[HN Gopher] 2025 Hiring Pause
___________________________________________________________________
2025 Hiring Pause
Author : abhayhegde
Score : 126 points
Date : 2025-03-02 19:39 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hr.cornell.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (hr.cornell.edu)
| submeta wrote:
| > due to "significant financial uncertainty" in higher education,
|
| This is directly linked to the new Trump administration's
| policies. The university explicitly cites potential deep cuts to
| federal research funding, new tax legislation affecting endowment
| income, and ongoing concerns about rapid growth and escalating
| costs as primary reasons for this decision.
|
| This move comes as Cornell and 11 other universities have filed a
| lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health over funding
| restrictions that could cost Cornell $80 million. The
| university's four-month hiring freeze coincides with similar
| measures at other prestigious institutions like Stanford, MIT,
| and Northwestern, all responding to the broader context of the
| Trump administration's proposals to eliminate the Department of
| Education and Executive Orders reducing scientific research
| funding.
|
| This new US government is deeply hurting itself and destroying
| most valuable assets. Which it needs to compete against China or
| Europe.
| cuuupid wrote:
| > This move comes as Cornell and 11 other universities have
| filed a lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health over
| funding restrictions that could cost Cornell $80 million.
|
| This is less than 0.75% of Cornell's endowment, so I'm not sure
| there is a strong case for causation here.
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| What is Cornell's endowment used for? Edit: Also: Who were
| the donors? What restrictions did they place on their
| donation?
| tzs wrote:
| I think you may misunderstand how endowments work.
|
| An endowment is a collection of funds that have been donated.
| Generally each donation is for furtherance of some specific
| aim that the donor wanted to promote.
|
| Usually the terms of the donation are that the money should
| be managed to support the purpose for which it was donated in
| perpetuity. To implement that the managers of the endowment
| invest the money for long term growth, and use the earnings
| to go toward the purpose of the donation.
|
| Cornell currently spends each year around 5% from their
| endowment, as do most other top schools.
|
| Endowments are usually not used to make up unexpected
| shortfalls for at least 2 reasons:
|
| 1. They are already spending all they can consistent with
| supporting the various causes the donors donated in
| perpetuity.
|
| 2. Because the endowment is a collection of individual
| donations that were donated for different purposes there
| might not actually be anything in the endowment that can be
| used towards a particular shortfall.
| loganriebel wrote:
| Cornell has an endowment of 10.7 billion dollars.
| https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/10/university-endowmen...
| DrBenCarson wrote:
| Reminder that endowments are highly illiquid and typically are
| not used to fund budgets
| nxm wrote:
| What should they be used for the ?
| briankelly wrote:
| Used? The university is what is used to grow the endowment.
| y-curious wrote:
| So what's the point of the endowment then? To make the
| green numbers go up?
| duskwuff wrote:
| To be invested and generate returns which can fund the
| university's programs. As I said in another comment, it's
| a long-term investment, not a spending fund. You don't
| eat your seed corn.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I believe most endowments have conditions. So whatever the
| donator say?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Universities use the interest and dividends to pay for
| operating expenses.
|
| Actually drawing down the fund would just ruin future
| finances.
| kaonashi wrote:
| endowments are the tail wagging the dog in many educational
| institutions
| mi_lk wrote:
| that's just misinformation.
|
| > In particular, the endowment supports roughly two-thirds of
| the budget for undergraduate and graduate financial aid, as
| well as a significant portion of faculty salaries, research,
| and key programs like libraries and student services.
|
| from https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/02/staff-hiring
| duskwuff wrote:
| The _returns_ from the endowment are used to support
| university programs. The endowment itself is not spent - it
| 's a long-term investment which produces dividends, not a
| spending fund.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Universities will dip into endowment funds if the returns
| are worse than expected. They will pretty much never make
| plans to dip into endowment funds, though.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, $500M (a 5% return) is still a lot of money.
