email that they hope the removal of the essay will make the admissions process less strenuous for applicants.

“During the annual review of our application process, we determined that an additional essay did not provide sufficient value when reviewing students for admission. We discovered that some applicants, like those interested in our honors program, were previously seeing up to four essay prompts. This change simplifies the process for all our applicants,” wrote David Rey, associate director of strategic communications.

A University of Virginia spokesperson gave a similar statement to the campus student newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, about its decision to remove a diversity essay prompt introduced in the 2025–2026 application cycle, saying that its removal aimed to “lighten the load and reduce stress and anxiety around the college application process.” UVA did not respond to Inside Higher Ed‘s request for comment.

Does that mean supplemental essays are falling out of vogue? Not necessarily, Conlin said; a significant number of selective universities still require them, and the students she works with are generally writing just as many supplemental essays as they have in previous years.

Despite some institutions opting to change or remove their diversity prompts, though, Ethan Sawyer, the founder of the admissions consulting firm College Essay Guy, said that a review of 300 institutions’ prompts for the 2025–2026 admission season showed that questions about what a student’s identity will bring to the institution are the most popular for the second year in a row.

He said in an email to Inside Higher Ed that these prompts have proven to be particularly effective at providing colleges with the key information they’re looking for out of an admissions essay. The identity prompt acts as the new “Why Us” essay, but avoids the pitfall of students focusing exclusively on the college’s attributes rather than their own.

“It lets colleges learn what they’ve always wanted to know—how will this student engage with our community? What qualities will they bring?—but through a framing that encourages students to reflect on who they are (as opposed to how awesome the college is). In other words, colleges are still trying to understand fit; they’re just using a lens that better centers the student,” he said.

Students Still Write About Race

While some colleges may be scrapping diversity prompts, many students want to write about their identities, Conlin and Sawyer said.

“They don’t see themselves through just one lens. No student wants to be reduced to a single label or experience. They understand they’re complex people shaped by many different identities, roles, and life moments,” Sawyer wrote. “Part of our job as counselors is to help them express that complexity—to choose which pieces of their story to spotlight in each essay, and to show how those pieces translate into contributions they’ll make on a college campus.”

Many of the new or reworded essay prompts that have replaced diversity-related questions are broad enough that students can still talk about their identities and experience if they choose to, Conlin noted. In her experience, students are often interested in discussing their race or first-generation student status in essays. But students are more reluctant to write about being LGBTQ+ or having mental health struggles.

Diversity essays aside, Conlin also noted two burgeoning categories of essay topics this year: prompts asking students to talk about how they handle conflict and prompts offering students the chance to explain their relationship with AI.

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November 26, 2025
Florida public universities plan to cut at least 18 academic programs
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Dive Brief:
- State University System of Florida institutions collectively plan to terminate 18 academic programs and suspend another eight after reviewing how many degrees they award, Emily Sikes, the public system’s vice chancellor for academic and student affairs, said at a meeting last week with lawmakers.
- In the review, SUSF officials identified 214 programs systemwide that they say are underperforming based on how many graduates they’ve produced in the past three years. System universities plan to continue at least 150 of those programs while consolidating another 30.
- The large majority of underperforming programs, 68%, are in the liberal arts, education and science fields, including ethnic and cultural studies, foreign languages, philosophy and religious studies, and physical and social sciences programs.
Dive Insight:

As required by SUSF regulations, the 12-university system has conducted productivity reviews of degree programs every three to four years for roughly the past decade and a half, Sikes said.

Over that time, the system’s institutions have axed over 100 programs based on those reviews, she said. Most of those programs were cut in 2011, when the first such review yielded 492 programs deemed to be underperforming, leading university officials to terminate 73 of them.

In this year’s review, SUSF officials looked for bachelor’s programs graduating fewer than 30 students over the last three years, master’s programs awarding fewer than 20 degrees and doctorate programs with fewer than 10 graduates during that period.

