Dive Brief:
- The University of New Orleans has cut dozens of employee roles as it tries to recover from years of budget deficits and falling enrollment.
- A university spokesperson confirmed Tuesday that UNO eliminated 72 positions across its operations. Of those, nine positions were filled, requiring layoffs, while the rest were vacant.
- Along with the headcount reduction, UNO as part of its cost-savings effort restructured its enrollment management division to include admissions, financial aid and scholarships, registrar and veterans services, according to the spokesperson.
Dive Insight:
UNO closed out fiscal year 2023 with a whopping operating loss of $61.7 million. That accounted for nearly 12% of the University of Louisiana System’s total operating loss for the year, according to the nine-institution system’s latest financials. After state appropriations and other revenue, UNO’s net position at the end of that year hit negative $9.4 million.
Still grappling with a $15 million deficit, UNO President Kathy Johnson during the spring called on the university’s schools to each cut their budgets by 15%, according to The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate, which reported the recent job cuts.
“My intent is to do what's necessary now so that we can go back to growth mode,” Johnson told the publication.
Shrinking enrollment is the source of much of the institution’s financial pain. In 2022, fall headcount declined to 7,111 students, dipping 10.7% from five years prior. And that figure is down 36.9% since 2010.
Contracting headcount has heavily impacted the university’s revenue. Between the 2019 and 2023 fiscal years, revenue from tuition and fees fell 30.9% to $39.4 million.
Following Johnson’s spring announcement of coming budget cuts, the United Campus Workers of Louisiana, which represents faculty and staff at UNO, launched a petition demanding that preserving jobs be prioritized in any restructuring.
The union offered a host of possible solutions to the budget crunch.
Among them: cuts to vendor contracts, reduced spending for administrative functions, salary reductions that would increase with pay scale, and a four-day, 40-hour workweek for staff that it said could help the university’s “extraordinary spending on utilities” by allowing most campus buildings to shutter on Fridays.
The union also called on UNO to protect positions in academic affairs while imposing greater cuts on the athletics department and other units “not critical to the university’s core missions of teaching and research.”
In an open letter Tuesday, Tim Duncan, UNO’s vice president of athletics and recreation, acknowledged that the administration asked the athletics department to cut its 2024-25 budget by 25%, which amounts to a more than $2 million reduction.
Duncan said the department has, among other efforts, tailored its recruitment for head coaches to focus on candidates who have experience at institutions with smaller budgets than what the athletics department has currently.
“Unfortunately, the reductions will affect personnel, operational dollars, travel expenses, and even athletic scholarships,” Duncan wrote.
UNO joins a long list of institutions to make cuts to staff, faculty and programs in recent months amid enrollment woes.
The most recent is Valparaiso University, a Lutheran institution in Indiana, which plans to eliminate over two dozen academic programs. Hampshire College, a private nonprofit in Massachusetts that survived a brush with closure about five years ago, also announced in July it would cut 9% of its employee headcount to balance its budget by the 2026-27 academic year.
