The college announced a series of cost-saving measures on Wednesday, April 2 that aim to cut over $10 million from the annual budget through reducing staff and faculty benefits and permanently raising the student enrollment projection to 2,600–2,650. The college attributed the changes to 15 years of consistent deficits, culminating in the unexpectedly high $14.1 million shortfall this fiscal year, a large portion of which is due to lower enrollment at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS).
In its plan to improve the institution’s financial health, the college will implement a voluntary early retirement incentive to eligible Vermont-based staff, reduce the maximum retirement match from 15% to 11% starting in 2026, and cut rental costs by relocating several Language Schools and administrative offices to Middlebury-owned properties. Additionally, Middlebury is evaluating its health insurance plans, with potential changes to be announced in the fall and implemented in 2026.
The college held a meeting for staff on April 7, with Wilson Hall filled by staff members uncertain about their future and asking senior administrators about the cuts. Interim President Steve Snyder told the crowd that laying off 140 employees would have accomplished a similar goal as these cuts, but they do not intend to pursue that path, according to publicly available meeting notes compiled by several Staff Council members on Monday.
The retirement buyout is aimed at reducing the workforce by 40–50 total staff; the incentive does not apply to faculty yet but administrators said that decision may be reassessed as Middlebury’s financial future evolves. Six hundred and twenty-two staff members will be affected by the reduced retirement match, and 180 employees are eligible for the buyout, which is projected to save $2.5 million annually, according to the meeting notes.
The college has also announced its intention to reduce the number of people participating in the Senior Leadership Group from 17 members to just six, which it says will promote the administration’s efficiency in the coming months.
Vice President for Human Resources Caitlin Goss emphasized that participation in the retirement incentive program is entirely voluntary for employees.
“This is a choice that is completely voluntary, so everyone who is eligible receives all the information, and people can take it or not,” she said in an interview with The Campus. Goss added that they have reached out to all supervisors with eligible employees to ensure the managers are informed and not improperly influencing people’s decisions.
Colleen Norden, president of Staff Council and a systems and communications specialist, said that college employees were frustrated by the recent cuts to their benefits.
“Staff are unhappy about this change because some of them are close to retirement,” Norden explained. “We’re still getting the same paychecks, but what happens is now that four percent piece that used to go into our retirement account won’t be, so the overall compensation is decreased.”
Norden added that while the college is seen as a good employer by many — the institution did not institute layoffs during Covid-19, she said — and correcting budget deficits is important, many staff feel like these cuts portray them as a financial liability, rather than as an asset.
“We had retirement incentives twice before, we had workforce planning, but we’re back here again,” she said. “Staff want a real solution, and they really want [the college] to be able to make changes institutionally that are sustainable and structurally sound so that we don’t have to face this again in the near term.”
Terry Simpkins, the library’s director of Discovery and Access Services, also felt that the college was placing a higher burden on staff members through the cuts.
“[Administrators] are planning to bring the Bennington Language Schools in the summer back to Middlebury, and there are, for many of us, cutting retirement, so I’m effectively working for less money,” Simpkins said. “This means workload is going to go up and my salary is going to go down, which will certainly have an impact on morale.”
The Trump administration’s cuts to higher education have played a role in the college’s calculus on its finances. Executive Vice President of Finance and Administration David Provost stated that the recent federal policies add more risk to the financial health of Middlebury, adding that the finance team is monitoring these risks daily.
However, the potential tax increase on endowment under consideration by the Trump administration may harm what Provost said was the backbone of Middlebury’s finances.
“Last year, the endowment tax was 1.4%. That charge to Middlebury was $1.2 million,” he said. “If it went from 1.4% to 14%, that’s 10 times — so $1.2 million would have been a $12 million impact on the endowment; If it went to 21%, you’re talking $24–25 million.”
The college has also placed a temporary pause on some hiring this semester, according to Goss, the head of Human Resources. She said the freeze is intended to affect open positions that could be paused with minimal impact on students and that would not have been filled this semester anyways.
“We likely would not have been able to realistically hire individuals to fill those roles and to start prior to the end of the spring semester, so we could afford to pause those and come back to them in July and determine what the next step is,” Goss told The Campus.
The hiring pause has created disruption among some departments that are understaffed and were in the process of hiring new team members last week before the temporary freeze was announced.
Alyssa Wright, director of Research, Instruction and Data Services, shared in an interview with The Campus that the research team is supposed to include six librarians — which she said is an average number for NESCAC schools — but Middlebury currently has only four.
“They were active searches — we were in the second round interview for the instructional media librarian. I had to cancel interviews, and the second one, we were reviewing CVs. Both had very healthy applicant pools,” Wright said. “It’s disappointing to have that pause to have to cancel interviews and send regrets to all of those candidates.”
