This is the public version of this data.
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.
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.
Conversely, 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. In contrast, 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.
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“Staff” include any employees of the institution who are not faculty — administrators, professionals, and hourly workers.
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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. 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.
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