UC Santa Cruz faces fresh round of austerity measures with systemwide hiring freeze

The University of California unveiled a systemwide hiring freeze and other spending restrictions Wednesday as it contends with state budget constraints and funding challenges from the Trump administration. 

In a statement, UC President Michael Drake outlined the austerity measures, which extend beyond the hiring freeze to include directives to campuses to defer maintenance and reduce business travel.

The cost-cutting measures will be tailored to individual campus needs, Drake wrote: “Because every UC location is different, these plans will vary accordingly. But regardless of UC location, every action that impacts our university and our workforce will only be taken after serious and deliberative consideration.”

UC Santa Cruz Chief Financial Officer Ed Reiskin said the school had previously implemented hiring restrictions on positions supported by its core budget, money that comes from student tuition, along with state and some federal funding. “We will review our practices for any needed changes in light of this announcement,” he wrote in a statement. “Principal officers will also need to continue to review travel plans to reduce nonessential expenditures.”

UCSC spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason said the new spending constraints would not impact campus housing projects currently underway.

As of Wednesday afternoon, job listings for UCSC — one of the largest employers in Santa Cruz County — included 120 academic vacancies and more than 60 open support positions, from cooks and groundskeepers to psychologists and program managers. Visitors to the school’s website who attempted to submit applications for support positions Wednesday were met with a pop-up message that read: “We are sorry, the job(s) you have selected is no longer available.” 

The decision by the country’s largest public university system comes as President Donald Trump has threatened to pull funding to schools that run diversity, equity and inclusion programs and attempted to cut money universities receive for federally funded research. Earlier this month, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking some planned cuts to National Institutes of Health research funding.

The Trump administration also cancelled $400 million in federal contracts and grants to Columbia University, saying the university failed to protect Jewish students over the past year during pro-Palestine protests against the war in Gaza. The federal government said a list of 60 other universities are at risk of losing funding over accusations of antisemitism on their campuses. 

Amid Trump’s threats against diversity programming, UC leaders also announced Wednesday that they would drop the requirement that applicants submit diversity statements as part of the hiring process in order to promote a diverse and inclusive culture. A judge last year dismissed a lawsuit filed against UC Santa Cruz by an applicant for a tenure-track faculty position in the developmental psychology program who said the required statement violated his free speech rights.

UC campuses are also being squeezed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plans to cut nearly 8% of their funding, or close to $400 million, for the 2025-26 year. In November, UCSC Chancellor Cynthia Larive told faculty those plans could reduce the school’s state funding by $16.6 million.

UCSC had already been making plans to reign in its spending. Last week, senior officials told the school’s academic senate that it was planning to cap graduate student admissions for the coming school year and add new language to offer letters that would allow the school to rescind student funding commitments “based on action by the federal and or state government.”

The school had been grappling with a structural budget deficit prior to the announcement of the hiring freeze, and last month revealed a projected $85 million loss for the current 2024-25 fiscal year.

Over the past five years, UC Santa Cruz has accumulated a structural deficit of nearly $350 million that officials say was largely caused by rising costs from increased hiring, along with lower revenues because of flat overall enrollment and a drop in the number of nonresident students, who typically pay higher tuition rates.

The hiring freeze adds another layer of uncertainty into an already precarious situation for UCSC lecturers, who had faced cutbacks and layoffs even before Wednesday’s announcement, said Jeb Purucker of UC-AFT Local 2199, which represents lecturers at the university.

“We’ve been seeing really severe layoffs and reductions in time. People who, for years and years, have been full-time, teaching eight courses, are now being told that next year they’re going to be teaching five courses, or three courses, or they’re getting laid off entirely,” he said.

UCSC employs around 400 lecturers in the fall quarter, with 350 working currently, Purucker said. Lecturers teach 40% of undergraduate credit hours and are typically hired on one-year renewable contracts. They become eligible for “continuing” contracts after 18 quarters. Lecturers have to maintain at least a half-time appointment — typically four courses per year — to receive health care benefits.

The hiring freeze could mean larger class sizes for students and difficulty enrolling in required courses, potentially delaying graduation, Purucker said. The impact is particularly acute in language programs, where multiple Spanish sections are being eliminated. The cuts extend beyond teaching staff — the university library recently experienced its first layoff in decades, Purucker said.

“It’s the university transferring its own budget woes and its own debt problems onto the people at the bottom,” he said. He argued that administrative positions have grown disproportionately at UCSC while front-line educators face cuts. “When times get tight, we’re going to clamp down on what I think is the most important thing that the university does, which is education [and] research.”

— Max Chun contributed to this report.

FOR THE RECORD: This story was updated to include new information about the UC dropping a requirement for diversity statements in its hiring process.

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