| Salgat wrote:
| To add, money is fungible. $100 for one department just
| means that $100 is freed up for a different department.
| sega_sai wrote:
| And what? You know that for example endowment funds have
| restrictions on what they can be spent on.
|
| This is really victim blaming. I would not have an issue if the
| government has said that for future grant rounds there will be
| limits on overheads, but this lot just decided they cut already
| agreed and planned budgets and no matter the consequences.
| _m_p wrote:
| The government should levy an 80% tax on this and use it to pay
| for student loan forgiveness.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| To be fair, I hear the Ivies have extremely generous
| scholarships (probably amortized by the nepotism
| acceptances). Much fewer people of financial need are
| graduating these schools in massive debt.
| derbOac wrote:
| Just for perspective, the annual research budget of a
| university I looked at the numbers for recently (not Cornell,
| but R1) would go through that in less than two decades, even if
| it were completely dedicated to research and nothing else.
| ein0p wrote:
| You're assuming they won't make any money on licensing or
| investments. Which they most certainly will.
| _bin_ wrote:
| and you're assuming they invest like you do in your 401k or
| whatever. which they most certainly don't. some are more
| aggressive w.r.t. private markets investment but many focus
| on capital preservation and don't grow as much as you'd
| expect. FY24 Cornell's endowment returned something like
| 8%. this despite an S&P500 gain of, what, 23% ish.
|
| institutions and allocators operate with a very different
| mindset versus individuals or hedgies.
| fny wrote:
| You don't spent an endowment, you spend the interest. The
| entire research budget comes from outside funding. In Cornell's
| case, the research funding amounts to $1B a year.
| fsh wrote:
| With an optimistic 10% annual return, this would amount to 1/5
| of Cornell's budget.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| And according to the same text, $5.8B in annual operating
| costs.
| EternalFury wrote:
| If anything in any country should be free, it should be
| education. And, obviously, the administration of education should
| never be a for-profit venture.
|
| Valuing democracy and being able to select sensible leaders
| depends on it.
| userbinator wrote:
| _If anything in any country should be free, it should be
| education._
|
| It's called The Internet.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| there's perhaps something to be said for this argument: if
| you paid a lot of money for something you might be more
| motivated to use it wisely.
|
| Also I can now get on the Internet and research jet engines
| or kidney transplants, but unless someone makes me learn the
| whole curriculum around it and then tests me to check if I
| understand, it's not worth much.
| userbinator wrote:
| _and then tests me to check if I understand_
|
| That's what interviews are for.
| _proofs wrote:
| yeah, and also one's personal responsibility to make sure
| they are indeed learning and practicing.
|
| implying i need to be dependent on a school to help me
| _retain learning_ is a concept that is foreign to me. if
| i had that kind of dependency in my learning life, i 'd
| be unemployed.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Ahh yes, the internet. Teaching babies about cursed Elsa,
| young children about alternative history, frustrated young
| men to blame women and minorities for their problem, and
| women that they will never be pretty enough without consuming
| product. Oh and the practically unlimited porn along all
| stages.
|
| Crassness aside.
|
| 1. the internet is getting more and more pay walls too. So
| proper education isn't even free on the internet without
| months of curation.
|
| 2. People who make this claim must not have seen studies
| about homseschooled kids. That social element in being around
| a group of peers is crucial development that you can't really
| simulate anywhere else (without again, a crap ton of money
| for camps or something). Especially these days when
| everything is trying to isolate off.
| berkes wrote:
| There's so much that you cannot learn from the Internet, but
| must practiced, coached, steered, etc. That needs fysical
| things to interact with. That need teams, colleagues, or
| other humans.
|
| People who think you can learn "everything" from the Internet
| have a very limited view of "everything". And could probably
| learn about the world by going out there ;)
| userbinator wrote:
| I've learned a lot more from YouTube videos than anything
| else, and even without archive.org there's all the other
| shadow libraries I can get books from.
