On August 5, Stanford University spokeswoman Luisa Rapport confirmed that Stanford is planning to fire 363 employees due to financial pressure due to increasingly tight federal funding for higher education.
The school's leadership did not say specifically which department would be affected the most, but the sacking in Stanford is expected to take effect from September 30. The information was published in a filing sent to the state of California last week.
According to Stanford's website, as of 2024, the school has a total of 2,345 lecturers and more than 19,000 administrative staff.
President Jonathan Levin and department head Jenny Martinez also admitted that Stanford is facing a challenging financial environment, largely shaped by changes in federal policies affecting higher education.
In a statement in June, Stanford said it had cut about $1.40 million in the general fund for next year.
This Silicon Valley university is among many leading educational institutions in the US that are facing scrutiny from the Trump administration over their compliance with the 2023 Supreme Court ruling prohibiting discrimination in university admissions.
The government has threatened to cut research grants and other funding funds for some schools. However, they also conduct negotiations with universities such as Columbia and Brown.
For the above cases, the funding fund has been restored after schools accepted to pay financial fines and made major changes to their policies.
At the same time, other prestigious universities in California are also facing similar challenges in maintaining human resources.
The University of California system with 10 campuses has applied freezing recruitment orders across the system, while the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles has also just announced the dismissal of 55 people due to facing a $200 million deficit.
