On June 18, Cornell staff and faculty received an email from Cornell leadership announcing the beginning of a period of austerity. Among a slew of planned actions, the administration threateningly notes that it “anticipate[s] involuntary reductions in headcount across the university.” While the cuts in federal grants undoubtedly have serious financial impacts across the university, the email presents a skewed view of Cornell’s financial reality and gives no concrete information about projected losses and cuts. Instead the university leadership is seizing a moment of financial uncertainty to enact unilateral austerity measures.
A new wave of austerity will negatively impact all of Cornell, resulting in even more over-burdened workers, intimidated to speak out over working conditions for fear of seeming “inefficient.” Yet we need a robust workforce to advance the university’s land grant mission. Among other reasons, Cornell’s student body has grown over the past five years (alongside a 17% increase in tuition), and labs facing increased competition for federal funding need staff to successfully compete for grants. Cornell holds out the hope that when the financial picture improves, staffing levels will quickly be brought back to “normal.” But even existing cycles of layoffs and rehiring disrupt university operations, impeding critical research, student success, and throwing into disarray the lives of Cornell community members who are “involuntarily reduced.”
To defend their planned layoffs, Cornell leadership references a selection of financial headwinds. The Cornell Contingent Academic Workers would like to issue the following responses:
- The email’s first justification for layoffs is that Cornell’s workforce has grown 15 percent since June 2021. But there are other ways to look at this data. First, moving the starting point to 2019 reveals a growth of 13.5 percent. This reflects an annual employment growth of 2.1 percent, which is equal to the average growth of student enrollment from Fall 2019 to Fall 2024. Just as importantly, spending on salaries and wages since 2021 has grown only 13 percent, which does not account for inflation. Meanwhile, the compensation received by fifteen “key employees and officers” grew 24 percent in the same period at a cost of almost $50 million. University upper administration could voluntarily reduce their large salaries in lieu of layoffs. This happened at Cornell during the COVID crisis, and is a measure being taken by Harvard’s president. In addition, labor costs are just one part of the financial picture. To be sure, when revenue falls, costs must follow, but there are other costs to consider, like capital projects. Focusing on hiring costs misrepresents the problems and solutions.
- Leadership also claims that austerity is necessary because of the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research contracts. This is an unfortunate reflection of our harsh political reality, but once again it dishonestly frames the situation. Since 2019, the Cornell endowment has grown from $7.3 billion to $10.7 billion, an increase of 46%. Endowment returns have also been exceeding their projected benchmark. Cornell has made at least $425 million in investment income so far in 2025 alone. From 2019 to 2025, the Cornell fundraising campaign has raised $4.6 billion. During and after COVID, heightened fundraising efforts resulted in 29 percent more giving compared to the previous five years.
- Finally, the administration says layoffs are necessary due to (potential) endowment taxes and legal costs. It’s hard to give our perspective on these challenges since the costs have yet to be shared, and the new endowment tax does not yet exist. But recent developments in the reconciliation bill leave Cornell’s tax burden exactly the same, at 0%. The newest version of the reconciliation bill sets a tax rate of 0% for any institution with an endowment value per student below $500k. Cornell’s endowment value per student is around $400,000. Furthermore, we argue that the livelihoods and contributions of Cornell workers should be worth more to the University than maintaining an accelerating rate of endowment returns. Cornell is more than an investment fund with a university attached to it.
- It is worth noting that on May 7, President Kotlikoff emailed all alumni asking them to support the university in the face of these financial headwinds. Alumni were asked to donate to the Provost’s Research Resiliency Fund and to advocate for Cornell to their networks and elected representatives. If the university has decided layoffs are necessary, we deserve to know if these funds are being used to prevent as many job losses as possible.
In light of these considerations, the Cornell Contingent Academic Workers call on Cornell to stop hiding the University’s financial situation behind the Trump administration’s threats. If Cornell leadership truly wants “to do the greatest good for many years to come” as they state in their email’s closing sentence, they should start being transparent about the university’s finances. We also call on the university to create an emergency fund and to at least temporarily raise the endowment payout as specified in the “Protect our Jobs and Academic Mission” letter sent to the Board of Trustees by the Cornell Postdoc Association. Finally, we request that Cornell alumni and community members join us in advocating for the jobs of Cornell faculty and staff, so that we may continue to facilitate world-class research, promote student success and “do the greatest good.”
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Cornell Contingent Academic Workers is an organization of employees across Cornell who work in solidarity with one another to improve their wages and working conditions and to build the collective power of the people who make Cornell run. They can be reached at cornellcaw@gmail.com.
