Staffing Crisis in Higher Education

Alongside increasing budget pressure, colleges and universities are navigating another issue: a people shortage.

That shortage is creating a difficult contradiction. Institutions are expected to deliver strong student services, maintain academic offerings, and keep campus operations running smoothly, but the people needed to do that work are harder to find and harder to keep than they were just a few years ago.

According to a Chronicle of Higher Education survey of 720, 84% of college administrators say hiring for administrative and staff positions has become more difficult over the previous year. For HR leaders, that number reflects the growing pressure many campuses are already dealing with every day. What used to be a short-term disruption is now an ongoing, daily workforce problem.

The Double Bind: More Work, Fewer People

Many institutions are caught in a familiar cycle. Staffing gaps force existing employees to absorb more work. That heavier workload increases stress, fatigue, and disengagement. Over time, that can fuel turnover, which makes hiring even harder and leaves remaining teams stretched further.

Recent CUPA-HR research shows that retention pressures remain significant across higher education. In its 2025 Higher Education Employee Retention Survey, CUPA-HR said one in four collegiate employees indicated they were likely or very likely to look for new job opportunities within the next year, and noted that earlier post-pandemic findings showed one in three staff members likely to seek other employment. The same report highlights persistent overwork and gaps between employee needs and institutional practices.

That helps explain why “doing more with less” no longer feels like a short-term response to disruption. On many campuses, it has become the default operating model. That may keep work moving in the near term, but it also creates long-term risk for service quality, employee morale, and institutional continuity.

Hiring Is Slower & More Difficult

It is tempting to frame today’s hiring issues as a pipeline problem, as though institutions simply need to post earlier, recruit harder, or wait for the market to normalize. But the data points to something deeper: the labor market has changed, and many traditional higher ed hiring assumptions have not changed with it.

According to The Chronicle’s survey, 78% of respondents said administrative and staff jobs were attracting fewer applicants, 82% said qualified candidates were harder to find, and 84% said positions were staying open longer than they did before COVID-19. Those figures suggest that competition, not just speed, is the real issue. Higher education is now competing directly with employers that can often offer higher pay, greater remote flexibility, and faster hiring cycles.

The Chronicle report also found that 84% of respondents believed applicants had increased their salary demands, reinforcing the sense that candidate expectations have shifted. Hiring is not “broken” so much as it is no longer working the way it used to.

Adjunct and Administrative Roles Are Among the Most Strained

Not every campus role is affected in the same way. But administrative, support, and flexible instructional roles are clearly under pressure.

The Chronicle survey found that 84% of respondents said administrative and staff hiring had become more difficult. It also found that nonprofessional support roles were especially difficult to fill, with building services and dining services reported most frequently (71% and 70%, respectively).

Adjunct roles add another layer to the picture. CUPA-HR reported in 2026 that adjunct faculty account for approximately 40% of the higher education faculty workforce. At the same time, adjuncts often face low pay, limited job security, and few benefits. That combination matters because institutions frequently rely on adjunct labor for flexibility, especially when enrollment needs shift or course coverage changes quickly.

But the conditions that make adjunct staffing flexible for institutions can also make those roles less attractive and less stable for workers. In other words, some of the roles colleges depend on most for day-to-day continuity and adaptability are also some of the hardest to fill consistently.

Why Fewer People Want These Jobs

In The Chronicle’s survey, 77% of administrators said the appeal of working in higher education was lower than it had been a year earlier.

That decline in job appeal likely reflects several overlapping realities: compensation that often lags behind private-sector alternatives, heavier workloads, slow-moving hiring processes, and changing expectations around flexibility and work-life balance. CUPA-HR’s 2025 retention survey similarly emphasizes that employees continue to care deeply about flexibility, supervisor support, feeling valued, and overall job satisfaction, not just pay alone.

For institutions, that creates an uncomfortable truth. Mission still matters, but mission alone is not enough to offset a demanding role, limited flexibility, or compensation that feels uncompetitive.

How Institutions Are Trying to Adapt, and Why It Still May Not Be Enough

To their credit, many colleges are responding, but most responses are slow relative to the scale of the problem.

The Chronicle found that 51% of institutions relied more on interim hires during the previous year. It also reported that 60% had changed their hiring approaches, whether by altering how they attract workers, increasing hybrid-work options, raising starting salaries, or taking other steps. 64% said their workforce was now operating in a hybrid model.

Those shifts matter. They show institutions are not standing still. But they also suggest that many campuses are still adjusting tactics within an older staffing model rather than fully rethinking how work gets resourced, supported, and sustained. CUPA-HR’s retention research points in the same direction: progress exists, but workforce pressures remain persistent, especially where overwork, support, and workplace experience are concerned.

What This Means for HR and Institutional Leaders

The core takeaway is that hiring difficulty in higher education is not a short-term inconvenience. It is persistent, systemic, and tied directly to institutional capacity.

That means this is no longer just a recruiting issue. It is a workload issue, a retention issue, and ultimately an operating-model issue. When roles stay open longer, applicant pools shrink, and existing employees absorb more work, the institution does not just face hiring friction. It faces strain across services, compliance, student support, and everyday execution.

That is why more institutions are leaning on interim support, exploring outside help (such as staffing partners), and rethinking how critical work gets done.

References

1. The Chronicle of Higher Education and Huron, The Staffing Crisis in Higher Ed: College Administrators’ Views on Campus Employment (2022).
2. CUPA-HR, The CUPA-HR 2025 Higher Education Employee Retention Survey (September 2025).
3. CUPA-HR, Adjunct Faculty in the Higher Education Workforce (February 2026).