SU Chancellor: No “large-scale” layoffs to deal with federal spending cuts

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Syracuse University (SU) Chancellor Kent Syverud says SU isn’t planning mass layoffs or hiring freezes to deal with federal spending cuts announced since President Donald Trump took office back in January. Syverud recently updated SU’s University Senate on the school’s budget in response to federal spending cuts, per a Thursday announcement on the school’s news website. “We’re not going to have large-scale layoffs. We’re not going to have across-the-board hiring freezes. We’re not going to have deep budget cuts or other drastic measures in graduate programs,” Syverud said, per the announcement. He went on to emphasize “that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to be responsible as we’ve been all year” in delivering a balanced budget. “Basically, what we’ve been doing since August is asking every unit, school, and college to identify efficiencies and realign their resources in ways that really make sense. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any changes, but they’ll be more consistent with the changes we do every year at Syracuse University in landing the plane or at least have been doing for recent times.” Syverud also noted that if SU had done nothing since last August, the school would be facing a 3 percent budget deficit. “By the way, 3% translates into millions of dollars. But if we can’t handle a 3% budget deficit humanely as managers and as a community, we’re not a very effective financial community, I believe,” Syverud said. In his remarks, Syverud mentioned that Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland was laying off thousands of staff and instituting freezes of faculty hiring and graduate admissions. “Really, I think you’ll see more of them, since a lot of academic institutions like to behave in a herd, and think behaving in a herd is the safe thing. I think you’ll see lots of institutions, including most of the AAU [Association of American Universities] doing things like this in the next couple of weeks,” Syverud said. Syracuse will propose a balanced budget for fiscal year 2026, which it’ll submit to the board of trustees for approval, the chancellor added.