The University System of Maryland Board of Regents passed a resolution last month authorizing universities to furlough employees and temporarily reduce salaries as a means of grappling with significant state budget cuts and federal funding losses.
The resolution allows the system’s 12 university presidents to include furloughs and salary reductions in their individual budget plans for fiscal year 2026.
Any furloughs and temporary salary reductions would still be subject to review by the university system’s chancellor and would be administered in “consultation with appropriate employee organizations,” the resolution read. The temporary salary reductions would end at the conclusion of the fiscal year.
“The board’s action did not authorize any specific activity,” the university system wrote in a statement to The Diamondback. “The presidents will decide how best to manage their budgets.”
University leaders would notify employees before instituting furloughs or salary reductions, as required by policy, the statement read.
[UMD prepares 2026 working budget amid USM funding cuts]
The resolution comes several months after the Maryland General Assembly voted in April to reduce university system funding by $155 million for fiscal year 2026, The Diamondback previously reported.
President Donald Trump’s administration has also rescinded millions of dollars in federal contracts and grants to universities in Maryland and across the country, paused the distribution of new grants and reduced funding for indirect research costs, including facilities and administrative management, according to the resolution.
Each university within the system is responsible for creating its own annual budget plan and may choose to implement a number of cost-saving measures in response to these recent funding losses, the resolution read.
But “some may find it necessary to implement personnel-related actions” such as furloughs and temporary salary reductions, the document added, as employee salaries and other personnel costs make up a majority of the university system’s budget.
The University of Maryland declined to comment on this university’s potential use of employee furloughs and salary reductions.
But university president Darryll Pines wrote in a campus-wide email in April that this university told colleges and departments to reduce spending as administrators work with the system to assess the financial impacts of budget cuts, The Diamondback previously reported.
Daniel Greene, an associate professor of information and the vice president of United Academics of Maryland — this university’s faculty union — said it is difficult to predict how this university will approach cutting costs, but he would not be surprised if furloughs and salary reductions turn out to be included in its plan.
Greene pointed to the university’s furloughing of employees in response to similar budget cuts in the past and the steps the university has already taken to counteract next year’s deficit.
In March, university leadership instituted a partial hiring freeze and tightened some hiring review guidelines, according to an email sent to faculty and staff that month.
[Maryland legislature finalizes budget plan that reduces USM funding by $155 million]
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Maryland Council 3, which represents thousands of workers at Maryland’s public universities, wrote in a statement to The Diamondback that the university system has not yet indicated any efforts to cut the positions and salaries of any of its members.
“As recently as April, we met with [university system] Chancellor Jay Perman and top leadership for a labor-management committee meeting where they also did not mention anything along these lines,” the statement read.
Greene emphasized the negative impact that potential furloughs and temporary salary reductions could have on both university employees and students.
The loss of tenure-track faculty could lead to overcrowded classrooms and an increase in adjunct faculty, whose positions are part-time and based on more unstable contracts, he said.
“Those adjunct folks are less likely to have an office,” he said. “They’re less likely to participate in service, they’re less likely to be around next year and invested in curriculum planning.”
Students employed at this university who are paid hourly, including graduate students and those involved with research, could also be impacted by the board’s resolution, Greene added.
Greene said the university system saying furloughs and salary reductions are options for resolving its financial crisis indicates that it does not value its employees.
“Budgets are moral documents,” he said. “The budget is a statement of values.”
