UO leaders brace for campus anxiety as budget reductions take shape

The University of Oregon will decide in December how to close its $65 million budget gap.

Chief Financial Officer Jamie Moffitt and Provost Chris Long told reporters Tuesday, Aug. 18, that proposals for budget reductions will begin to surface in September, as deans discuss options with department heads and faculty, but no final decisions will be made until the winter. 

All vice presidents and academic deans are modeling general fund budget reductions of 5%, 10% and 15%. Later this month and in September, officials will share those proposals with the Academic Modification Advisory Committee, a group of faculty, staff, administrators and students newly formed to provide input on budget cuts affecting academics.

Committee members will review proposals and give feedback to officials in a “confidential setting,” Long said. The university will then publicize a rough draft of its budget reduction plan in October for public comment and will make final budget decisions in December. 

Moffitt and Long acknowledged the uncertainty, anxiety and rumors that might emerge on campus as proposals take shape.

“We are not making decisions until December, but we still need to begin to consider a wide variety of ideas that we need feedback on during the process,” Long said.

In May, UO President Karl Scholz said the university would need to cut $65 million from its budget over an unspecified period of time to avoid future annual deficits.

In June, the university offered more details, estimating a roughly $23 million budget gap in fiscal year 2027 that is projected to reach $65 million by 2031, in large part because of a drop in out-of-state enrollment. About 1,888 nonresident students are expected to enroll in fall 2026, the lowest number in 10 years.

While plans for a $65 million budget reduction will take shape this year, the actual cuts won’t happen all at once, Moffitt and Long said on Tuesday. 

“We’re not assuming that everything’s going to happen right away,” Moffitt said. “Some of it might take multiple years to put in place, but we want to be in a position where we can be thoughtful about that, and we can look out into the future and work with the different units on what the plans are that will get us to a point of balance.”

Long declined to name any specific programs or departments being targeted for cuts, adding that “all sorts of things” are on the table, including reorganizations and department mergers. 

“Between now and [December], we’re going to be thinking about a lot of different ideas, and of course that just increases the anxiety and uncertainty,” Long said. “I feel concerned about that, but I think it’s the price you pay for a more open decision making process.”

He said decisions will be “data-informed but not data-determined.” Officials are examining metrics like the number of student credit hours, the number of majors within a program and the ratio between tenure track faculty and majors, Long said. 

“This is actually something that’s meaningfully different and really better this year than we had last year,” he said. “We have a much more robust set of data that we’re looking at, and that we’re sharing with” the Academic Modification Advisory Committee. 

The university cut $29.2 million from its budget in fiscal year 2026, terminating 57 employees last fall. Some faculty, staff and students felt last year’s cuts stemmed from a rushed process that lacked transparency and community input. 

The Academic Modification Advisory Committee is tasked with reviewing proposed budget changes only on UO’s academic side, but Moffitt said she “imagine[s]” bringing some “larger administrative options” to the committee, too. 

When asked why UO is taking more sweeping action to correct its deficit this year, as opposed to previous years, Moffitt pointed to recent shifts in the higher education landscape stemming from the federal government, like changes to international student visa access, financial aid and research funding on top of “climate changes and cultural changes.”

“The amount of change that has happened in the higher education marketplace in the last 12 to 18 months has pretty much never been seen before,” she said, adding: “I don’t know that anyone could have anticipated this much of a shift in our marketplace a couple of years ago.”

As part of budget reduction planning, a group of more than a dozen business and human relations professionals from across the university is examining UO’s processes for payroll, travel and HR to identify efficiencies and potential savings, Moffitt said.

The university has not made a decision on when it will end its freeze on hiring and pay action, which were implemented in May, she added.