Master’s programs made up 55% of the 214 that fell below graduate thresholds. But, Sikes added, there is a reason for that: SUSF universities often award master’s degrees to students who don’t complete doctoral programs so they have something to show for their time and effort.

Another 31% of the underperforming programs were bachelor’s, and 14% were doctorate.

For the eight programs set for suspension, the universities will stop enrolling students and “take a hard look” at either updating the curriculum to improve the program or deciding to wind it down, Sikes said.

While Florida’s university system has reviewed its program productivity for years, other states have begun mandating their public colleges trim their offerings along similar lines.

This summer, the Indiana Commission for Higher Education announced that six of the state’s public colleges planned to eliminate 75 programs, suspend another 101 and consolidate 232 others in response to a new state law.

In April, Indiana lawmakers introduced graduation quotas for public college programs, requiring a three-year average of at least 15 graduates for bachelor’s programs, 10 for associate degrees, seven for master’s programs and three for doctoral degrees. The quotas were part of a controversial last-minute bonanza of new higher ed policies that lawmakers baked into a budget bill this year.

The speed of the program cuts led to confusion and chaos for some Indiana faculty this summer. “Even tenured faculty are wondering, am I going to have a job in two months?” one faculty governance leader in Indiana told local media in June.

Ohio enacted a similar law this spring, called SB 1, which has led to dozens of proposed program cuts at the state’s public universities.
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November 24, 2025
HHS moves to cut Harvard off from all federal grants and contracts
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Dive Brief:
- Harvard University could lose access to all federal grants and contracts under proceedings initiated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Monday.
- The agency’s Office for Civil Rights has referred the university for suspension and debarment, the process by which the agency can cut off entities from federal grants and contracts if it determines that wrongdoing renders them “not responsible enough to do business” with the government.
- The move represents the latest federal effort to bend Harvard to the Trump administration’s will through financial pressure. The administration has sought to use multiple federal agencies to gain increased influence over the higher education sector, singling out Harvard as a prime target.
Dive Insight:

On Monday, HHS’ OCR recommended excluding Harvard from federal funding, arguing the move would protect the public interest. The agency cited its June notice that formally accused Harvard of being in “violent violation” of Title VI by being “deliberately indifferent” to harassment of Jewish and Israeli students on its campus.

Title VI forbids institutions that accept federal funds from discriminating based on race, color or national origin.

HHS can pursue the debarment process when an entity — in this case Harvard — does not voluntarily agree with the agency’s terms to return to compliance with Title VI, according to Paula Stannard, director of HHS’ OCR. HHS and three other federal agencies on the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism in June called for Harvard to “institute adequate changes immediately” but did not publicly detail what those changes should be.

Stannard said Monday that Harvard has the right to a formal hearing during the suspension and debarment process.

“An HHS administrative law judge will make an impartial determination on whether Harvard violated Title VI by acting with deliberate indifference towards antisemitic student-on-student harassment,” Stannard said.

Harvard has 20 days to request the hearing. The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

Suspension and debarment applies to all federal grants and contracts, not just those from HHS. And agencies across the federal government can initiate suspension and debarment proceedings. If sustained, debarment is not permanent and typically lasts under three years, according to a 2022 HHS report.

Monday’s announcement is unrelated to HHS’ joint civil rights investigation with the U.S. Department of Education into Harvard and the Harvard Law Review. The agencies opened the probe in April, citing allegations of “race-based discrimination permeating the operations” of the student-run journal.

Months before HHS formally determined Harvard had violated Title VI, the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force froze over $2.2 billion of the university’s grants and contracts.

The halt came after Harvard President Alan Garber publicly rebuked the Trump administration’s call for increased federal control of the institution. Its demands included that the university hire a third party to audit the viewpoints of Harvard students and employees, halt all diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, and reduce the power of certain faculty and administrators involved in activism.

A federal judge ruled in early September that the Trump administration violated the university’s First Amendment rights and didn’t follow proper steps when it suspended the funding. No evidence indicated that “fighting antisemitism was Defendants’ true aim in acting against Harvard,” the judge wrote.

