USC enacts hiring freeze and makes cuts over Trump threats to funding
Source: The Guardian
USC enacts hiring freeze and makes cuts over Trump threats to funding
California university makes changes amid slashes to research funding and investigation over campus protests
Robert Mackey
Tue 25 Mar 2025 20.14 GMT
Last modified on Tue 25 Mar 2025 20.33 GMT
The University of Southern California announced an immediate hiring freeze for all staff positions, “with very few critical exceptions” in a letter to faculty and staff on Tuesday.
The letter, from USC’s president, Carol Folt, and provost, Andrew Guzman, said the hiring freeze was one of nine steps to cut the school’s operating budget amid deep uncertainty about federal funding – given sweeping cuts to scientific research, the reorganization of student loans, and an education department investigation accusing the university of failing to protect Jewish students during protests over Israel’s destruction of Gaza following the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023.
“Like other major research institutions, USC relies on significant amounts of federal funding to carry out our mission,” the university administrators wrote. “In fiscal year 2024, for example, we received approximately $1.35 billion in federal funding, including roughly $650 million in student financial aid and $569 million for federally funded research. The health system also receives Medicare, Medicaid, and Medi-Cal payments – a significant portion of its revenues – and the futures of those funds are similarly uncertain.”
The other measures include: permanent budget reductions for administrative units and schools, a review of procurement contracts, a review of capital projects “to determine which may be deferred or paused”, a curtailment of faculty hiring, new restriction on discretionary spending and expenses for travel and conferences, an effort to streamline operations, a halt on merit-based pay increases, and an end to extended winter recess introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/25/usc-hiring-freeze-cuts-trump-funding
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