Universities spend an extraordinary amount of time talking about the future of work.

They teach students how to navigate it. They redesign programs around it. They invite employers onto advisory boards, create career centers, introduce technology into classrooms, build workforce partnerships, debate artificial intelligence, and increasingly measure whether graduates are finding jobs after they leave.

The language is everywhere: adaptability, innovation, skills, leadership, resilience, lifelong learning.

But there is another workforce inside higher education that receives considerably less public attention.

The university's own.

Behind every professor standing in front of a classroom is a sprawling network of people keeping the institution functioning: academic advisers, financial-aid officers, registrars, librarians, information-technology specialists, admissions teams, researchers, instructional designers, custodians, maintenance workers, administrative assistants, career-service professionals, human-resources teams, laboratory staff, department coordinators, student-support employees, and hundreds of other roles.

And something interesting is happening to that workforce.

New data released this month by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) found that between November 2024 and November 2025, full-time staff headcount at participating institutions declined 6.6 percent [1]. Part-time staff headcount fell even more sharply: 23.9 percent [1].

Faculty moved in the opposite direction. Tenure-track faculty headcount increased 7.0 percent, its largest single-year increase since CUPA-HR's current series began in 2016. Non-tenure-track faculty increased 2.1 percent, while adjunct faculty grew 0.9 percent. CUPA-HR based the analysis on institutions reporting headcount in consecutive years, with at least 936 institutions represented in each annual comparison [1].

A single year does not establish a permanent restructuring of American higher education.

But put those numbers beside what higher-education workers themselves have been saying, and a more consequential question begins to emerge.

Can colleges transform what they deliver while simultaneously straining the workforce responsible for delivering it?

Higher Education Is a Workplace, Too

In late 2024, The Chronicle of Higher Education asked more than 4,000 employees what it was actually like to work inside American colleges and universities. The survey included 4,107 respondents: 1,402 administrators, 1,443 faculty members, and 1,262 staff members at U.S. higher-education institutions [2]. Reporters then used those responses to guide interviews with employees across the sector.

One of the resulting stories carried a remarkably direct headline: "Higher Education Is Exhausted" [3].

The underlying findings help explain why.

More than six in 10 academic employees surveyed by The Chronicle said they were working more than they had five years earlier. More than four in 10 said they were working significantly more [3].

Employees described responsibilities accumulating after colleagues retired, resigned, or were laid off and never replaced. Others described new initiatives arriving without corresponding resources. Leadership turnover sometimes produced yet another program, priority, or reorganization that existing employees were expected to execute.

Meanwhile, some faculty reported that students needed more assistance outside the classroom, adding another layer to workloads that already included teaching, research, advising, service, committee work, assessment, accreditation, administration, and institutional governance [3].

None of those responsibilities is inherently unreasonable.

The problem appears when they accumulate.

That changes the nature of burnout.

It stops being merely: "Is this employee tired?"

And becomes: "Does this organization still have enough capacity to perform the work it has assigned itself?"

When Work Disappears From a Job Description but Not From the Institution

Work has an inconvenient characteristic.

Eliminating a position does not necessarily eliminate the work that position performed.

Sometimes the work genuinely disappears because technology, restructuring, or changing institutional priorities make it unnecessary. Sometimes it is automated. Sometimes a service is discontinued.

But sometimes the work simply migrates.

One employee leaves. Someone else answers the emails. Someone else handles the reporting. Someone else advises the students. Someone else processes the paperwork. Someone else attends the committee meeting. Someone else learns the new software. Someone else takes responsibility for the compliance requirement.

And eventually an institution can find itself with fewer people performing an expanding collection of functions.

The newest CUPA-HR numbers make that question particularly relevant.

Full-time staff headcount had actually grown substantially in 2024, rising 6.5 percent. Then in 2025, it reversed direction and declined 6.6 percent. Part-time staff moved even more dramatically: after growing 21.1 percent in 2024, their numbers fell 23.9 percent the following year [1].

That volatility does not tell us why every individual position disappeared. The CUPA-HR data reflect the combined effects of hiring, retirements, resignations, layoffs, vacancies, and other workforce changes.