The judge’s decision barred the Trump administration from cutting off Harvard’s federal funding in retaliation for the university exercising its free speech rights or without following the procedural requirements of Title VI. However, the judge noted that her ruling didn’t prevent the Trump administration from “acting within their constitutional, statutory, or regulatory authority.”

Trump administration officials appealed the decision and said it would keep Harvard “ineligible for grants in the future.”
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October 1, 2025
Purdue Ends GEAR UP Program After Federal Grant Cut

Purdue University is ending its GEAR UP program after the Trump administration canceled a $34.9 million federal grant to support its activities, WFYI reported. The program provided college-prep programming for more than 13,000 low-income students in Indiana, according to a 2024 press release from Purdue’s College of Education.

The grant, awarded last year, was expected to run through 2031. But the U.S. Department of Education told Purdue in a Sept. 12 termination letter that the grant application flouted the department’s policy of “prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education” and ran afoul of civil rights law. The letter referenced parts of the application, including plans to provide DEI training to hiring managers and professional development in “culturally responsive teaching.”

The program is “inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, the best interest of the Federal Government,” the letter read. The GEAR UP program shut down on Tuesday. Purdue did not appeal the grant termination, WFYI reported.

The Education Department has canceled at least nine GEAR UP grants, EducationWeek reported, though it continued awards for other programs last week.

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October 1, 2025
Students, Alumni Rally to Keep Cut Affinity Programs Alive

For years, Black students gathered at the University of Cincinnati’s African American Cultural and Resource Center for its traditions, including the Tyehimba Black Graduation Celebration and Akwaaba, a welcome event for new students, among other programs. This year, the AACRC, at least as it once existed, is gone. It’s been rebranded “the Cultural Center” after an Ohio law banned diversity, equity and inclusion activities at public colleges and universities in March.

But Black students and alumni wouldn’t let the center’s traditions and resources die. Black seniors celebrated their graduations at an event held off campus. Freshmen gathered for Akwaaba, organized by students and funded by alumni, who created a foundation to sustain the AACRC’s programming. The United Black Student Association and other student groups have committed to putting on programs throughout the year that were previously handled by AACRC staff.

“Regardless of these changes, there is no policy that can be written that can outlaw OUR spirit, OUR ability to mobilize, OUR right to congregate,” the United Black Student Association wrote on Instagram. “They cannot outlaw our ability to gather, to build, to resist, and to love. Our legacy is not theirs to give or take.”

Amid an escalating anti-DEI movement, students, alumni and off-campus advocates are hustling to fill the gaps left by shuttered and rebranded identity centers, DEI offices and programs across the country. Students and outside organizations, like the Native Forward Scholars Fund, hosted their own affinity group graduations this year as campuses started to cancel such events. Three student clubs broke off from the University of Utah to avoid the state’s limits on public university programs, forgoing university funding. Some students and alumni involved in these efforts say they feel a renewed pressure and responsibility to provide the services colleges are shedding as institutions are caught in the crosshairs of state DEI bans and the Trump administration’s sweeping anti-DEI campaign.

How do we make lemonade out of a lemon?”

—Harlan Jackson, president of the Cincy Cultural Resource Center Foundation

The Cincy Cultural Resource Center Foundation, the nonprofit founded to continue Black student programming at University of Cincinnati, was born out of that sense of duty among alumni. Some graduates involved in the effort spent years pushing for the creation of the African American Cultural and Resource Center and took pride in watching its programs expand and flourish.

“We can’t just stand idly by and just allow something this negative and something this backward to happen at the university,” said Harlan Jackson, president of the foundation and former president of the United Black Association in the late 1980s. “I’m really proud of the diverse community that’s showing up and acknowledging that we’re going to take this on.”

The foundation now has weekly meetings with Black student leaders to determine how best to support their needs, and alumni leaders plan to put three students on the foundation’s board. Students emphasized to alumni that continuing the center’s events and traditions is their top priority, so the foundation is funding these programs, with hopes to also fund student scholarships in the future.

