Facing declining enrollment, Clark University to reduce faculty by as much as 30 percent over next three years

The camous of Clark University. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff

Clark University is the latest institution to face an enrollment crunch, as the Worcester school said this week it would reduce its faculty by as much as 30 percent, freeze staff hiring, and comprehensively review its academic offerings.

For the second year in a row, enrollment for the incoming class was about 100 students below projections, university officials said in a statement.

Administrators said the restructuring is part of a “bold strategic plan” that will address “unprecedented pressures” facing higher education, such increasing costs and growing uncertainty over federal policy.

“All of higher education, Clark included, is at a critical inflection point,” university president David Fithian said. “Rather than simply meet this challenging moment as an exercise in budget constraint, we have taken a longer view, leaning into current strengths and what is best about Clark to offer our students an even more compelling experience going forward.”

The number of faculty members will be reduced by 25 to 30 percent over the next three years, administrators said. Retirements and voluntary attrition will go toward the targeted reductions before layoffs are considered for non-tenure, pre-tenure, and adjunct faculty, they said.

Provost John Magee said in the statement that it was “too soon” to determine whether tenured faculty will be affected.

Clark employed 228 full-time and 101 part-time instructional faculty members last year, according to the Common Data Set, which tracks university demographics.

Clark’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which represents full-time faculty, did not immediately return a request for comment.

The university is also implementing a hiring freeze for staff as part of a 5 percent reduction over the next year, administrators said.

Administrators also said that majors with low enrollment will be eliminated, with new majors, courses, and concentrations added. The school will refocus its curriculum to three areas it identified as “most relevant to meeting the needs of a changing world”: climate, environment, and society; media arts, computing, and design; and health and human behavior.

David Jordan resigned as dean of the university’s School of Business, administrators wrote in a letter on Thursday, after it was announced it would be folded into the School of Professional Studies under the new strategic plan.

University officials said the move would reduce administrative overhead and allow both programs to coordinate better with each other.

“A university-wide restructuring is essential to meet the fiscal and market demands of the moment,” the administrators wrote. “Every business must learn to adapt and be agile in responding to external forces, and that is what Clark is doing.”

Administrators said the reductions would not negatively impact the “highly personalized nature” of instruction at Clark, adding that the school will still aim for a student-faculty ratio of 10 to 1. That ratio stood at 8.5 to 1 in fall 2024, according to the Common Data Set.

Last year, Clark enrolled 430 students in the freshman class, according to the Common Data Set. That marked a sharp decline from the 637 first-year students who enrolled the previous year — and a decline of nearly 40 percentfrom the class of 2026, which at 705 was the largest freshman class in the university’s history.

The university is also feeling the uncertainty generated by the Trump administration’s crackdown on international students. More than three-quarters of Clark’s graduate student enrollment in 2023 came from outside the US, one of the highest proportions in the country, according to a New York Times analysis.

Clark is the latest small, private university to contract under enrollment pressures. Last year, Emerson College laid off 10 staff members due to a budget crunch and drop in enrollment, which the college said was fueled by backlash over pro-Palestinian demonstrations and arrests on campus.

Citing low demand, Rhode Island College in Providence announced plans to suspend 20 degree programs and consolidate 15 others.

Several other smaller schools have either moved or closed entirely due to falling enrollment, such as Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy and Bard College at Simon’s Rock.