But the longer-term trend is difficult to ignore.

Separate CUPA-HR research found that between 2017 and 2023-24, the number of full-time non-exempt staff in higher education declined approximately 9 percent, while part-time non-exempt staff declined approximately 8 percent [4].

The institution may become leaner.

The work does not necessarily become lighter.

The People Who Stay Feel It

CUPA-HR's 2025 employee-retention research adds another piece to the puzzle.

More than half of higher-education employees surveyed reported regularly working more than full-time hours. The pressure was especially pronounced among supervisors, who were more likely to absorb additional responsibilities, work weekends, and report rising job expectations [5].

Pay remained the leading reason employees gave for looking elsewhere, but workload, job expectations, limited flexibility, recognition, and connection to the workplace also mattered.

Among employees seeking new jobs, 60 percent were looking outside higher education [5].

That finding deserves a second look.

It does not mean 60 percent of all higher-education employees are planning to leave. It means that among employees already looking for another job, a majority were considering leaving the sector entirely.

Yet the same research contained an important counterpoint: many were still willing to stay in higher education if the right opportunity existed. Seventy percent of job seekers were also considering jobs at other colleges or universities, and nearly half were open to different roles inside their current institutions [5].

That suggests the relationship between higher-education workers and their industry may be more complicated than simple dissatisfaction.

Many may not want to abandon the mission.

They may want the conditions surrounding the mission to change.

A Workplace Can Feel Respectful and Toxic at the Same Time

That contradiction appears elsewhere in The Chronicle's research.

One of its workplace reports was titled: "Higher-Ed Employees Think Their Workplaces Are Respectful — but Toxic."

At first glance, those descriptions appear mutually exclusive.

They are not.

According to reporting around the survey, 81 percent of respondents said they felt respected by colleagues, while roughly one-third characterized their workplace as often dysfunctional or toxic. At the same time, 97 percent said they believed they contributed positively to their institution's mission [6].

That combination may tell us something important about knowledge-intensive, mission-driven workplaces.

An employee can respect colleagues. Love students. Believe deeply in education. Feel pride in the work. Understand the institution's purpose.

And still believe that the organization itself is functioning badly.

In fact, commitment to the mission may be one reason employees continue carrying excessive workloads.

Higher education has a particularly powerful source of meaning available to it: students.

Another Chronicle story from the same workplace project asked what keeps stressed-out faculty members going.

Its answer was right in the headline: their students [7].

Purpose is a tremendous organizational asset.

But purpose can become dangerous when institutions unconsciously begin treating it as a substitute for adequate staffing, manageable workloads, compensation, or effective management.

Workers who care deeply about a mission may stretch themselves extraordinarily far to protect it.

Until they cannot.

Compensation Complicates the Picture

Higher-education compensation tells a similarly complicated story.

Employees have received raises.

But that does not necessarily mean their purchasing power has recovered.

CUPA-HR reported in March 2026 that median pay increases for administrators, professionals, and staff exceeded inflation for the third consecutive year.

Yet when salaries were adjusted for inflation, every major higher-education employee group remained below its 2019-20 level.

Tenure-track faculty had the largest gap: median salaries were 11.7 percent lower in inflation-adjusted terms than in 2019-20. Non-tenure-track teaching faculty were 6.8 percent below their pre-pandemic level. Non-exempt staff were 0.9 percent below [8].

That distinction matters because an employee can receive an annual raise and still feel financially worse off over time.

And financial pressure does not exist in isolation.

The Chronicle's workplace collection itself highlights another uncomfortable dynamic: student-loan debt weighing on higher education's own workers.

There is an almost circular quality to that problem.

The industry responsible for delivering expensive credentials also employs people who may carry debt from obtaining the credentials necessary to enter that industry.

That does not make higher education uniquely exploitative.

It does make the economics worth watching.

Especially as colleges face increasing demands to demonstrate the return on investment of the education they sell.

Turnover Has Improved — But It Hasn't Disappeared

There is good news in the workforce data.

The post-pandemic turnover surge has moderated.

CUPA-HR reports that voluntary turnover jumped after the pandemic and peaked around 2022 for most employee categories before moving downward.

