Despite reaching a deal with the Trump administration in the summer that restored more than $500 million in federal funding the government had frozen over allegations of discrimination, Brown University is laying off dozens of employees as it attempts to weather its ongoing financial pressures.
In a recent letter to the campus, Brown President Christina H. Paxson, Provost Francis J. Doyle III, and Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Sarah Latham said that while that deal — which required Brown to agree to several new operating conditions as well as to pay $50 million over ten years to workforce development organizations — had lessened Brown’s financial problems, it had not eliminated them.
In addition to a $29 million deficit for its Fiscal Year 2026 budget that had been approved in May, the administrators projected that Brown now faced more losses for FY26 totaling $30 million.
In order to close that additional budget gap, the university is splitting its budget reductions into two roughly equal shares — $15 million by the central administration and $15 million by other academic and administrative units.
At the central level, the administration is taking these five actions to achieve its $15 million in savings:
- Consolidating health plans to a single provider.
- Selling off some real estate holdings.
- Temporarily pausing spending on plans to move the University to net-zero emissions.
- Making modest, temporary reductions in information technology and facilities renewal.
- Prioritizing fundraising for gifts that can immediately help the budget.
The other academic and administrative departments were given an overall target to reduce expenses by 2.5%, with the amount of the reductions varying from unit to unit. As a result, the following actions were taken:
- Reduction of operating costs, including decreased travel, reduced spending on external vendors and consulting, less discretionary spending on equipment, activities, tools and resources, and shifts to restricted funding sources.
- Elimination of 55 unfilled budgeted positions.
- Layoffs of 48 staff across campus.
“We want to acknowledge the gravity of these measures for those directly affected by layoffs and for their colleagues,” the leaders wrote, promising that “the University will provide support to impacted employees, including severance packages and outplacement services.”
Although Brown’s financial plight had been previously outlined by its leaders, the magnitude of the problem is now becoming more clear. In a communication to the campus community last December, Doyle and Latham identified several initial actions the university would take to address a structural budget deficit then estimated at $46 million, writing that “without changes to the way Brown operates, the structural deficit is expected to continue to deepen significantly, including a deficit next year that would grow to more than $90 million, with steady increases in subsequent years.”
As part of its belt-tightening plan, the university implemented staff hiring freeze last March, eliminated about 90 vacant staff positions, froze discretionary spending, and implemented a salary freeze for members of the president’s cabinet for fiscal year 2026 (Paxton, Doyle and Latham took a 10% salary cut).
The campus-wide freezes on hiring, travel and discretionary spending are no longer in effect, in part because several developments over the summer “reduced the threat to Brown’s finances far below what the University feared at the beginning of the summer.” Those developments included Brown’s agreement with the government restoring funding from the National Institutes of Health, court rulings that have halted the Trump administration’s attempts to limit research funding, and a new determination that Brown will not see an increase in taxes on its endowment and other investment income this year.
Nonetheless, Brown, which has taken out loans of $300 million and $500 million in the past year, is still not out of the financial woods. It anticipates the need for more austerity measures in the future. “Because we expect federal impacts for all colleges and universities to deepen in FY27 and beyond, we anticipate the need to provide budget guidance for FY27 that incorporates further adjustments when that process begins in the coming months,” the administrators warned.