The Illinois Institute of Technology has laid off approximately 160 faculty and staff just before the start of the fall semester, a university spokesperson said in a written statement.
According to an email shared with WBEZ, the university’s president said Illinois Tech is facing research funding cuts and “severe restrictions on international students.”
“The university has no choice but to pursue targeted reductions to address these challenges and protect our mission as an opportunity engine for all,” Illinois Tech President Raj Echambadi wrote in an email to employees on Tuesday.
Illinois Tech, which has its main campus in Bronzeville and a law center downtown, is not the only university with these struggles. The Trump administration has significantly cut federal funding for university research and tightened regulations on foreign students.
The changes have discouraged and even disallowed international students from coming to the United States, which is hurting college finances. Foreign students typically pay higher tuition than domestic students.
The university reported that more than 40% of students were from countries outside the U.S. in fall 2025. Six in 10 graduate students at the school were foreign.
Enrollment data posted on archives of Illinois Tech’s website show a loss of approximately 1,200 international graduate students between the fall of 2024 and 2025 — a significant decline for a school that enrolled 7,500 students overall last year.
An Illinois Tech spokesperson did not detail how many faculty and staff have been laid off in each department. But several educators at the school said the cuts were deep and compounded by months of attrition following rumors of financial instability.
The university spokesperson said leaders recognize the changes “have a significant impact” on laid-off employees and are “committed to providing impacted colleagues with severance.”
“As always, we will continue to place students at the center of all that we do and to ensure educational excellence at Illinois Tech,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.
The university’s faculty senate issued a vote of no confidence in the president and provost on Monday, the day before faculty and staff began receiving layoff notices. In a letter to the university’s attorney shared with WBEZ, senate members acknowledged the campus is facing “extreme” financial difficulties but criticized how senior officials have handled them.
“The faculty do not trust the current senior administration to make the necessary decisions to navigate this transition in a way that meets our responsibilities to students and accreditors,” wrote Daniel Bliss, political science professor and faculty senate chair. “The current senior administration’s slow, opaque, apparently uninformed and non-transparent addressing of the crisis has deepened and aggravated its scope.”
Multiple employees said campus leadership have yet to communicate with students about the layoffs. The fall semester starts for much of the campus on Aug. 17.
“Students are concerned that we’re going to be closed in two years, three years,” said one staffer who asked to remain anonymous because they fear retaliation from university administration. “They’re worried they’re not going to get the courses that they need because we don’t have the faculty to teach them.”
Lisa Kurian Philip covers higher education for WBEZ, in partnership with Open Campus.