Drexel College plans to put off 60 workers members because it tries to steadiness its price range.
The cuts don’t apply to school and symbolize lower than 1.4% of the non-public, Philadelphia-based establishment’s workforce, in response to an emailed assertion from the college.
One other 155 workers have opted into the college voluntary retirement incentive program, in response to Drexel.
“The choice to put off members of our skilled workers is rarely made evenly,” the college stated. “That is a part of Drexel’s plan for resolving an approximate 10% imbalance in its working price range with the intention to guarantee resilience amid monetary headwinds dealing with the upper training sector.”
College officers signaled that cuts have been coming earlier this fall after enrollment got here in need of projections, one thing they blamed on the troubled federal rollout of the Free Software for Federal Pupil Assist. In addition they listed previous rising prices, elevated institutional assist and spending on pupil help companies as driving its price range woes.
A decline in first-year college students this fall, particularly, led to an extra $22 million hole in Drexel’s working price range, in response to the college. In October, the college famous that first-year undergraduate enrollment, at 2,350 college students, was on tempo to fall about 17.5% beneath preliminary estimates.
Like many schools, Drexel has a large share of scholars depending on federal assist, making it susceptible to the FAFSA debacle. Within the 2021-22 tutorial yr, 25% of its undergraduates acquired Pell Grants and 49% took out federal pupil loans, in response to federal knowledge.
The college stated in its assertion this week that it “stays well-positioned to navigate the shifting tides of upper training.”
“In service of its distinctive academic mannequin, the College is within the course of of remodeling its tutorial construction, together with shifting to a semester schedule, and implementing a core competency curriculum to raised put together college students to benefit from their experiential studying alternatives,” Drexel stated.
