Stanford announced on Thursday that many schools and budget units have issued layoffs over the last few days as a result of the University’s $140 million budget cut for the upcoming academic year.
“This is a product of a challenging fiscal environment shaped in large part by federal policy changes affecting higher education,” Stanford president Jon Levin ’94 and Provost Jenny Martinez wrote in the announcement of the layoffs.
According to the University, a total of 363 layoffs have occurred thus far.
“This is a difficult step that affects valued colleagues who support Stanford’s mission of research and education,” University spokesperson Luisa Rapport wrote in an email to The Daily.
President Donald Trump’s “One, Big, Beautiful Bill” that was signed into law on July 4 calls for an increase in Stanford’s endowment tax from 1.4% to 8%. In response to a higher endowment rate and Trump’s termination of over 4,000 federal funding grants nationwide, Stanford braces itself to navigate a challenging fiscal landscape.
The University said they provide support resources and layoff benefits to eligible employees. Eligible employees receive at least 60 days’ paid notice, a severance based on their years of service to the University, contributions to their benefit premiums for three months and outplacement assistance.
Still, the University acknowledged the consequences of its actions in affecting “valued colleagues and friends who have made important contributions to Stanford” in its announcement.
A Stanford library employee who chose to remain anonymous for fear of being laid off said that one of the library employees who was laid off had decades of service to the University.
“A job at Stanford used to be pretty stable… Now it feels like that sense of stability is gone,” the employee said. “People are pretty concerned about what the future holds, because it’s clear there’s not a lot of communication from the top.”
Despite the budget reduction and impending consequences, the layoffs came as a shock to many staff members.
“Many of us went to lunch not knowing what’s happening, what’s going on, and then all of a sudden some of our colleagues were just gone,” the library employee said.
Levin and Martinez set forth the need to “position the university to be resilient as federal policy evolves” in their June announcement of the $140 million budget reduction.
In Thursday’s announcement, the pair reaffirmed their commitment to their “vital ongoing mission of research and education” in guiding decisions and adaptation strategies to come.