The University of Maine will lay off an unknown number of faculty and staff to close a projected $19 million budget shortfall for next year.
The layoffs are part of a draft budget meant to close the university’s gap between expenses and revenue that will be presented to the University of Maine System in January 2027, according to a Thursday letter from UMaine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy and Provost Gabriel Paquette.
Additional efforts will include combining courses, permanently eliminating vacant positions, and increasing recruitment and retention for out-of-state, transfer and adult degree students, according to the letter.
Declining enrollment, more than a billion dollars in deferred maintenance costs, and changes in federal funding and policy are among the factors causing UMaine’s budget shortfall. The university’s proposal comes at a time when campuses around the country are experiencing staff and faculty retrenchments and program cuts.
The university is projecting $303 million in expenses and $284 million in revenue for the next fiscal year.
Specifics about who would be laid off were not shared. The reductions would follow bargaining agreements, UMaine System spokesperson Samantha Warren said. More than 2,400 people, not counting student workers, are employed at UMaine and UMaine at Machias.
“As the university develops its FY28 budget proposal, President Ferrini-Mundy and her team are taking a thoughtful, data-informed approach that includes both permanently reducing expenses and growing enrollment and revenue,” Warren said. “Faculty retrenchments and staff layoffs will be part of that process, though UMaine and the System will aggressively pursue all opportunities to minimize them and their impacts.”
UMaine’s operating costs have outpaced revenue from tuition and state-appropriated funds, according to the letter.
In a March email, Ferrini-Mundy said $5.6 million would need to be cut from UMaine’s 2027 budget. Part of that cut was proposed as 7% reductions in every university department. The university was able to avoid large lay offs at the time by using one-time funds.
The upcoming budget process will be different because those funds are not available anymore and operating costs have already been reduced, according to the letter. Additional cuts are still needed.
“Progress has been made, but we must continue to seek permanent, structural solutions both by increasing revenues and reducing expenditures,” Ferrini-Mundy and Paquette said in the letter.
The letter outlines how some of the $19 million gap will be closed.
Academic affairs, which accounts for roughly half of the university’s budget, will slash its expenses by $10 million. Roughly one fifth of vacant positions will be cut in the reduction and courses will be consolidated, according to the letter.
Roughly $2.2 million in revenue will be added by increasing student retention by 1% and by boosting the number of first-year class, transfer students, adult degree earners and tuition-paying graduate students by 1% in 2027 compared with this year, according to the letter.
Those strategies combined would still leave a $5.7 million shortfall.
Additional revenue could be found or more than one in five vacant positions could be permanently eliminated to further close the funding gap, according to the letter.
If the plan isn’t adjusted and no alternatives are found, staff layoffs and faculty retrenchment would be required.
The letter also outlines where targeted hiring and hiring full-time faculty, particularly lecturers on 10.5-month contracts, could lead to additional revenue from understaffed and under-resourced departments.
The news of layoffs “will cause concern and anxiety,” but plans will be shared when they become more definite, Ferrini-Mundy and Paquette said in the letter.
“We must all work together to lead UMaine into an era of budgetary stability, sustainability, and ultimately, institutional strength,” they said.