Staff Cuts Put Princeton on ‘Sustainable’ Budget Path

In the second of three planned years of cost cutting, Princeton is on “a faster path than expected toward a sustainable budget,” Provost Jennifer Rexford ’91 wrote in a September letter to faculty and staff. But she cautioned that more changes are coming.

In 2025, Princeton announced a goal of 5% to 10% permanent budget cuts for University departments and units. Since then, staff positions have decreased by more than 3% “through a combination of staff reductions and unfilled vacant positions,” according to Rexford’s letter, which anticipated additional cuts in 2026-27. 

Rexford pointed to three primary pressures shaping Princeton’s budget challenges: increased health benefits costs, decreased long-term endowment projections, and “lower and more variable” government funding for research.

On the latter two, the University has some positive news. Rexford wrote that she expects a strong endowment return (results for the 2026 fiscal year are typically announced in October); and in the summer, Princeton announced two major National Science Foundation awards for the Quantum Leap Challenge Institute ($27.9 million over five years) and the Princeton Center for Complex Materials ($18 million over six years). Still, Princeton’s federal funding declined 25% over the past year compared with the previous three years, according to Rexford’s letter. 

In March, the Board of Trustees approved a $3.4 billion operating budget for the 2026-27 academic year, a 2.1% increase over the previous year.