By 2024, overall turnover across faculty and staff was approximately 13.4 percent. That was below the roughly 16-percent peak in 2022. But it remained above the approximately 12-percent pre-pandemic level [9].

The averages also conceal enormous differences among types of employees.

In 2024, turnover was lowest among tenure-track faculty, at 6.3 percent. For part-time non-exempt staff, it was approximately 25 percent [9].

That is another reminder that there is no single "higher-education worker."

A tenured professor, an admissions counselor, an adjunct instructor, an IT specialist, a dean, a maintenance worker, and a financial-aid processor may technically work for the same institution while experiencing entirely different labor markets.

And that matters when institutions restructure.

Some roles may be difficult to replace. Others may experience constant churn. Still others may disappear.

Then Artificial Intelligence Arrives

All of this would be consequential even if higher education were operating in a period of technological calm.

It is not.

Artificial intelligence is arriving at precisely the moment colleges are already being asked to reconsider what students learn, how professors assess learning, what skills graduates need, how administrative work is performed, and which human tasks still require human labor.

The Chronicle's own workplace coverage now includes guidance for campus leaders on how to lead institutions on AI, while its current reporting reflects continued debate over faculty AI use, institutional AI use, grading, assessment, and the future of academic work [10].

AI can potentially reduce workload.

That possibility should not be dismissed.

Administrative tasks can be streamlined. Information can be retrieved faster. Routine communication can be drafted. Data can be analyzed more rapidly. Students may receive new forms of assistance. Faculty may gain tools that reduce repetitive work.

But technological efficiency creates its own organizational question:

What does an institution do with the time it saves?

If automation removes three hours of repetitive work and the institution replaces those three hours with five hours of new responsibilities, technology has not reduced workload.

It has increased organizational throughput.

That distinction will matter enormously.

AI can be used to make people's jobs more manageable.

Or it can be used to ask fewer people to do more.

Those are not the same future.

The Demographic Pressure Is Coming, Too

And higher education's workforce challenge is unfolding against another major structural shift.

The United States has entered the long-discussed decline in the number of traditional college-age students.

The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education projects that the number of U.S. high-school graduates peaked around 2025 and could decline approximately 13 percent by 2041, although the impact will vary dramatically by region. WICHE projects that nine of 17 Southern states will see gains or no change, while institutions in some Northeastern, Midwestern, and Western markets face considerably greater demographic pressure [11].

For colleges that depend heavily on local enrollment, fewer prospective students can mean less tuition revenue, greater competition, pressure to consolidate programs, pressure to find new student markets, pressure to reduce expenses, and, potentially, pressure to reduce staffing.

At the same time, institutions are being asked to invest in new technology, workforce programs, compliance systems, student services, career outcomes, cybersecurity, AI capability, and academic innovation.

In business terms, that is a difficult equation: increase transformation while controlling cost.

Someone ultimately has to absorb that equation.

Now Put Article #1 Beside Article #2

This is where the story becomes larger than workplace satisfaction.

In our first Petrillo Post investigation, we examined several forces pushing American higher education toward greater emphasis on employment outcomes.

Workforce Pell ties certain short-term programs to completion and job-placement requirements. Proposed accreditation changes emphasize outcomes and return on investment. Employers are experimenting with skills-based hiring. Artificial intelligence is accelerating questions about how quickly skills become obsolete. Students and families are increasingly evaluating education economically.

The emerging question was: What can your education demonstrably do?

Now turn that question inward.

Who collects the outcome data? Who advises students? Who redesigns the curriculum? Who establishes employer partnerships? Who implements new technology? Who trains faculty? Who manages accreditation? Who administers financial aid? Who supports students who are struggling? Who maintains the systems? Who answers when something goes wrong?

People do.

That creates an uncomfortable possibility.

The same higher-education system being pushed toward greater accountability, faster adaptation, and measurable results may be asking an increasingly strained workforce to produce those improvements.

That is not merely an employee-relations problem.

It is an execution problem.

Burnout Is Not the Story

This distinction may be the most important one.

Burnout is visible.