Davis Family Library has faced chronic understaffing and turnover in recent years, leading the research librarians to take on heavier workloads and longer hours. The concern for the research team at Davis specifically is that their unique positions require special skill sets that are difficult to recruit, magnifying the impact of even a temporary freeze.
“It takes a long time to hire librarians because they’re academic positions, so you have to have an academic skill set, and they have to have some more practical skill sets,” Wright added.
The hiring was paused until July 15 due to changes in the budget, according to Simpkins.
“I just don’t understand how, on the one hand, [the administration] can say ‘We don’t want to negatively impact the students’ learning experience’ and on the other hand, they can say, ‘We have to pause the librarian searches’,” he told The Campus.
The recent changes to retirement benefits and plan to review healthcare packages has also impacted faculty, who discussed the reforms last Friday at the monthly faculty meeting. Faculty Council member and Professor of Political Science Bert Johnson said that increased class sizes during Covid-19 placed heavier burdens on professors, and the expected post-pandemic return to normal is now out of reach.
“We were at 2,500 [students] before Covid, I feel like we thought that worked pretty well, and I thought a lot of us felt like we were going to eventually get back to that number,” Johnson said. “So to hear that we’re at this higher level perpetually without an additional infusion of resources does make us sort of adjust our perspective in how we think about planning courses and other kinds of things.”
According to Provost, the vice president of finance, the college currently enrolls around 2,600 students on campus, making the new enrollment projection a continuation of the status quo rather than an increase in size.
“Historically, the numbers pre-Covid always hovered just shy of 2,600,” he said. “This isn’t an increase. It stabilizes us back to where we were.”
Administrators have previously told The Campus that the ideal enrollment range was 2,500 to 2,600 students on campus; enrollment spiked to well over 2,800 students in 2021 in the wake of Covid-19. Provost added that the changes be gradually phased in, blending enrollment for each year group increases from 700 to 720 over time to ensure a more manageable and sustainable transition.
Provost also shared that the college relies on approximately $15 million in federal grants, the majority of which go to Monterey. He estimated that the Vermont campus relies on about $2–3 million in federal grants for summer research and faculty research projects. The Campus has previously reported that over $6 million in total research grants on the Vermont campus from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation could be affected by federal cuts.
“Student financial aid, federal aid is about $16.7 million. That is Pell Grants, [Supplemental Educational Opportunity] grants, work-study grants, and parent loans — guaranteed parent loans. So if we were to lose that money, that would be a real problem,” he said. Provost clarified that all federally-funded financial aid for this academic year has already been applied.
Regarding the Institute, Provost acknowledged that the graduate school’s financial challenges are real. Middlebury is closely monitoring international student policies, as half of the Institute’s student body is composed of international students.
Apart from policies, one of the Institute’s biggest programs, Translation and Interpretation, is currently impacted by artificial intelligence (A.I,), which Provost said will only create more challenges for the program.
Reflecting on the changes to retirement benefits and health insurance, Johnson shared that fellow faculty members expressed mixed emotions since the announcement last week.
“For some people, it’s anger; for some people, it’s exhaustion, with continual focus on tightening belts,” he said. “Whe we came to these jobs, because we valued education, we valued the mission, we valued the student experience, and when we can’t do the best possible job of that for resource reasons, it’s frustrating.”
For the retirement match reduction, Goss shared that the Human Resources team will provide access to the TIAA specialists, referring to an external company available to employees through the college for retirement and investment advising. She said that since the change will not go into effect until January 2026, there is enough time for staff to plan ahead.
“This does not change the ability of an individual to make an individual decision to put more of their money into their retirement plan,” Provost clarified.
In light of all the recent changes to staff benefits and retirement, Simpkins reflected on how he has seen the college’s support for staff and library has changed over the past two decades.
“Middlebury is a terrific place, it’s a top-notch college, it’s relatively well-supported, and we’re relatively well-paid,” he said. “[But] what I’ve seen over 25 years is sort of a steady degradation in some of the perks that staff would get that made it a place that people wanted to come to.”
Despite the challenges posed by the new austerity measures, Johnson understood that it must be a tough decision for the administrators.
“I do not envy the senior leadership group having to make decisions,” he added. “But, we also need to convey how it affects us.”
Hugo Zhang '28 (he/him) is a News Editor.
Hugo previously served as an Online Editor. He intends to major in Economics and Geography. He enjoys cartography, traveling, and history. Last summer, he studied at Sciences Po Paris and traveled across Europe. He has also conducted research on ethnic minority policies, economic transformation, and urban planning in Northeastern China, also known as Manchuria.