|
| But sure, keep telling yourself that your overpriced
| "education" is worth anything in this era of truly massive
| information access.
| f6v wrote:
| It's never free. People in Europe say it is when they want to
| take a jab at the USA. But the reality is that earning
| potential is severely limited in Europe. And let's not pretend
| that every degree obtained is beneficial to society. People get
| degrees with no marketable skills all the time. And the losses
| are distributed among all the taxpayers.
| EternalFury wrote:
| It costs someone something, but no one their freedom. Mass
| ignorance is the opposite.
|
| As for degrees with no use, pretty sure these are the
| byproducts of education for profit, with heavy marketing
| passing as administrative expense.
|
| Maybe you could divide the system in two halves: 1) Of
| national interest, 2) Discretionary.
|
| As for earning potential, it has nothing to do with free
| education, as so many high-earners in the US were educated by
| such systems.
| testfoobar wrote:
| Here is a 2024 article from the Stanford Daily:
| https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/behind-stanfords-double...
|
| In 1996: 13,811 students, 1488 faculty, 5881 total staff.
|
| In 2024: 17,529 students, 2323 faculty, 16,527 total staff.
|
| In 28 years: 27% increase in students 56% increase in faculty
| 281% increase in total staff
|
| The ratio of staff to students is nearly 1:1
|
| This is insane.
| mrtksn wrote:
| What does the non-faculty staff does? Is it maybe connected to
| technical staff? They Can't all be management?
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Janitorial, technical, nutritional ... basically anyone not
| involved in educating students "non-faculty."
| freehorse wrote:
| So including people performing a big chunk of essential
| research tasks and who do not fall into the "professor" or
| "student" category.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I would assume non-student TAs (who do teach students), lab
| technical staff (who maintain equipment and and more
| directly enable teaching than janitorial staff) and such
| are also all non-staff.
| biophysboy wrote:
| Non-student TAs are typically grad students whose
| research lab lacks research assistant funding.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Universities try to hire grad students as TAs to help
| them out, but sometimes hire outsiders as TAs. It could
| be because the undergrad major has lots of students but
| the corresponding graduate major has few.
|
| Obviously this varies from university to university and I
| know nothing about Cornell.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| >I would assume non-student TAs (who do teach students),
| lab technical staff (who maintain equipment and and more
| directly enable teaching than janitorial staff) and such
| are also all non-staff.
|
| They are considered staff.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Sorry. I did mean they are staff, and that they are
| "necessary" staff for the core function of teaching.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" The ratio of staff to students is nearly 1:1"_
|
| > _" This is insane."_
|
| "This expansion is largely at the School of Medicine, where the
| yearly staff growth rate of 5.6% is significantly higher than
| the 1.7% rate across the rest of the University...
|
| School of Medicine spokesperson Courtney Lodato wrote that the
| increase largely includes clinical educators who teach and
| provide clinical care, financed by external research funds from
| government and industry sources"
| ein0p wrote:
| Still, 1:1? Please.
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| I mean, if you tack on a hospital to a university, the
| correct denominator to compare against is "patients
| served," not "students educated," at least for the portion
| of the headcount you're sticking in the numerator.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| In the US, many Medical schools are schools only in the
| technical definition of schools. In reality they are more
| like research and medical centers that also do a bit of
| teaching on the side. Staff to students ratio could easily
| be in excess of 10:1
|
| A little over a decade ago, I remember Dean of a top
| medical school I attended showing the budget of the medical
| school. Tuition was like 5% or of the entire med school
| revenue and budget. I remember raising my hand and asking
| the Dean if tuition was so little, why not just make it
| free. He gave me a death stare and just danced around the
| question.
| ein0p wrote:
| How come the ratio was so much lower before? Could it be
| the (mostly useless) administrative positions?
