 "Why has America's richest university paused hiring?")
Top universities in the United States have announced hiring freezes amid threats by President Donald Trump to cut funding for higher education. Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania are the latest to stop hiring faculty.
They have joined a growing list of American universities imposing hiring freezes as the uncertainty looms over Trump’s threat to impose steep financial cuts in research funding.
Let’s take a closer look.
Harvard makes hiring freeze
Harvard University, the richest US university with a $53 billion endowment, has announced a temporary hiring freeze. In an email to the school community on Monday (March 10), Harvard University President Alan M Garber wrote that it is developing “long-term capacity needed to advance academic priorities at a time of uncertain revenues”.
“We need to prepare for a wide range of financial circumstances, and strategic adjustments will take time to identify and implement,” he said, as per a Bloomberg report.
“Consequently, it is imperative to limit significant new long-term commitments that would increase our financial exposure and make further adjustments more disruptive,” Garber added.
While it did not mention Trump by name, the email said that universities across the nation “face substantial financial uncertainties driven by rapidly shifting federal policies.”
“Effective immediately, Harvard will implement a temporary pause on staff and faculty hiring across the University,” the email said.
As per Bloomberg, Harvard said the freeze in faculty and staff hiring was to ensure financial flexibility until leaders “better understand how changes in federal policy will take shape and can assess the scale of their impact”.
Other universities to pause hiring
Another Ivy League university has halted staff hiring. The University of Pennsylvania announced its decision on Monday, along with plans to review faculty hiring.
“The direction is clear, and we are already experiencing reduced funding,” an email to Penn staff by two university administrators read, according to a New York Times (NYT) report.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsPenn said it is facing a cut of about $240 million in research funding. “Changes to federal research funding could significantly reduce our operating budget,” John L Jackson Jr, the university’s provost, wrote to faculty.
Moreover, the top US university said it was putting a stop to some raises and reducing other expenses by five per cent.
The funding cuts have also led to some departments at Penn to revoke verbal admission offers to incoming PhD students.
Before Penn and Harvard, Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Cornell announced hiring freezes due to uncertainty about government funding.
The University of Notre Dame and the University of Vermont have also stopped hiring for the same reason.
“As we seek to understand the executive orders, federal agency directives and other policy changes announced over the past several weeks, our decision-making will continue to be guided by our mission as a global Catholic research university,” Erin Blasko, a spokesperson with Notre Dame, said in an email, as per NBC News.
The University of Vermont said last week it would review its hiring freeze in 60 days.
Why is this happening?
American universities are under pressure after Trump threatened to slash funding for higher education.
The US’ top institutions could lose millions of dollars in grant funding by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research and studies. Last month, the federal agency announced it hopes to save $4 billion by reducing its federal grant funding.
The NIH said it would cut indirect costs for research, including utilities and administrative staff, at universities and research centers.
After several lawsuits were filed against the move, a federal judge has temporarily blocked the new policy.
In a separate move, the Trump administration cancelled $400 million in grants to Columbia University “due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”
Harvard and Columbia are among the 10 schools identified by the Trump administration over accusations of anti-Semitic incidents linked to Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.
Pro-Palestine protests had broken out at several universities in the US last year.
With inputs from agencies
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