Universities slow hiring, faculty navigate rocky future amid Trump attacks on higher education

The Trump administration’s attacks on universities have led to a slowdown in hiring, with international academics particularly caught in the crossfire. 

Colleges are being forced to navigate both threats to federal funding and immigration roadblocks, a landscape that many find increasingly untenable to navigate.  

The U.S. has a reputation for research that some say will survive the Trump onslaught, but the real harm could be deterring future candidates from pursuing certain fields. 

The pause in hiring began last year after the administration started pulling millions of dollars from elite universities, often citing allegations of antisemitism. 

The loss of money led to hiring freezes at top universities such as Harvard and thousands to be laid off at Johns Hopkins University.  

While some schools have reached deals with the administration to restore funding and others won it back in the courts, restoration has not translated to a resurgence in hiring. 

“It’s become much more complicated in the sense that we’re spending a lot more time than we used to try to make the case for new positions, to justify how a new position is going to lead to enrollment growth … I have heard a lot more kind of consternation from counterparts around just the struggle to make the case for new positions. And, in some instances, just not being able to hire new faculty,” said Kevin McClure, chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.

While funding concerns plague hiring issues on the administrators’ end, academics are also struggling with decisions over whether to even stay in their fields amid the turmoil.  

Free speech concerns have hit U.S. and international academics as some states crack down on how professors can teach about certain topics such as race and gender, efforts largely supported by the White House

Even before the second Trump administration, the American Association of University Professors found in 2023 one in three academics were looking to leave Texas,........

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