| freehorse wrote:
| What is "staff"? Is there a break down on how much "staff" is
| involved in research tasks vs admin tasks? Research nowadays is
| complex and requires a lot of technical support, a lot of
| people who are hired as technical-administrative stuff may do
| actually purely research tasks [0]. As usually faculty captures
| people in some "professorship" level, it completely misses this
| big crowd of research-related work.
|
| [0] source: me
| machinekob wrote:
| Contemporary academia especially in the West has a massive
| surplus of staff.
|
| Many people pursue academic careers solely for a comfortable
| lifestyle, doing minimal or even no research for long period of
| time. With extra lack of oversight that allows researchers to
| isolate themselves they create circles which cover each other.
|
| Occasionally, folks outside of the circle come in and they
| start finding ton of fraud in the research with multiple big
| cases in past few years on top universities like Harvard for
| example.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| What fraud happened at Harvard?
| nis0s wrote:
| If you search "Harvard research fraud" at least three
| distinct cases come up.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I found 2. One is an ongoing lawsuit and the other seems
| mostly like stupidity because people keep falling for the
| stupid AI grift. I can barely trust AI to produce basic
| boilerplate and they are trying to verify novel research
| with it?
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/8/3/hbs-prof-
| lawsuit...
| sega_sai wrote:
| Wow, experts in academic careers are contributing here. Can
| you please give us a source of your knowledge of why people
| pursue academic careers?
| evil-olive wrote:
| > Many people pursue academic careers solely for a
| comfortable lifestyle, doing minimal or even no research for
| long period of time.
|
| do you have any concrete evidence (that is not based on
| vibes, anecdotes, or "everyone knows") to support this claim?
| grounder wrote:
| We might need to know the FTE values to understand what this
| means. Are staff positions full-time FTE? Are faculty positions
| full-time, tenure positions? Have they added part-time staff,
| adjunct faculty, etc.?
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| Total staff numbers are only marginally useful without further
| breakdown, as that article points out.
|
| A family member works for an eatery at a large university.
| Technically they are employees (staff) of the university, but
| pretty much in name only. They work for a business unit which
| receives no financial support from the university. They are
| profitable on their own and if they aren't, they would close
| down. They are provided benefits via the university, but it is
| part of their budget. Including them in the count relative to
| students is about as useful as including the employees of the
| (independent) Starbucks on campus.
|
| (It's not Stanford, so I can't speak to that specific
| institution)
| elif wrote:
| virtually every sector of the economy has 'excess staff;' it is
| not confined to higher ed. It's the obvious conclusion of
| decades of automation not being realized as less working hours,
| but in the dilution of responsibilities into more complicated
| and larger corporate apparatuses. Some of them are called
| "bullshit jobs" some of them are given credibility, while being
| utterly purposeless ultimately. This is largely ignored as a
| general trend because it is usually contextualized to a
| narrative within each company (as is the case here) rather than
| seen as a larger phenomenon.
|
| This is the inevitable conclusion of unprecedented
| concentration of capital, which is not new but only being
| revealed during a time of seemingly limitless automation
| potential.
| almosthere wrote:
| The other insane thing is 10 students to one teacher? I don't
| understand that because when I went to SJSU, I was almost
| always in a class with 60+. For CS, it was around 30 people in
| the room.
| sega_sai wrote:
| Did you consider what happens to the ratio when students take
| more than one class ?
| dmd wrote:
| When I was in college (25 years ago) classes were either 5-15
| people or 400+; nothing in between.
| grapesodaaaaa wrote:
| This is also the fallacy of looking at one metric.
|
| Do staff include productive researchers producing net positive
| incoming?
|
| Other comments mention the medical school. Are these staff
| providing patient care (and billing insurance)?
|
| University staff aren't necessarily just your traditional
| educators. A whole lot of productive stuff (both for the
| university and everyone else) can potentially benefit from
| "staff."
| metaphor wrote:
| > _281% increase in total staff_
|
| Nit: 181% increase
|
| I do wonder what percentage of said "staff" are really just
| students working to fulfill student responsibility[1] for
| pennies on the dollar.
