University of Denver leaders cut jobs and are tightening the school’s budget amid what Chancellor Jeremy Haefner is calling “a very difficult time for the university.”
The private research university is facing waning enrollment that has left the institution with an $11 million budget deficit, according to school officials.
As a result, DU eliminated eight administrative staff positions this fall — three in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and five more across the campus, including in the chancellor’s office, University College and the Josef Korbel School of International Studies.
Additionally, 15 staff positions in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences will be replaced with higher-paid roles that will serve all 20 departments. The new model is intended to create more standardized roles with clear career paths to help staff better manage workloads, DU spokesman Jon Stone said.
DU also eliminated an undisclosed number of vacant positions.
“It’s tricky and challenging and hard, and it hurts,” Haefner said in an interview with The Denver Post. “It does.”
But DU faculty and students are sounding the alarm about the university’s belt-tightening. On Friday, faculty leaders in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences — the university’s largest academic unit — took a vote of no confidence against Haefner, with 14 voting in favor and five abstaining.
Department leaders cited Haefner’s “pattern of fiscal mismanagement.”
In response to the vote, Stone said the university appreciates the faculty’s “commitment to the college’s mission and DU’s success. We look forward to continually working with faculty and staff across the university to ensure ongoing educational excellence for our students and a strong, sustainable future for DU.”
Multiple students and faculty members reached out to The Post over the past week concerned about the direction of the university and the decision-making of Haefner and leadership.
“Morale is in the pits,” said Aaron Schneider, a professor in the Josef Korbel School of International Studies. “People are worried about their jobs. Worried about their colleagues. They’re worried about the mission of this university.”
DU’s enrollment peaked in 2022 at 13,815 students and has been declining since then, according to the university. Projected enrollment for DU’s 2025 fiscal year is 12,043 students, 10% lower than fall 2023 enrollment.
Haefner said he believed several factors have led to DU’s reduction in students, including the so-called enrollment cliff — an anticipated decrease in college students due to declining birth rates — as well as loss of public trust in higher education and issues with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid that delayed or deterred students from receiving federal funds for their education.
“I so believe in the future of this university,” Haefner said. “We offer something no other university offers with the four-dimensional experience, Kennedy Mountain Campus, and our deep commitment to free speech and pluralism.”
The University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado State University and Metropolitan State University of Denver all saw enrollment increases this year, with CU Boulder and CSU touting record numbers of students.
Haefner said he suspected students whose middle- and high-school experiences were diminished by the pandemic are seeking a big school environment for their college years and shirking the idea of a smaller, private university.
“We’re taking a very fiscally conservative approach when it comes to enrollment projections,” Haefner said. “Our revenues are coming down. We’re a tuition-dependent university. … Like any family budget, when expenses start to exceed revenues, you’ve got to tighten your belts. We’re doing it very carefully, preserving student experience overall.”
Riley Laub, editor of DU’s student newspaper The Denver Clarion, said he did not feel comforted.
Laub is worried about further cuts and how that could impact his class sizes and overall student experience.
“I am also mainly concerned with the well-being of my professors and colleagues,” Laub said. “They’re the ones who will be most affected by these cuts and the ones who will deal with the most stress. I think as a result of all this, a lot of faculty will weigh whether this university is the right place for them to work and have a career.”
He’s already noticed student services taking a hit, such as the closing of a campus food pantry.
The food pantry, funded entirely by donations, ran out of money at the end of August, Stone said. The service that provided groceries to students in need saw an increase in demand it could not meet, he said.
The university is restructuring the service for its long-term sustainability, Stone said, including switching out paid student staff with work-study graduate students and volunteers. Work-study is federal financial aid through which students’ on-campus jobs pay for their education.
DU is partnering with on-and-off campus organizations including the Denver Zoo Conservation Alliance to help fund a new food pantry that the university hopes to roll out next quarter, Stone said.
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“DU’s response to an enrollment shortfall has been to cut services to students and raise the price,” said Schneider, the international studies professor. “I don’t know in what universe raising the price and worsening the product will fix an enrollment problem, but that’s the direction the university is going.”
DU has repeatedly increased tuition over the past five years. In the 2024-2025 academic year, tuition for a full-time student living on campus exceeds $60,000.
The university has a more than $1 billion endowment, which Schneider said he and other faculty feel could be tapped into to better address budget woes.
Chancellor Haefner said the endowment is intended to serve future generations and that trustees have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that happens. Some of the endowment is restricted to specific expenditures such as scholarships and can’t be spent miscellaneously, he said.
“The reality is, if your expenses are exceeding revenues, the prudent financial budgetary component whether you’re a family or university is to look at your expenses and say, ‘Can we operate more effectively while trying to increase revenues but maintaining and managing expenses at the same time,’ ” Haefner said. “Short-term solutions… are not the long-term solution.”
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