ECU to cut $25 million over next 3 years as enrollment and budget challenges loom
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- ECU plans $25 million in cuts by 2028 to address enrollment and fiscal shifts
- Cuts may impact staffing and programs but include reinvestment in high-demand fields
- University responds to slow enrollment rebound and prepares for demographic decline
East Carolina University will implement $25 million in budget cuts over the next three years, accounting for roughly 2% of the university’s total budget, Chancellor Philip Rogers announced Thursday.
The cuts will include at least $5 million this academic year, with $4.2 million of that total in “cost savings” already identified by campus leaders, per a message Rogers planned to send to campus after making initial remarks on the topic at a university ceremony earlier Thursday.
The initiative could result in cuts to jobs and academic programs at the university, Rogers and Provost Chris Buddo confirmed to The News and Observer in an interview Wednesday.
ECU’s enrollment has lagged below pre-pandemic levels, and Rogers cited current and impending enrollment trends at ECU and nationally as a key reason for the cuts. He pointed to the looming demographic or enrollment cliff that will see the number of 18-year-old high school graduates drop off in the coming years due to declining birth rates and pose significant challenges for higher education.
“Budget challenges” at the state and federal levels are also factors, Rogers wrote to campus. But Stephanie Coleman, ECU’s vice chancellor for administration and finance, said ECU is not facing a budget “shortfall” or deficit, and leaders are instead implementing the cuts as a proactive measure given the headwinds the university expects to face in the coming years.
The cuts will build on some work already being done: For roughly a year, the university has sought to address and explore some challenges through “fiscal health” workgroups.
“We believe ECU sits in a very strong position today, but our goal is to ensure we’re well-prepared to navigate many of the emerging issues that are outside of our control, and to reposition resources within the institution to solidify a sustainable future for ECU now and for years to come,” Rogers told The News and Observer.
The university will also shift some of the “savings” achieved from the cuts into targeted areas, such as academic programs aligned with high demand from students and the state’s workforce needs, like nursing.
“We’re doing this now because it provides an opportunity for us to reallocate critical resources and to adapt for our own future,” Rogers said.
Enrollment trends, funding headwinds force cuts
Thursday’s announcement comes after ECU’s enrollment has seen a noticeable decrease in recent years, which has significant implications for the amount of funding North Carolina’s public universities receive from the state.
Since 2020, ECU’s enrollment has dropped nearly 6.5%, according to the most recent data available from the UNC System. Last year, the student population rebounded just slightly for the first time since the pandemic, with an increase in enrollment of 155 students, or just over half a percent, from the previous year.
While the UNC System’s funding model for universities is no longer as firmly tied to campuses’ enrollment growth as was previously the case before the Board of Governors changed the policy three years ago, the calculus still relies heavily on in-state students’ credit hours, with increased state funding tied to the growth of that factor.
The General Assembly has helped ECU stave off some financial impacts of its enrollment losses, appropriating nearly $1.4 million to the school last year to mitigate the potential losses it faced due to its decreased student population. The legislature also gave varying amounts of funds to UNC Greensboro, UNC Asheville, Winston-Salem State University and UNC Pembroke for the same purpose.
Buddo said he expects ECU’s enrollment to be up again this fall, though an official count was not yet available Wednesday.
But even with the expected growth this year, there’s reason to believe that the trend may not continue — or at the very least, that it will be difficult for the university and others around the country to continue on that path — because of the upcoming enrollment cliff.
Though North Carolina remains one of the country’s fastest-growing states, the population — here and across the country — is aging. The state’s birth rate is also declining, falling from 14.4 births to 11.4 births per 1,000 residents since 2007, according to data from 2023.
Those trends pose a significant dilemma for universities, which have historically relied largely on college-going high school graduates to fill the seats in their classrooms. And Buddo noted that ECU could be particularly impacted, given its location in Eastern North Carolina, a largely rural area.
The impending enrollment challenges are also likely to be compounded by a projected drop in state revenue in the coming years, with Democratic Gov. Josh Stein warning in February that North Carolina is “approaching a fiscal cliff.”