|
| [1]
| https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/how/student.html
| evil-olive wrote:
| from the article you linked:
|
| > Stanford also has unique characteristics that create high
| staff headcount, former Provost Persis Drell told the Faculty
| Senate during a May 2023 meeting: Unlike other institutions,
| Stanford requires more staff to maintain Stanford Research
| Park, a large housing portfolio and other facilities.
|
| from one of the sources [0] that paragraph linked to:
|
| > It's also important to understand how Stanford defines terms
| used in headcount growth since those definitions vary widely
| among research universities, Drell noted. For example,
| clinician educators, which have grown significantly in number,
| are categorized as "staff" at Stanford, while at other
| universities they are often counted as "faculty." In addition,
| and in contrast to many other institutions, Stanford has chosen
| to focus more on hiring staff in many areas rather than using
| outside contractors whose employees would not count as Stanford
| staff.
|
| and from [1] also linked in the above paragraph:
|
| > We recognize that stable, affordable housing is critical for
| student success. Stanford guarantees housing for undergraduates
| for all four years and provides housing for over 70% of
| graduate students. We also provide as much as three times more
| student housing than large universities across California in
| similarly constrained housing markets.
|
| given the context, it seems perfectly reasonable that Stanford
| would have more "staff" employees than the University of
| Southwestern North Dakota, even normalized for different
| numbers of student enrollment.
|
| 0: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2023/05/provost-
| provides-d...
|
| 1: https://housinginfo.stanford.edu/by-the-numbers
| mi_lk wrote:
| Same at Stanford https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/02/staff-
| hiring
| AznHisoka wrote:
| As well as MIT https://hr.mit.edu/jobs
| ineedaj0b wrote:
| How are the ivy leagues NOT financially independent? People
| claw/cheat/do whatever it takes to get in. Ivy's employ some of
| the best raw IQ people we have. Endowment funds over years should
| blossom.
|
| Could they be so smart to 'redline', to maximally extract as much
| funds from the Gov as possible while also pumping up their
| investments? Or might they not have managed funds well enough and
| truly cannot afford things?
|
| if scenario 1) refactor expenses, pass an audit, and make a plan
| to build up funds. return to 75% prior budget levels
|
| if scenario 2) refactor expenses, pass an audit, and make a plan
| to build up funds. return to 25% prior budget levels
|
| *in both cases we need to remove regulations on schools so they
| can fire all the admin (they claim to need to keep up legally
| inane wild things) and pay the professors/researchers more.
|
| Colleges and Universities are already on a downward trend; the
| perfect storm of declining enrollment/population numbers and AI
| potentially wiping out what they offer. Colleges and University
| were meant to be a special protected Eunuch class studying 'the
| dark arts', but they've publicly become known havens of scheming
| Eunuchs trying to overthrow the emperor. Too close to the sun
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| you got the academic and economics right. but ignored the
| politics. academic politics is very exclusive... and the circle
| in it owns lots of capital. so when capital goes on strike,
| they fall in line.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I imagine they are, but they will still have some mindset of a
| business and cut spending in lieu of economic headwinds. Like
| pretty much every industry in the last few years.
|
| I think the ivies will be fine. It's 99% of other universities
| without 10b in endowments I'm worried about.
| freehorse wrote:
| I assume they, like most orgs, make a planning based on some
| available budget. If the budget gets higher, they will expand.
| If it gets lower, they will reduce their expenses/spread. I
| also assume that the reduction of overhead in particular is
| gonna hurt such institutions _a lot_ because they have exactly
| planned based on that.