So far, alumni have raised “well over” the roughly $5,000 needed to run Akwaaba and parents’ weekend, with plans to raise half a million dollars within the academic year, said Byron Stallworth, the foundation’s secretary.

Stallworth, who was president of the United Black Association in 1991 when the AACRC opened, said the idea of alumni and students taking the reins is catching on beyond University of Cincinnati as well—three University of Cincinnati alumni, parents of students at other colleges and universities, have asked him questions about how they could start similar efforts to sustain Black student life on their children’s campuses.

“This is a universal problem,” he said, and alumni elsewhere “are aware of what we’re doing.”

Jackson noted that while the rebranding of the AACRC hits close to home, programs and centers dedicated to supports for women and LGBTQ+ students have also suffered cuts because of the Ohio anti-DEI legislation.

He hopes other Ohioans “can look to this model, and we can determine … How do we connect? How do we share? How do we learn? How do we build bridges and partnerships to continue to support the young people developing themselves in the state of Ohio?” he said. “That’s what it’s all about.”

Pressures New and Old

Even with such support, students fighting to keep programs alive without university backing hasn’t necessarily been easy.

Isaac Makanda, co-head of the juvenile justice and political action committee for University of Cincinnati’s NAACP chapter, said students and alumni can’t completely make up for the loss of the African American Cultural and Resource Center. He described running into a Black first-year on campus who didn’t know about Akwaaba or other events happening for Black students on campus. He believes that’s because the new students are without a hub.

When Makanda was a freshman, the AACRC sent out emails telling incoming Black students about events and programs, he said. This student “had no idea about any of these things that were going on because those resources were taken away from him.”

Some student groups have also had to hustle for funding to keep their events running. The Pacific Islander Student Association, which cut ties with the University of Utah alongside the Black Student Union, lost its student group funding in the separation. PISA used to receive at least $5,000 annually from the university, so that loss was a “major hit,” said Mayette Pahulu, vice president of the group.

But she and other student leaders felt it was worth it to have full control over their programming after Utah’s anti-DEI bill became law last year. They didn’t want to be limited by the new strictures on public universities, “whether that be talking about certain subjects, encouraging our members to have their own rights … to host socials that are specific to our heritage, cultures and ethnicities,” Pahulu said. “We would rather lose the funding than our members lose a safe space.”

Now the group raises its own money. PISA student leaders have an ongoing GoFundMe campaign and seek out sponsors for event costs, including the nominal fees required for outside groups to host programs on campuses.

We would rather lose the funding than our members lose a safe space.”

—Mayette Pahulu, vice president of the Pacific Islander Student Association at the University of Utah

Pahulu said the students’ new responsibilities have pros and cons. On one hand, she and other student leaders find themselves pushing hard, with less support, to engage students who are feeling unwelcome on campus amid changes wrought by Utah’s anti-DEI legislation. On the other hand, she believes the new connections they’ve had to make with other student groups, community organizations and businesses to sustain their work could bode well for PISA’s future.

“Even though we’ve taken kind of the short end of the stick, having to scramble around to find these organizations, we’ve honestly started to build a bigger community and network,” she said. “I think in the long run, it will benefit us … We’re working with representatives to get these supports put in place so that the longevity and the sustainability of our organizations can outlast—no matter how drastic the changes may be politically.”

Jackson, the University of Cincinnati alum, said in a similar vein that he’s proud to see students and alumni making the best of the raw deal they’ve been given.

As universities strip away programs at the behest of state lawmakers, “all they’ve done is put more burden on the students,” Harlan said. At the same time, “it gives them opportunity to network with the community, more opportunity to do planning and budgeting, more opportunity to lead in terms of putting together programs and executing programs.” The question is “How do we make lemonade out of a lemon?”

