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Dive Brief:
- The New School plans to reduce its workforce by 15% through layoffs and eliminating vacant positions in the coming months as it restructures its academic operations and copes with budget deficits, senior leaders told employees late last week.
- The announced cuts, to take place through the spring, come on top of a 7% workforce reduction that the private university, in New York City, has been making through voluntary buyouts since December.
- “While enrollment has declined, our operating expenses have increased,” the senior leaders said. “As a result, we have a structural deficit that requires us to make structural changes to balance our budget and place the university on a strong financial footing.”
Dive Insight:
Until now, The New School has sought to shrink its workforce through voluntary buyouts. But in March, President Joel Towers signaled that the college would have to get even smaller to shrink its $30 million structural deficit.
In their Friday email, Provost Richard Kessler and Chief Operating Officer Francisco Pineda said that full-time faculty and staff will receive layoff notices by June.
They said job cuts will vary among university units. “Throughout this process, our intent is to align capacity with our actual needs while preserving core academic strengths and positioning areas of growth for future expansion,” Kessler and Pineda said.
They also acknowledged the emotional impact of the layoffs.
“We understand the gravity of this moment and the distress that these actions will cause for many,” they said. “We also understand well the anxiety, fear, and anger many in our community are experiencing and will experience, and how very difficult this period is.”
In a separate statement, The New School said it will also eliminate unfilled positions before turning to “calibrated” layoffs. The university aims to “reach our overall, fully operational size, balanced with our enrollment, by the fall,” it said.
In fall 2024, The New School had roughly 3,100 employees, about 2,000 of whom were dedicated to instruction, according to federal data. According to the university, personnel costs make up 60% of the institution’s expenses.
Declining enrollment is driving much of the change at The New School. Just between 2021 and 2024, fall enrollment fell 13.6% to 9,068 students, according to federal data. Kessler and Pineda noted Friday that total current enrollment is down 20% from fall 2021.
With the declines have come financial stress. S&P Global Ratings in February downgraded The New School’s bond rating, with analysts citing deep deficits and “a weakened operating picture.” The institution has a mandate from its governing board to balance its budget by fiscal 2028.
Partly to adapt to a smaller student body, The New School is consolidating its four individual colleges into two. The process will combine its liberal arts college with its social research-focused graduate school into one unit and its design, performing arts and media schools into another.
“The transition from four colleges to two is more than mere administrative realignment,” Kessler and Pineda said Friday. “It represents a purposeful evolution toward a more integrated academic model — one that mirrors the often-interdisciplinary nature of contemporary practice and scholarship and the increasingly collaborative ways our students engage with the world.”