|
| I cannot speak about Cornell specifically, I do not know if
| they have a bloated administration or superfluous expenses. But
| the truth is that admin stuff are necessary for supporting
| education and research. Having been in universities during
| admin reforms reducing admin stuff (claiming that they make
| "smart restructuring") it always negatively affects work done
| in the university in one way or another. Usually, it means that
| research staff will have to pick up some of the admin work
| themselves, or be offered less support doing it. As research
| staff are usually paid more than admin stuff, that is not
| necessarily effective (unless it is assumed that research stuff
| will be working overtime anyway). In any case, it does not seem
| like an efficient move most of the times, even if it seems so
| to the bureaucrats who make these plans.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Not going to lie, I felt the 2025 market would get worse but
| never thought to have "(potential) mass government layoff" on my
| bingo card.
|
| What are unemployed people even finding these days? Is everyone
| just giving in to the gig economy? Sadly my car is definitely on
| its last legs (probably saved by the pandemic) so I don't know
| how long it'd last if I did Doordash/Uber
|
| ------
|
| On topic, it's a shame even an Ivy League is feeling a result of
| this economy and administration. What does that say about any
| other public school? Is post-secondary education going to
| collapse?
| tdeck wrote:
| > I felt the 2025 market would get worse but never thought to
| have "(potential) mass government layoff" on my bingo card.
|
| I'm curious if this is because you never heard about what was
| in Project 2025, or didn't think Trump would win, or didn't
| think he would enact it?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I learned from 2016 and didn't discount the idea of Trump
| winning again. I just didn't think he'd enact it. He'd be
| blocked by properly smart people who realize across the board
| that "this will impact my money".
|
| And to be fair some smart people (in the courts) are blocking
| it. I just didn't think so many illegal actions in the course
| of a month would escalate this far without. It makes Nixon
| look like the Dali Lhama.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It's all about the choices. Post secondary schools had easy
| money (student loans, grants, expanding endowments) and rapidly
| expanding enrollment for decades. It seems many schools thought
| that would continue, but we saw enrollment plateau and even
| decrease. Ivy schools have options - lower prestige to increase
| enrollment, or lean on prestige and endowments to raise prices.
| Other schools will likely cut staff/services and increase class
| sizes. I went to a state school and their enrollment has
| dropped 25% since I was there. It seems tuition went up, state
| funding per student is higher (not sure if total is the same or
| higher), some upgrades were put off, and some services seem to
| have been scaled back.
| tinier_subsets wrote:
| > Ivy schools have options - lower prestige to increase
| enrollment, or lean on prestige and endowments to raise
| prices.
|
| Ivies aren't dependent on tuition at all. All have need-blind
| admissions and most offer full rides to anyone accepted who
| couldn't pay otherwise. Penn just updated its income
| thresholds to provide guaranteed full tuition scholarships to
| families earning less than 200k a year and budgeted over
| $300m/year to cover it. These aren't the box-top Us you're
| looking for.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Based on history, ivy schools have substantially increased
| enrollment to bolster endowment, so it seems that's the
| track they're taking.
| abhayhegde wrote:
| Other institutions are also following the lead: MIT [0], Stanford
| [1], North Carolina State [2], UCSD [3], and perhaps there will
| be many others.
|
| [0]: https://hr.mit.edu/jobs
|
| [1]: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/02/staff-hiring
|
| [2]: https://www.wral.com/news/education/nc-state-hiring-
| freeze-f...
|
| [3]: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/02/20/uc-san-
| diego...
| znpy wrote:
| > To ensure that we continue to thrive in an even more complex
| future, we must commit, across every part of our institution, to
| a sustainable budget today.
|
| Are they implicitly admitting they have been living on an
| unsustainable budget so far?
|
| Seeing other comments bringing up the numbers of staff vs
| students+faculty would suggest that's the case...
| sega_sai wrote:
| They had a sustainable budget, but the government decided to
| cut already agreed budgets.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| From the article
|
| > Together with all of American higher education, Cornell is
| entering a time of significant financial uncertainty
|
| From Wikipedia
|
| >As of 2024, Cornell University has an endowment of $10.7 billion
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Check the top discussion for some perspective on what that
| really means. This barely covers two years of operation, funds
| have a lot of use restrictions by donors, and you can only
| spend cash once.
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