Keisha Bross, director of race and justice at the NAACP, said student organizations—like Black student unions, NAACP chapters and the group of Black sororities and fraternities known as the Divine Nine—have always provided supports and programming for Black students in areas where universities have failed to do so. These groups “stepping in” to fill unmet needs is their “legacy,” she said. But she doesn’t believe the work students are doing, and have historically done, should allow universities to “get off easy” for cutting back programs dedicated to their success.

“We cannot allow colleges to make these really traumatic decisions that are hurting student populations and their leadership, and then just say, ‘Oh well,’” Bross said. “We need to continue to hold universities accountable, because they have a responsibility to the students that they serve. Universities have and should be providing these resources to their students, 100 percent.”

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September 29, 2025
Southern Oregon University to cut 23 programs and lay off 18 employees
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Dive Brief:
- Southern Oregon University will eliminate 10 bachelor’s degrees, 12 minors and one graduate program in the face of long-term structural budget deficits after a vote by the institution’s board.
- The public university will also lay off 18 employees and cut roughly three dozen other jobs through retirements, the elimination of vacant positions and other methods. SOU will shift 17 jobs off its payroll by funding them through alternative sources, such as the SOU Foundation, a nonprofit affiliated with the university.
- The cuts are intended to stabilize SOU following years “marked by unprecedented fiscal crises,” according to the plan approved by trustees last week in a 7-2 vote.
Dive Insight:

SOU has faced a quartet of problems plaguing other higher education institutions — declining enrollment, flat state funding, rising costs and a shifting federal policy landscape.

The university’s full-time equivalent enrollment fell almost 22% from 4,108 students in 2015 to 3,209 in 2024, according to state data.

“It is also highly likely that the federal government’s intent to dismantle support systems for low-income students also will have a devastating impact,” the plan noted.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration sought to reduce funding to certain need-based student aid programs and eliminate others altogether, such as the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant program. Since then, both chambers of Congress have rejected some of those overtures in their own budget proposals for fiscal year 2026, though House lawmakers likewise pitched eliminating FSEOG.

At the state level, Oregon’s fiscal 2025-27 budget raised funding for its public universities slightly. But SOU argued that the bump fails to cover increasing costs outside of its control, such as retirement and medical benefits.

In June, SOU’s board of trustees directed the university to find $5 million in savings by the end of fiscal 2026.

In response, University President Rick Bailey planned more significant cuts to set SOU up for longer-term stability. He declared financial exigency at the beginning of August, paving the way for a dramatic restructuring at the institution.

The plan pitched to SOU’s board Friday will cut more than $10 million from the university’s annual educational and general budget over the next four years, bringing it down to approximately $60 million total.

Academically, the proposal will sunset “low-enrolled or less regionally relevant programs” to focus on “what SOU does best for the majority of students,” it said.

Following the reduction, the university will offer a total of 30 majors and 19 minors meant to lead students toward interdisciplinary programs “aligned with regional workforce demands.”

“SOU is no longer a comprehensive university,” the plan said. “We cannot continue to provide all the programs and supports as we have in the past.”

Bachelor’s degrees slated for elimination include international studies, chemistry, Spanish and multiple mathematics programs. It will also cut a graduate leadership degree focused on outdoor expeditions.

Some programs originally considered for elimination — such as creative writing and economics — will go on with restructured curricula and face additional review in coming years.

The plan will also restructure SOU’s honors college and eliminate direct funding for its annual creativity conference.

During Friday’s meeting, board member Debra Fee Jing Lee supported the cuts, arguing SOU‘s strength moving forward will be based on its ability “to be lean and agile and entrepreneurial.”

Board member Elizabeth Shelby similarly voted for the proposal.

“It’s incumbent upon us to plan as we must for the next several years, even if that requires additional cuts,” she said.

But Hala Schepmann, a board member and chair of SOU’s chemistry and physics department, opposed the plan, calling it “the nuclear option.”

“Do we need to make immediate cuts? Yes,” she said. “But taking away key foundational components of our institution will make it harder for us to make progress.”

