Sara Randazzo and Heather Gillers
The university is an acute example of the financial woes plaguing higher education. Even before President Trump’s federal funding cuts, many schools were already stretched by years of competitive spending. Their budget struggles are in many cases more than a decade in the making, and it’s not just far-flung state universities or D-list private colleges suffering.
As schools scramble to make cutbacks, they face broader questions about what kind of university they can be in this new era of financial constraint.
“Our president kept saying we’ll get ‘sharper,’” said Gabe Winant, an associate history professor at UChicago. “How does something get sharper? You file away at it.”
In the years leading up to the pandemic, low interest rates fueled borrowing binges across higher education to build snazzy academic buildings and dorms. UChicago and other schools also pushed into private equity and other alternative assets, hoping for big returns but tying up money in long-term investments even as cash grew tight.