Northwestern University announced Tuesday that it was cutting 425 positions as the university faces a $790 million federal funding freeze from the Trump administration.
The university said that of the 425 positions, nearly half were currently vacant, and the exact number of layoffs was unclear.
“I’m still in shock. I think it won’t settle in until my time officially ends,” one staffer who was laid off told the Sun-Times. The employee didn’t want to be named in order to speak freely. The staffer had worked at the university’s Feinberg School of Medicine for two years.
“The rumor mill’s been running for months now, ever since the funding freeze was announced … so it’s not a complete and total surprise, but it was unexpected for it to happen right now,” the employee said.
In an email, university president Michael Schill said the school would reduce its staffing budget by about 5%, which included Tuesday’s layoffs. Schill added that personnel costs make up about 56% of the school’s total annual expenditures.
Jon Yates, a Northwestern spokesperson, said the university was facing similar pressures as other institutions.
“Like many of our peer institutions, Northwestern faces mounting financial pressures that threaten the university’s immediate and long-term financial stability,” Yates said.
“Over the past several months, the university has taken several measures to address these pressures,” Yates added. These measures include changes to employee health insurance, implementing a hiring freeze, cutting non-personnel expenses by 10% and forgoing annual pay raises.
But the faculty wasn’t consulted before the move, according to Jacqueline Stevens, a professor of political science and the president of the Northwestern chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
“They’ve told us that they anticipate permanent budget cuts to programs. … These staff layoffs are among the many shots across the bow that the Schill administration is sending on behalf of the Trump administration to the detriment of the Northwestern community,” Stevens said.
Schill’s email cited “rapidly rising healthcare expenses, litigation, labor contracts, employee benefits, compliance requirements” along with a host of federal measures like constraints on enrolling international students and reductions in research facilities and administration reimbursements.
Northwestern is hoping to restore frozen federal research funding soon. It was among a list of universities targeted for cuts by the Trump administration; Harvard, Columbia and Cornell were among the others.
Columbia has agreed to pay more than $220 million to the federal government to restore federal research money that was canceled in the name of combating antisemitism on campus. Harvard is currently in a legal battle to restore $2.6 billion in cuts.
“I’m sad for me, about my situation, but I’m upset that these very important works are being affected because of choices of a federal administration that doesn’t understand the importance of what’s being done at universities,” the staffer who lost their job said.