The budget crisis at the University of Denver (DU) is part of a national reckoning in private higher education.
Across the country, private universities are grappling with strikingly similar pressures: ballooning deficits, shrinking enrollments, program eliminations and faculty reductions.
Why is it happening on a national level?
The financial strain hitting universities has roots stretching back nearly two decades. When birth rates fell during the 2008 recession, higher education experts back then began embracing what they now call the “demographic cliff.” Simply put, there is a sustained decline in the number of 18-year-olds reaching college age, meaning that the cliff has arrived.
Currently many students who do graduate high school are choosing not to go to college. COVID-19 added another layer of disruption by causing the class of 2026 to be abnormally large, due to delayed enrollment patterns for millions of students. Chancellor Jeremy Haefner cited this issue as a driver of the university’s current shortfall. When the senior class exits and a smaller incoming class takes its place, the tuition revenue gap widens.
By 2041, the number of high school graduates in the U.S. is projected to fall by 13 percent.
How other private universities compare
The broader national higher education crisis has disproportionately affected private universities with less selective admissions rates. As tuition at private institutions continues to rise, many students are opting for large public universities that offer lower costs.
On the other end of the spectrum, highly selective institutions can rely on large pools of qualified applicants and are also less dependent on tuition revenue, with many waiving tuition costs altogether for middle and upper-middle class families.
These factors leave private universities like DU at a disadvantage, though some institutions have been hit harder than others.
Across the country, NPR reports that “442 of the nation’s 1,700 private, nonprofit four-year colleges and universities, with a combined 670,000 students, are at risk of closing or having to merge within the next 10 years.”
While DU and similar private universities are staying open, they are dealing with cuts that in some cases are strikingly similar.
At Boston University, the College of Arts and Sciences was asked to cut nearly $8 million last summer before a $30 million university-wide budget shortfall was announced in October.
Sound familiar? DU also asked the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences to cut $8 million last year before announcing a $30 million shortfall in February.
Still, some colleges have seen no cuts despite enrollment declines. At Lafayette College, they saw their endowment increase while revenue fell by just $1 million.
A large part of their financial strength comes from a lesser reliance on tuition, which currently makes up 51 percent of their revenue.
At DU, tuition makes up 67 percent of revenue, leading to higher consequences during enrollment decline.
How student newspapers are covering it
As schools navigate similar crises, student journalists have become some of the primary sources of information.
The approach to communicating financial pressures varies widely across institutions. Some universities — such as the University of Colorado Springs — have held open forums with leadership to discuss budget concerns. While others have routed nearly all communication through public relations offices and required participants in restructuring decisions to sign confidentiality agreements.
The New School Free Press published detailed breakdowns of their university’s $48 million deficit and restructuring plan. While covering the development, news editor Shane Gomez noted the paper’s small team has had to stretch to keep up with the volume of the story.
“Community members often tell us that our coverage was more helpful and insightful than the university’s communications,” said Gomez.
A recurring theme across student coverage is frustration with administrative transparency.
At The New School, faculty sources are largely reluctant to go on the record out of fear of retaliation. Board of Trustees members are legally bound by confidentiality agreements, preventing them from speaking about the restructuring. Faculty members who accepted buyout offers were also required to sign non-disparagement clauses.
“A key element of the university’s restructuring plan strategy is layoffs. And the university has been vague about layoffs, so there’s an atmosphere of fear from faculty members who are hesitant to go on the record,” said Gomez.
Drake University’s Times-Delphic took a different approach by surveying anonymous faculty about recent program cuts, including the dissolution of the religion major, East Asian Studies major and graduate certificate in evidence-based health care. Faculty describedd an administration with no clear long-term plan.
Their findings echo a sentiment felt across higher-education: a lack of trust in administration to handle budget shortfalls and faculty salaries.
The disconnect between college leadership and upper administration is a pattern some at DU say they have experienced firsthand. One faculty member in an impacted department, who was granted anonymity due to concerns about professional repercussions, described the divide directly.
“I have been impressed by the way that Dean Byrne and her staff have gone out of their way to keep us updated… This same level of transparency seems wholly missing at the level of the Provost and Chancellor.”
What unites community members across these campuses is not just the cuts themselves, but the struggle to obtain clear information about decisions that will reshape their universities. In each case, students and faculty have increasingly turned to their student newspapers to fill the information gap.
“I want my reporting to support and uplift and empower these people whose livelihoods are on the line,” said Gomez. “I hope through our journalism, we’re able to enact change and give the community the tools that they need in order to fight this campaign which is going to gut the university and its mission and its history and identity.”
For student journalists at DU, the goal is to provide the community with the most accurate and up-to-date information as possible amid continued uncertainty surrounding the cuts. As administrators prepare to announce final decisions in June, The Denver Clarion will continue covering what comes next.
