Brown University laid off 48 administrators and eliminated 55 unfilled staff positions this week to offset a budget deficit, citing the Trump administration’s cuts to federal education funding.
According to the Ivy League school, the purge of 103 of its 3,805 staff jobs erases half of a projected $30 million shortfall in its fiscal 2026 budget. School officials pledged that discretionary cuts would cancel the other half.
In a statement to The Washington Times, Brown spokesman Brian Clark cited “ongoing federal impacts” from recent education policy changes.
“Those impacts include expected declines in federal research funding, the persisting threat of deep cuts to indirect cost reimbursements for research grants to higher education, and other federal policy changes will affect tuition revenue,” Mr. Clark said.
The Providence, Rhode Island, campus has not publicly identified the eliminated jobs, but Mr. Clark said they cover “a range of academic and administrative departments and offices on campus.”
The White House and the Department of Education declined to comment on the layoffs.
The Trump administration froze $510 million in grants to Brown in April after flagging the school’s sponsorship of diversity initiatives and handling of complaints about antisemitism in campus protests against the war in Gaza.
The Education Department also paused grants at Cornell University, Harvard University, Northwestern University and Princeton University over similar concerns.
Brown struck a deal with the Trump administration in July to restore the funds. That deal requires the school to end race-based admissions and hiring policies, bar transgender students from women’s facilities and sports teams, and contribute $50 million to state workforce development agencies.
“The Trump Administration is successfully reversing the decades-long woke-capture of our nation’s higher education institutions,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement at the time.
In a separate statement, university President Christina Paxson said the compromise protected the school’s “academic independence” and core mission values.
The university announced in August that expected funding cuts to grants from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the National Endowment for the Humanities would still leave a $30 million budget deficit.
Brown, which has an endowment valued at $7.2 billion, also plans to sell off real estate holdings in Providence and consolidate its health coverage to a single provider to trim costs.
According to the private university, payroll expenses make up 43% of its $818 million annual budget.
Alex Shieh is a former Brown student journalist who sent a March 18 email to the university’s 3,805 staff members asking what they do all day. He said this week’s layoffs confirmed his suspicion that the university has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on “bureaucratic bloat.”
Brown had threatened to discipline Mr. Shieh for publishing the names of 49 administrators who he said violated a Trump administration ban on diversity staff, but it backed down after pressure from a free speech advocacy group. He later dropped out of the university over the summer to start an Ivy League watchdog.
“The recent reduction in administrators is a victory for students, particularly those who are struggling to afford the crushing cost of attendance,” Mr. Shieh said this week in a text message. “But the fact that the bloat has persisted for so long is why Americans no longer trust elite institutions to serve their interests.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.