Tim Tai

Yale is implementing an immediate 90-day hiring pause, reducing non-salary expenses by 5 percent, delaying several construction projects and lowering annual salary increases for faculty and staff members.

Faculty and staff received an announcement of those changes on Monday afternoon in a message signed by Provost Scott Strobel, Vice President for Finance Stephen Murphy and Senior Vice President for Operations Jack Callahan. The message was also posted to the Office of the Provost’s website.

The message referred to Congress’s present consideration of a steep increase to the rate at which Yale’s endowment will be taxed, one of the proposals in President Donald Trump’s sweeping “big beautiful bill.” Since the House of Representatives advanced a version of the legislation in May, Yale administrators have warned that the tax hike could imperil the University’s research budget and student financial aid.

“We do not make this decision lightly, recognizing that recruiting and hiring exceptional faculty and staff play a critical role in advancing our mission,” the administrators wrote Monday. “Due to the substantial uncertainties ahead, however, we must focus on supporting our current faculty, students, and staff.”

The decision echoes a March message signed by the same three administrators, which requested that deans and university leaders limit non-salary expenditures and follow measured spending.

The 90-day freeze applies to new, replacement and temporary positions. University spokesperson Karen Peart wrote in a statement that student employment positions are “not generally included in the hiring pause.”

When asked by the News which outgoing construction projects would be impacted,  Peart did not provide any information on which projects would be delayed. Earlier this month, Yale’s top New Haven affairs administrator, speaking at an annual Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce meeting, said that the University planned to pause 10 construction projects in the planning stage.

Faculty hiring tightened, but grant-funded roles are unaffected

During the 90-day freeze, searches for faculty positions must be approved by the university provost and the dean associated with the role, per the Monday email. Ongoing searches for staff positions will continue.

Following the announcement from the Provost’s Office, School of Medicine Dean Nancy Brown sent a message to the medical school community, affirming that grant-funded or clinical positions are exempted from the hiring freeze. 

Brown’s email, which the News obtained, alludes to previous “town hall” meetings where the freeze was discussed.

“During the next 90 days legislative outcomes will begin to clarify the budgetary landscape. As a school we have done considerable contingency planning to prepare,” Brown wrote.

Coraline Mlynarczyk, assistant professor of medicine in hematology at the Yale Cancer Center, praised the grant-based hiring exemption in an interview.

“Peers at other institutions have been unable to hire for a few months and in some cases, felt pressured to downsize their labs,” she told the News. “Yale has been frequently communicating on steps taken preventively, and actively making efforts to maintain our research, education and health care efforts. The exemption of grant-funded research from the hiring freeze is a step in this direction.”

Administrators point to potential endowment tax hike, research funding cuts

Yale began the hiring pause as U.S. senators deliberated on the budget reconciliation bill and voted on amendments to the proposal throughout Monday. The legislation’s current text would establish a three-tiered rate system for institutions’ net-investment income tax, or endowment tax.

In 2017, the first Trump administration imposed a tax on university endowment gains at a flat rate of 1.4 percent across schools. Under the 2025 reconciliation bill, the rate would depend on the ratio between the total endowment value and the full-time student population, or “student adjusted endowment.” 

In the tiered system laid out in the latest version of the Senate bill, institutions where that ratio sits between $500,000 and $750,000 would face a 1.4 percent tax; between $750,000 and $2 million, a 4 percent tax; and above $2 million, an 8 percent tax.

Under the current proposal, Yale — alongside only Harvard, Princeton, MIT and Stanford — would fall into the highest tier and be taxed at the maximum rate of 8 percent. That rate is reduced from a previous version of the bill passed by the House of Representatives, which instead outlined a four-tiered system and included a 21 percent tax on institutions as wealthy as Yale.

In the Monday message, University leaders wrote that either the 21 or 8 percent rates would produce a “significant gap” in the funding that composes Yale’s budget. Administrators have previously warned that an increase in the endowment tax rate could force cuts to research funding and financial aid. 

Peart, the University spokesperson, clarified that the upcoming 5 percent reduction in non-salary spending will not impact student financial aid.

The Monday message also directly cites challenges to federal funding of university research and notes potential increases to costs associated with research for the University.

The Trump administration has directly targeted seven peer institutions’ access to federal funding, including six members of the Ivy League. In the wake of those direct attacks, University of Pennsylvania and Harvard implemented hiring freezes during the spring semester, while Columbia has laid-off nearly 180 staff members paid by terminated federal grants.  

Yale’s access to federal funding has not yet been directly targeted in the same manner.

“Depending on legislative outcomes, we may need to adjust the budget and take additional actions to further reduce spending,” the three administrators wrote in their Monday message. “In the coming weeks and months, as the financial picture becomes clearer, we will review our decisions regularly and make changes as circumstances warrant.”

During the 2024 fiscal year, Yale received approximately $900 million in federal grants and contracts.

Correction, July 1: A previous version of this article mischaracterized the planned merit pool reduction; the same amount of employees will be considered for annual salary increases, but the increases themselves will be reduced. The article also misstated who will approve searches for faculty positions. The university provost will approve these searches, not a department-specific provost.