The size of the higher ed workforce changes from year to year as the result of hiring, separations, retirements, and other events. To track those changes, CUPA-HR collects total employee headcount in its higher education workforce surveys. This page, updated annually, features workforce size changes since 2016. To assess changes in size for specific positions, departments, or disciplines, subscribe to DataOnDemand.
Key Findings for Staff
Both full-time and part-time staff headcounts saw sharp decreases in 2025 relative to the previous year, marking a stark shift from the growth observed in 2024. Full-time staff sizes decreased by -6.6%, ending a multi-year period of positive growth that peaked at 6.5% in 2024.
The drop in headcount was even more pronounced among part-time staff, whose headcount decreased by -23.9% in 2025. This steep decline follows an unprecedented expansion in 2024, when part-time staff grew by 21.1%. The sharp reversal underscores the greater volatility of part-time positions relative to full-time roles and indicates that institutions cut staffing levels broadly in 2025 — though part-time positions bore the brunt of the reductions.
Key Findings for Faculty
In contrast to staff, faculty headcounts experienced growth across all categories. Most notably, tenure-track faculty experienced a large surge, growing by 7.0% relative to the previous year — its highest single-year increase since 2016 and a sharp rise from 1.1% in 2024.
Growth slowed for non-tenure-track faculty, easing to 2.1% after reaching 3.6% in 2024. This was the first time in the decade depicted that tenure-track faculty growth exceeded non-tenure-track faculty growth. Finally, the headcounts for adjunct faculty increased modestly in 2025 by 0.9%, maintaining a second consecutive year of slow but stable growth, up from 0.3% in 2024.
Changes in staff and faculty size differ by classification and control, sometimes substantially. Use the dropdown menu in the graphic above to view this data.
Increases in Tenure-Track Faculty Headcount in 2025
CUPA-HR found an overall substantial increase in tenure-track faculty in 2025 that far exceeded the flat growth observed in the past decade. To provide context about the growth in tenure-track faculty headcount, it is important to clarify what the year-over-year percentage change represents and where the 2025 increase is actually concentrated.
The percentage change shown in the graphic above represents the aggregate change in tenure-track faculty headcount across all institutions that provided data. Changes in headcount reflect individual institutions’ varying rates of growth, stability, or decline.
The 7% increase in tenure-track faculty headcount in 2025 was the largest single-year increase in at least a decade. This represents the growth of tenure-track faculty across higher ed. However, only 1 in 10 of the 936 institutions included in the analysis saw large increases in tenure-track faculty. The graphic below shows the breakdown of institutions where tenure-track faculty headcount grew 7% or more. Nearly half of that group are doctoral institutions. However, there were institutions with large tenure-track faculty growth across all classifications.
Consistent with the first graphic, if we look across only doctoral institutions, we see growth over 9% at both public and private institutions. In contrast, tenure-track faculty headcounts declined across associate’s, baccalaureate (public and private), and master’s (public and private) institutions. A decrease in headcount indicates that, in aggregate, headcount cuts outweighed headcount growth within that category — but even here, some institutions in these categories saw growth in tenure-track positions.
Tenure-track faculty growth is concentrated in certain disciplines, and the disciplines that see more growth vary by institution. To benchmark faculty sizes for any faculty discipline using custom peer comparators, use DataOnDemand.
Methodology
Data are based on headcounts reported in the Institutional Basics section of CUPA-HR’s annual surveys with an effective date of November 1 in the fall of each academic year. The academic year is denoted by the first part of the year (e.g., “2025” refers to the 2025-26 academic year). For example, percentage change for 2025 is based on the headcount change between November 1, 2024, and November 1, 2025. “Staff” include any employees of the institution who are not faculty — administrators, professionals, and hourly workers. Tenure-track headcounts are based on full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty.
Only institutions providing institutional basics information in both years of the comparison were included in the analysis. The overall number of institutions analyzed is at least 936 for each year included on the graphic. For-profit institutions were excluded from the analysis due to the small numbers of these institutions reporting.
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