Tuesday, March 5, Provost Peggy Agouris and Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Mike Todd released a statement informing the campus community that the College of William and Mary is sustaining a temporary hiring slowdown through June 1, 2025. All hirings will be paused, with general exemptions including those that are in the final stages and with in-person interviews already completed.
“These decisions are not made lightly, and William & Mary’s values-based mission of teaching, learning, and research serves as our bedrock,” Agouris and Todd wrote. “We know that uncertainty can create extra concern for our community. We commit to providing as much clarity as we can as new details become available, and this information will be added to the university’s federal guidelines resource hub.”
The slowdown in hiring comes amidst an evolving federal funding landscape. In 2024, the College received 71.3 million dollars in grants and contracts, about 10% of all funding. Although some of these grants are not at risk, the reduction of federal grant funding creates financial uncertainty for colleges that receive them.
Agouris and Todd encouraged faculty to reach out with further questions as they arise, recognizing the quickly evolving higher education landscape.
“We understand that slowing hiring and deferring new hires may require adjustments in staffing and may bring up follow-on questions about workload management and more,” Agouris and Todd wrote. “We will be working closely with Cabinet leaders to provide guidance over the coming weeks – so that those who are impacted by this slowdown have appropriate support.”
Professor of history and department chair Tuska Benes offered clarification on the situation and how it will directly affect both professors and students.
“We have folks who are tenure eligible, and then we have folks who are teaching faculty but are continuing as teaching faculty with contracts who come up for renewal periodically,” Benes said. “Those faculty are not affected by this pause.”
However, professors and faculty whose contracts are new or extended, and not renewed, may be at risk under this hiring slowdown.
“Anybody who had to have a new contract, rather than a contract that was being renewed, was subject to evaluation for whether or not that position would be affected by the pause,” she said.
Adjunct faculty teach on a course-by-course contract basis, meaning that their contracts are for a set period. Currently, the university is evaluating multiple adjunct faculty contracts to examine if they are mission-critical.
“So we have not had word about adjunct contracts that had been anticipated but not yet signed,” Benes said. “Those may go through, they may not go through. We don’t know that yet.”
Benes emphasized that this hiring slowdown will not affect any summer courses. Speaking on the status of the history department, she explained that the courses offered in the fall will reflect an increase in the diversity of their course offerings due to recent hires.
“My concern is less for our curriculum, which I think is on solid footing, than it is for the impact on the livelihood of the individuals who had hoped to be teaching those courses and may still be teaching them, but we just don’t know yet,” Benes said.
Benes said that her understanding of this policy is that it is anticipatory and an assessment to ensure that the school can continue mission-critical operations under any financial constraints.
“I appreciate the efforts of the administration to do this,” Benes said. “But I am worried that there are individuals who will feel a heavier impact from any restrictions or limitations in the budget that we experience.”
“That’s where my largest concern is, is with any individual, whether it’s a faculty member, a graduate student, staff member, any individuals on campus who may be affected,” she said.
This new policy in the hiring process may affect visiting professor of history Nathanial Berndt, as his two-year contract was up for extension this semester.
“Just at the time when I was kind of expecting to hear about this, there was this, you know, kind of blanket slow down announced,” Berndt said. “And so, you know, for now, that’s off the table. It’s affecting me at William and Mary, but of course, this is part of a larger phenomenon.”
Colleges across the country have also enacted temporary hiring slowdowns, creating a chilling effect on the national job market.
“I’m on the job market,” Berndt said. “Who knows how many other universities that I’ve applied to, the jobs don’t actually even exist anymore.”
The College has been navigating other policy shake-ups in recent weeks, including the Feb. 28 cancellation of the search for a new operator at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, also known as the Jefferson Lab.
The U.S. Department of Energy oversees the lab, which is one of the College’s long-time partners. The lab has provided research opportunities in physics for faculty and students at the College since 1984. Once reopened, the lab is slated to expand into computer and data science research, housing a new hub valued at $300 to $500 million.
According to Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin D.P.S. ’22, restarting the bidding process to manage Jefferson Lab will ensure greater compliance with Trump administration priorities.
“I spoke with Dept. of Energy Secretary Wright about the future of Jefferson Labs,” Youngkin wrote. “The management contract will be recompeted with a new, clean RFP that’s in line with the Trump Administration’s vision for the future of this important institution.”
In an update to its federal policy guidelines website, the College expressed uncertainty over the future of its research partnership with the Jefferson Lab.
“William & Mary, as a longtime research collaborator with Jefferson Lab, is trying to understand the implications of this cancellation,” the College wrote. “We’re hopeful for a smooth management transition and continuity of operations.”
