TL;DR: The wave of US university budget cuts and layoffs that began in early 2026 has not slowed heading into summer. June and July 2026 brought new cuts at Johns Hopkins, the University of Minnesota, The New School, Southern Oregon University, Ursinus College, and several others, layered on top of earlier retrenchment declarations at Portland State and Brown. Some of these are explicitly and directly tied to federal research-funding disruption — lost NIH and NSF awards, the USAID drawdown, and continued uncertainty over indirect-cost recovery — while others are driven primarily by enrollment declines and state appropriations. Research administrators should not treat the two causes as interchangeable when reading institutional announcements, but should expect both pressures to keep compounding through the rest of the year.
The pattern, by the numbers
Higher-education layoff tracking by trade outlets counted well over 8,500 full-time faculty and staff positions eliminated across US institutions between January and March 2026 alone, with reporting describing more than 1,000 additional layoffs in April. Those aggregate figures come from secondary industry trackers rather than a single federal data series, so treat the precise count as directional rather than exact — but the direction is consistent across every outlet covering the sector this year: cuts that started as isolated, institution-specific retrenchment plans in late 2025 had become a recognizable annual pattern by mid-2026, not a one-off event.
On the federal side, the pressure feeding into that pattern is real and documented. Federal research funding to universities fell an estimated 6% in fiscal year 2025, and the administration’s FY2026 budget proposals sought reductions on the order of billions of dollars at NIH and roughly $5 billion at NSF relative to FY2024 — see CASRAI’s own coverage of the NIH funding cuts landscape and NSF funding cuts and grant terminations for the mechanics and litigation status of each.
Named examples: who’s cutting what
The specifics vary a lot by institution, and the causal mix (federal funding loss vs. enrollment decline vs. state appropriations) is different in each case. The clearest examples from June and July 2026:
- Johns Hopkins University laid off approximately 110 employees in June 2026, affecting the Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Carey Business School, and central administration. This followed a reported multi-year decline in the university’s federal research portfolio of more than $500 million, tied to a roughly 43% drop in federal research funding and a 28% decline in the number of active federal awards compared with the prior year, plus the loss of more than $800 million in USAID funding after that agency’s drawdown. Johns Hopkins is consistently reported as one of the largest recipients of NIH funding among US universities, which is why NIH award terminations and reduced funding levels register so directly on its budget. (Coverage: CBS News Baltimore, The Baltimore Banner, WYPR, the Daily Record, American Bazaar.)
- Brown University cut 48 positions to close part of a roughly $30 million budget gap that the university has attributed in part to lost NSF and Department of Energy grant funding.
- Portland State University entered formal “retrenchment” in March 2026 under President Ann Cudd, targeting a $35 million structural deficit and identifying 19 academic departments for reduction or elimination, including the closure of University Studies, Conflict Resolution, and the Portland Center study-abroad program. PSU’s own framing centers a 23% enrollment decline since 2019 as the primary driver, with federal funding pressure as a compounding rather than sole factor — a useful reminder that not every 2026 retrenchment story is a federal-funding story, even when it’s happening in the same year and gets covered alongside ones that are. (Source: Portland State’s own retrenchment communications, and Oregon Public Broadcasting’s reporting.)
- University of Minnesota eliminated 230 positions through layoffs and attrition as part of a $44 million budget reduction, citing state funding challenges and rising operational costs rather than federal research-funding loss specifically.
- The New School laid off 87 employees (19 faculty, 68 staff) as part of a plan to balance its budget by fiscal year 2028, driven primarily by enrollment decline from a 2021 peak of roughly 10,500 students to about 8,300.
- Southern Oregon University cut 66 positions (23 faculty, 43 staff) and eliminated three academic programs against a $12.5 million deficit; Ursinus College cut 36 staff positions toward a $10 million reduction target; Life University laid off more than 30 employees and suspended its 401(k) match against a $5 million deficit; University of Arizona eliminated 28 positions in finance, administration, and communications, effective August 2026; and Colorado School of Mines cut roughly 16 positions, about 1% of its workforce.
- At the system level, the University of California’s president has told state legislators that federal funding actions could cost the UC system an additional $4–5 billion per year to offset, a figure reported by multiple outlets covering UC budget planning — treat it as UC’s own planning estimate rather than an audited figure. CASRAI has separately covered what “restored” federal funding actually means at UCLA specifically, since restoration announcements and actual disbursement have not always tracked together in 2026.