Schepmann also took issue with deciding on the plan amid “significant fluctuations” in the university’s projected budget.

This summer, SOU lowered projections for its expected revenue by $1.9 million after an internal analysis found “a multi-decade issue” of double-counting some online education tuition revenue.

The workforce reduction comes just two years after SOU eliminated nearly 82 full-time positions through a combination of layoffs, unfilled vacancies, voluntary reductions and retirements.

That wave of cuts left the remaining employees “feeling as though they were asked to do more with less,” according to the proposal. It argued that the new round of cuts will address this issue by paring down programs in tandem with shrinking the workforce.
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September 25, 2025
Federal judge declines to restore $1B in grants cut by NSF
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Dive Brief:
- A federal judge on Wednesday declined to restore more than $1 billion in research grants cut by the National Science Foundation over research related to diversity, equity and inclusion while a lawsuit against the agency goes forward.
- In the ruling, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb concluded that the court didn’t have the jurisdiction to temporarily restore the grants and that plaintiffs failed to show they would experience “irreparable harm” from the agency’s new anti-DEI policies while the case proceeds.
- Cobb cited in part a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that universities and researchers facing mass federal agency cuts must pursue their monetary claims in a separate federal court that handles economic and contractual disputes with the U.S. government.
Dive Insight:

In April, NSF issued a new statement of priorities asserting that grant awards “should not preference some groups at the expense of others, or directly/indirectly exclude individuals or groups.”

“Research projects with more narrow impact limited to subgroups of people based on protected class or characteristics do not effectuate NSF priorities,” the agency added. NSF also noted grants related to environmental justice and the study of disinformation would also fall short of the agency’s objectives under the Trump administration.

Mass cancellations of previously awarded grants followed. In June, a group of unions and higher education associations — including the American Association of Colleges and Universities and the American Association of University Professors — sued NSF.

They counted 1,600 canceled grants amounting to over $1 billion funding, including many that aimed at broadening participation of women, underrepresented groups and those with disabilities in scientific and technical fields. Commonly appearing typos and boilerplate language in many of the termination notices to researchers showed the mass, automatic nature of the cancellations.

“NSF afforded recipients of terminated grants no advance notice, and indeed no process whatsoever, before the terminations,” the complaint stated.

Plaintiffs argued that NSF’s anti-DEI directive and cancellations violated the law as well as the constitutional principles of separation of powers and due process. Among other things, plaintiffs said the grants carried out NSF’s “statutory directive to support an increase in the participation of underrepresented populations in STEM fields, including women, minorities, and people with disabilities.”

In her ruling Wednesday, Cobb, a Biden appointee, wrote that her court likely had jurisdiction to decide if NSF’s anti-DEI policies could be applied to future grants. But retroactively restoring the grants that had been canceled, as the plaintiffs had requested, would likely need to be handled by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

Among other precedents, she cited last month’s Supreme Court ruling in a case against the National Institutes of Health over similar DEI-related grant cancellations at that agency. While the top court declined to block a district court’s order that struck down the NIH’s anti-DEI guidance, it said the plaintiffs must seek relief for the canceled grants in federal claims court.

Critics of the decision — including justices in the liberal minority — said that the ruling would add new complications and delays while research projects and laboratories suffer.

Cobb further concluded that plaintiffs’ argument that their constitutional rights were violated was unlikely to succeed, finding that their claims were instead statutory in nature. There again Cobb cited a recent case against the Trump administration, this one brought by the Global Health Council over mass cuts at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Democracy Forward, a nonprofit legal organization representing plaintiffs in the lawsuit, called Cobb’s decision not to block NSF’s terminations disappointing and “a loss for American innovation and excellence.”

“This case is not over and we are eager to defend the important role the NSF plays in the daily lives of Americans,” the group said in a statement.
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September 11, 2025
UTS defends decision to cut courses – Campus Review

The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has given evidence to a federal senate inquiry that probed how cutting education and public health courses aligns with its public mission.

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September 10, 2025