In a Feb. 26 email, Brian Burnett, the newly appointed executive vice president and chief financial officer of Case Western Reserve University, announced the implementation of a hiring freeze for new staff. These cost-saving changes come amidst a backdrop of recent changes to higher education administration put forward by the Trump administration that threaten traditional funding for higher education.
“Changes at the federal level, especially the capping of indirect cost rates for the National Institutes of Health grants, could lead to considerable budgetary impacts at Case Western Reserve University,” the email states. Burnett characterized the hiring freeze as a “temporary pause” for the semester, emphasizing that this impacts all hiring, including for already posted positions.
Exceptions, as Burnett said in the email, must come from the Executive Compensation Committee. Little is known publicly about the group: a search of the CWRU website only shows four results, all tied to the faculty search and compensation process. In an emailed statement to The Observer, the university clarified that “The executive compensation committee is a small group of university leaders who evaluate each open position based on its critical importance to university operations.”
An analysis of open positions from the Human Capital Management system reveals the main impacts of the hiring freeze. Of the 75 jobs that were live the day after the announcement of the freeze, 16 of them are on the “director” level roles, including the Executive Director of Entrepreneurship through Acquisition and four positions for director of development. Many student-facing positions are also impacted: a career planning specialist, four roles in University Health and Counseling Services and two librarian roles were previously listed and now unposted.
The university didn’t comment when contacted about the impacts of the hiring freeze and the status of student-facing departments that have historically been plagued by understaffing. In a written statement, the university said, “The freeze does not include student employment.”
In the same email, Burnett announced pauses on university-funded travel for staff, “unrestricted discretionary spending” and “additional pay and temporary staffing requests.” He said these measures are necessary to “help protect against these significant potential financial impacts,” referencing the cap on indirect research costs from the National Institute of Health. This cap, announced on Feb. 15, seeked to cap indirect cost reimbursements for federally funded research studies at 15% of the grant’s worth.
CWRU’s prior negotiated reimbursement rate is 61%, which matches with the rate at University Hospitals and Cleveland Clinic. The change to 15% amounts to $38.8 million potentially being cut from CWRU, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Universities and research institutions across Ohio may lose up to $185.7 million.
CWRU is not the only university that has implemented spending changes. Peer UAA institutions, such as New York University and Emory University, have announced similar cost-cutting measures. These hiring freezes also extend to include Ivy League schools and various public university systems, capturing national attention and headlines.
These measures have been challenged in court and as of March 26 are subject to a preliminary injunction from a federal court in Boston, pending three lawsuits filed by higher education interest groups and a few universities, which does not include CWRU. Regarding the lawsuit and injunction, a statement released by President Eric Kaler on March 6 said that “While concerns remain about the slowing of research funding and the potential for indirect cost caps, we are grateful to these groups—and many others with whom we’ve partnered—for advocating on behalf of researchers to conduct their meaningful, life-changing work.”