Institutional capacity is harder to see.

When an individual employee burns out, the symptoms are personal: fatigue, detachment, stress, reduced motivation, or departure.

When enough employees experience the same thing, the effects become organizational.

Projects take longer. Institutional memory disappears. Errors become easier to make. Students wait longer. Supervisors spend more time hiring and training. Remaining employees inherit additional responsibilities. New initiatives become harder to execute. Innovation becomes another item on an already overloaded list.

And eventually the institution may discover that it does not have a motivation problem.

It has a capacity problem.

The Chronicle's reporting offers an almost perfect illustration. One professor described serving on so many committees that she had to stop and think about how many there were. She estimated that she was spending roughly twice as much time on service as she once had while continuing to teach three courses a semester [3].

Her frustration was not that the work was meaningless.

Quite the opposite.

She wanted enough energy left to give students the experience they had come to college to receive.

That is the contradiction in miniature.

The mission remains.

The capacity to deliver it is being stretched.

Colleges May Be Entering Their Own Future-of-Work Experiment

There is another way to interpret everything happening.

Perhaps universities are becoming laboratories for exactly the transformation they spend so much time studying.

Work is being reorganized. Technology is changing tasks. Some roles are growing. Others are shrinking. Employees want flexibility. Organizations want efficiency. Workers are reconsidering what they are willing to tolerate. Artificial intelligence is altering job design. Economic pressure is forcing institutions to reconsider how resources are allocated.

The old employment bargain is under pressure.

In other words: higher education is experiencing the future of work, too.

That could ultimately produce better institutions.

Universities may redesign jobs. Automate work that employees never needed to be doing manually. Remove unnecessary bureaucracy. Create better career pathways for staff. Invest in managers. Build more flexible work arrangements. Recognize the difference between productivity and perpetual availability. Use AI to increase human capacity rather than merely reduce headcount. And reconsider whether every new initiative needs to become permanent institutional infrastructure.

But that outcome is not automatic.

Organizations can respond to pressure by redesigning themselves.

They can also simply transfer the pressure downward.

The Larger Signal

It is tempting to interpret the strain inside higher education as a collection of separate problems.

Burnout. Turnover. Budget cuts. Pay. AI. Enrollment. Staff reductions. Student needs. Leadership instability.

But viewed together, they may describe something larger.

The operating model of higher education is being tested.

Colleges are being asked to become more responsive to employers. More accountable for outcomes. More technologically sophisticated. More efficient. More flexible. More affordable. More supportive of students. More transparent about return on investment. And faster at adapting to labor-market change.

Those expectations may all be defensible.

But they carry an operational cost.

Someone has to perform the transformation.

That means the future of higher education may depend on more than what colleges teach, which credentials they offer, or how much students earn after graduation.

It may depend on whether the institutions themselves learn one of the central lessons they have spent years teaching everyone else:

Organizations cannot adapt indefinitely without investing in the people doing the adapting.

For decades, universities have asked: How do we prepare students for the future of work?

Perhaps the next question belongs inside the institution.

What Petrillo Post Is Watching

Petrillo Post connects research, policy, markets, and emerging signals to understand what may be coming next.

Sources & Further Reading

[1] CUPA-HR. Changes in workforce size, 2025-26 — Source

[2] The Chronicle of Higher Education. What it's like to work in higher ed — Source

[3] The Chronicle of Higher Education. Higher education is exhausted — Source

[4] CUPA-HR. The non-exempt higher education staff workforce: Trends in composition, size, and pay equity — Source

[5] CUPA-HR. The 2025 higher education employee retention survey — Source

[6] The Chronicle of Higher Education. Higher-ed employees think their workplaces are respectful — but toxic — Source

[7] The Chronicle of Higher Education. What keeps stressed-out faculty members going? Their students — Source

[8] CUPA-HR. Workforce pay increases, 2025-26 — Source

[9] CUPA-HR. Higher ed workforce turnover — Source

[10] The Chronicle of Higher Education. College leaders are divided on the risks and benefits of generative AI — Source

[11] Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. Knocking at the college door: Projections of high school graduates, 11th ed. — Source