On Tuesday, all Kenyon staff and faculty members were invited to an employee open forum hosted by President Julie Kornfeld. The event, originally scheduled to take place in Archon Auditorium during Common Hour, was ultimately held in a completely packed Community Foundation Theater. During the forum, Kornfeld and other members of the administration provided an update on Kenyon’s current financial pressures and the steps the College is taking to address them, including faculty and staff “rightsizing,” which includes eliminating some employee positions. 

The forum, the second of its kind this semester, was held to inform College personnel of ongoing changes to mitigate Kenyon’s current financial constraints. “This is a difficult moment, as you might know, because you read all the headlines every day that there are just a lot of different pressures on all institutions of higher education,” Kornfeld said in her opening remarks. “Institutions that are just like us, and even institutions that are stronger and wealthier than us, are feeling these pressures and are making decisions and responding to the environment that we find ourselves in.” 

Kornfeld emphasized in her opening statement that Kenyon is, and has been, a fiscally responsible institution. “The reason that we’re in this position and able to withstand these financial pressures is because of conservative planning investments in our future [and] rainy day funds from our endowment that allow us to smooth out the bumps.”

Kornfeld also noted that while Kenyon’s pre-COVID strategic plan aimed to increase the student body size to 2,000 students, the College has pivoted away from that goal. According to statistics shown during the forum, between the 2019-20 and 2025-26 academic years, total student enrollment has declined 6.5%, from 1,837 to 1,717. In 2026-27, enrollment is projected to drop by roughly 100 students.

“I think the math is pretty clear: We have less students, and they’re costing us much more,” Kornfeld said. Kenyon’s sizable 2025-26 financial aid budget of $65,054,000 helps the College meet 100% of demonstrated financial need. “People’s financial situations have changed around the country, and they are asking institutions for more financial aid, and we are meeting that need, as we always have,” she said.

The changing student body is one of the reasons adjustments are necessary. “We are in a situation where the resources in every division across the College have to reflect the size of the student body that we are currently serving, not necessarily one that was planned for five years ago, six years ago, right?” Kornfeld noted.

According to Kornfeld, every division, including the Academic Division, will be impacted by changes. “This is an urgent situation,” she said. “There will be changes, and we are looking at every opportunity that we have to save and reduce costs, and that means a lot of different things. It does mean looking at positions. It also means looking at the benefits that we provide here.”

The forum comes on the heels of some significant changes already made, both at the end of the last academic year and at the start of this year. According to Kornfeld, 2025-26 controllable expenses were reduced 10%, in addition to the elimination of 12 staff positions last July. Kornfeld and the administrative cabinet also took a temporary voluntary pay cut of 10%. 

Further budgetary changes are coming to Kenyon’s faculty and staff. During the same time period that student enrollment dropped 6.5%, total staff grew 3% and total faculty grew 8%. This year, Kenyon has 199 faculty members. In 2019-20, the student-to-faculty ratio was 10-to-1 and 8.6-to-1 in 2025-26. The projected 8-to-1 student-to-faculty ratio for 2026-27 is, according to Kornfeld, “not sustainable from a cost perspective,” therefore necessitating cuts. 

“I want to be clear that we will have to make some reductions. I don’t know at this time how many,” Kornfeld stated. For faculty, which encompasses Kenyon’s professors, the College is offering a limited-time opportunity for those eligible to voluntarily retire early in order to “begin to rightsize the faculty to reflect the student body and the population we’re currently serving.” The deadline to accept early retirement is Jan. 7, 2026. 

The College is not currently offering early retirement for its staff. According to the presentation, Kenyon will have to lay off an unknown number of College staff and administrators, with severance packages issued to those affected. Increased collaboration between divisions and consolidation of staff positions were also floated as future changes on the horizon. “We will have to make some targeted reductions across divisions, with the goal of minimizing not just the operational impact, but the human impact,” Kornfeld stated. Notifications of “involuntary staff separations” will be announced in mid-February.

“These difficult decisions that we have to make are in no way a reflection of how much we value what each of you bring to this campus,” Kornfeld emphasized, addressing attendees during the Q&A session after the presentation. 

Director of Campus Safety Michael Sweazey attended the forum. In an email to the Collegian, Sweazey expressed his gratitude for Kornfeld’s leadership, despite the current anxieties the community is experiencing. “The administration has hard choices to make, and I believe they are trying to plot the most effective path with the least disruption to services, lives and careers. If the administration didn’t care so much about the students, faculty and staff, many of these financial decisions would be much easier to make,” he said.

Kornfeld’s presentation ended with a look to the future and an eye toward necessary revenue generation. “We have to think about where critical investments need to be made to make sure that we continue to be an attractive place for people to work, for people to learn, and we want to continue to be the best liberal arts college that we can be,” she said. “It’s a difficult balancing act.” Kornfeld noted the success of the Our Path Forward fundraising campaign, as well as the current fundraising effort to raise $100 million for Kenyon’s endowment in two years, which is already more than halfway complete. According to Kornfeld, these recent successes are signs of faith in Kenyon’s ongoing mission. “It speaks to the confidence that our alumni have and our board members have in the future of Kenyon College.”

Although Kornfeld reiterated the difficulty of these decisions, she ultimately urged calm. “We are not in a crisis shutdown mode,” she said. “We are in a mode where we have to be responsible, plan for our future and invest in our future, so that we continue to attract the best staff, the best faculty and the best students here for the foreseeable future and next century as we go forward.”