This is not an exhaustive list of every 2026 higher-education layoff — it is a representative sample of the institutions with the most specific, independently reported figures as of mid-2026, chosen because each has real numbers attached rather than a vague “cuts are coming” statement.
What’s actually driving it — and what isn’t
Three distinct federal-side mechanisms show up repeatedly in these announcements, and it’s worth keeping them separate:
- Grant terminations and non-renewals. A number of NIH and NSF awards have been terminated mid-cycle or not renewed in 2026, independent of any indirect-cost policy change — this is the mechanism behind Johns Hopkins’ reported 28% decline in active award count and Brown’s NSF/DOE losses. See CASRAI’s NSF grant-terminations litigation tracker for the current legal status of NSF terminations specifically.
- Agency drawdowns. The USAID drawdown is a distinct line item from NIH/NSF award activity and hit research-heavy institutions with large global-health or international-development portfolios — Johns Hopkins’ reported $800 million-plus USAID loss is the clearest example in this batch.
- The indirect-cost-rate question. NIH’s attempt to cap indirect (F&A) cost reimbursement at a flat 15% remains enjoined: a federal court issued a permanent nationwide injunction in April 2025, the First Circuit affirmed it in January 2026, and the Justice Department let its appeal deadline lapse in April 2026 without petitioning the Supreme Court. The cap is not currently in effect. That said, institutions that spent much of 2025 planning around the possibility of a reduced F&A rate have not necessarily fully unwound that planning, and the episode is frequently cited in 2026 layoff coverage as part of the broader climate of funding uncertainty even where the cap itself never took effect. See CASRAI’s guide to NIH’s proposed 15% indirect cost cap for the full litigation history, and the Uniform Guidance (2 CFR 200) guide for how indirect cost rates work in the first place.
Set against those three, several of the specific cuts named above — Portland State’s enrollment-driven deficit, the University of Minnesota’s state-funding gap, The New School’s enrollment decline — are not primarily federal-funding stories, even though they’re landing in the same news cycle. Reporting on the “wave” as a single undifferentiated phenomenon risks overstating how much of it is attributable to federal policy specifically. The honest read as of mid-2026 is that federal research-funding disruption is a real, independently documented contributor at research-intensive institutions with large sponsored-research portfolios (Johns Hopkins, Brown, UC), while a separate and larger group of institutions is cutting primarily for enrollment and state-appropriation reasons that predate 2026’s federal funding disputes — the two pressures are compounding at the same moment rather than sharing one cause.
What this means for research administrators
For sponsored-programs and research-administration offices, the practical implications are less about the aggregate headline number and more about portfolio concentration: institutions with a high share of total research expenditure concentrated in NIH and NSF awards, or with sizeable USAID/international-development programs, are the ones showing up in this list with the largest, most specific figures. Offices managing awards at those institutions should expect continued volatility in award renewal timing, F&A rate negotiations, and closeout scheduling through the rest of 2026, even with the 15% indirect-cost cap itself off the table for now. CASRAI’s grants management hub and NIH grants overview collect the underlying mechanics — award structures, indirect cost rate agreements, closeout deadlines — that these budget decisions are being made against.
Frequently asked questions
Is the NIH 15% indirect cost cap actually in effect right now?
No. A federal court permanently enjoined it nationwide in April 2025, the First Circuit affirmed that injunction in January 2026, and the Justice Department did not appeal further before its deadline lapsed in April 2026. Institutions continue to be reimbursed at their individually negotiated F&A rates under existing NICRAs.
Are all the 2026 university layoffs caused by federal funding cuts?
No. Some, like Johns Hopkins’ and Brown’s, are explicitly and substantially tied to lost NIH, NSF, DOE, and USAID funding. Others, like Portland State’s and the University of Minnesota’s, are driven primarily by enrollment declines or state appropriations, with federal funding uncertainty as a secondary or compounding factor rather than the stated primary cause. Institutional announcements generally specify which factors they’re citing, and it’s worth reading past the aggregate “wave” framing to what a given institution actually said.
Which universities have been most affected by federal research funding loss specifically?
Among institutions with detailed public figures as of mid-2026, Johns Hopkins University reports the largest and most directly attributed federal research-funding decline, driven by NIH award terminations/non-renewals and the USAID drawdown. Brown University has also attributed part of its budget gap directly to lost NSF and DOE grant funding. The University of California system has separately estimated several billion dollars a year in costs to offset federal funding actions system-wide.