“Preparing for the future demographic reality facing higher education is going to require us to get organized now to prepare for potential budget reductions in the coming years and decades,” Rogers said.
Academic programs, jobs could be cut
As one tactic to address the challenges, Rogers said the university will seek to “diversify” its enrollment, including by honing in on online education. That will take shape through ECU’s programs offered through Project Kitty Hawk, an independent, nonprofit entity affiliated with the UNC System that helps universities within the system offer online classes geared toward nontraditional adult students.
The university will have roughly 600 students in four PKH-powered programs this fall, which Buddo named as one factor in the expected growth in the university’s enrollment.
But where some programs are growing and experiencing high demand from students, others at the university aren’t.
This spring, the university underwent an “academic portfolio review,” an exercise that examined the “productivity” and enrollment of academic majors, minors and other programs across the university.
Next week, Buddo said, leaders will announce the initial results of that review, which will result in some programs being “curtailed.”
“The programs that we will be reducing have significantly low numbers,” Buddo said.
Similar reviews have unfolded at other UNC System schools in recent years — notably at UNC Greensboro and UNC Asheville, where significant budget deficits, spurred by yearslong declines in enrollment, resulted in both universities cutting a number of academic programs to address the issues.
Rogers noted that it will take time to “realize savings and financial opportunity from program closures,” given that the process to fully close out a program can take years as students already enrolled finish their studies — making other cuts perhaps more urgent.
“This really is a part of the long-term strategy, so that we make those decisions now, and then over the course of the next two to three years, as those programs wind down, as the students graduate, as we make the adjustments we need to make, we would begin to realize the savings associated with those changes,” Rogers said.
The university will also implement “organizational restructuring” across campus, with some changes already underway in the information technology and human resources divisions.
Rogers said it’s likely some jobs may be eliminated as part of the effort, though he and other leaders hope to have a “minimal impact” on employees and “exhaust all options possible before separating with employees.” Some downsizing is likely to be accomplished through retirements, Buddo said.
“I don’t think it’s possible to navigate a change of this magnitude without a smaller employee footprint, and to ensure that our employee population matches the footprint of our student population,” Rogers said.
Rogers and Buddo committed to involving faculty, staff and other stakeholders as they make such decisions.
Reinvesting in high-demand programs
Amid the cuts, leaders plan to reinvest “existing resources” into what they see as promising programs based on demand and the role they can play in serving the state.
One such program, as identified by Rogers, is nursing. Rogers said the programs offered through ECU’s College of Nursing “have highly qualified students waiting at the door” who want to study the field, making it a prime candidate for growth.
The program can also help fill a key workforce need in North Carolina.
A 2021 study published by the Sheps Center for Health Services Research at UNC-Chapel Hill projected that North Carolina could face a shortage of roughly 12,500 registered nurses by 2033. Other reports, including one published by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, have shown nationwide increases in the number of nurses leaving, or planning to leave, the profession since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.
“We need more nurses. We need more Pirate nurses,” Rogers said, referencing the university’s mascot. “And that’s an example of the type of program that will receive resources through a reallocation as we do this work.”
The university also sees promise in its research, which is growing and helped ECU earn the prestigious “Research 1,” or R1, designation in the Carnegie Classification system earlier this year. To earn R1 status, universities must spend at least $50 million on research and award at least 70 research-based doctorates each year.
Rogers said the total value of proposed grants for research projects submitted across the university over the past year was the highest in ECU’s history, with an average, per-project value of more than $500,000.
Despite significant cuts to federal research funding under President Donald Trump, Buddo said ECU officials “feel like we’re in a pretty good research space.” While the cuts and the larger federal funding landscape are “part of the calculation” for the university implementing budget cuts, it was not a driving force behind the decision, he added.
That’s a marked difference from Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill, fellow R1 universities in the state that are implementing budget and staffing cuts due in large part to the loss of research funding and other financial pressures this year.
As the university embarks on its new initiative, Rogers said officials will reassess the efforts at the two-year mark and “adjust up or down as needed.”
“We’re remaining in a place of adaptability,” Rogers said, “because we know the context and the environment around us can also change over the course of the next two to three years.”
This story was originally published September 4, 2025 at 11:15 AM.
