Update on SLU’s FY26 budget

August 26, 2025

Dear SLU faculty and staff,

I write with an update on the fiscal year 2026 budget that was approved by SLU’s Board of Trustees at its special meeting on August 12.

Context and background

Fiscal year 2026 represents the second year in a three-year effort to re-align the University’s expenses with our revenues and with the areas in which SLU can make a distinctive impact.

Last fall, University leadership shared that we would need to close a budget gap of approximately $20 million each year in FY25, FY26, and FY27. The decreasing population of college-aged students in the U.S. has led to intense competition among higher education institutions; pressures to increase spending for financial aid and other needs continue to intensify; and in 2024, we experienced an unanticipated shortfall in international graduate student enrollment. In this environment, growth in our spending was outpacing growth in our revenues and we needed to take decisive action.

Over the past year, the University successfully reduced operating expenses by more than $20 million to end FY25 with a balanced budget. Those efforts to control costs served us well. At the start of the FY26 budget process, our forecasted FY26 budget gap remained at about the level we had anticipated a year ago, despite another very challenging year for undergraduate recruitment, international graduate enrollment that has been severely impacted by new federal changes in visa approval processes and rates, and unexpected costs associated with federal retrenchment in research funding.

Priorities and the path forward

To build a balanced FY26 budget, we identified expenditure reductions that will protect the core priorities of student success on the one hand, and efforts to build enrollment and improve our financial position on the other. We also worked to sustain progress on developing SLU’s research infrastructure and to align resources with areas of academic distinction and impact. As a result, the FY26 budget includes reductions that are allocated differentially and strategically across administrative units, colleges, and schools.

In addition, we have made the difficult decision to forgo merit increases this year, to limit travel, and to restrict hiring to essential positions. These actions are helping us protect positions as well as exercise caution under highly uncertain conditions. We will continue to reduce our workforce through attrition, and we will accelerate efforts to retool in ways that make our administration more effective and efficient. However, we expect that we will eliminate only a small number of filled positions this year.

While we are not alone among higher education peers in taking these kinds of actions, making decisions about how and where to reduce spending is never easy. Throughout the budget planning process, senior leaders have worked thoughtfully to avoid across the board reductions and to make hard choices that protect our mission and put us in a stronger position going forward. This fall, we will launch development of SLU’s next strategic plan, with the goal of articulating actions that will increase our competitiveness, bolster our financial resilience, and permit new investment in our educational and research mission.

I have been impressed and heartened by the shared commitment and goodwill with which the SLU community has navigated multiple challenges in an environment that has only become more complex. As I said in my message to the SLU community on July 1, I firmly believe SLU’s future is bright, not out of luck, or as of right, but because we will make it so.

I look forward to working alongside you as we build SLU's bright future in the months and years ahead.

Sincerely,

Edward Feser, Ph.D.
President