Lance Fortnow is a well-known computer scientist. He just lost his tenured position at Illinois Tech in a wave of cuts driven by a financial crunch. I have his book on P vs NP on my shelf. Here is how he described it: « Illinois Tech got hit hard by a large drop in foreign graduate enrollment due to changing visa requirements, general anti-US sentiment, more opportunities in other countries and a weaker job market for graduating Masters students partly due to artificial intelligence. Universities face challenges beyond international students including Baumol's disease, administrative bloat to meet expanding regulations, the demographic cliff, reduced grant funding, and less support of universities by the public and both political parties, and AI changing how and why we teach. Illinois Tech is one of the first tech research schools to eliminate tenured roles, but it won't be the last. » His school lost about 1,200 international graduate students (Chicago Sun-Times). Roughly 60% of its graduate students came from abroad. A similar contraction is underway in Canada. It has become harder for international graduate students to enter, and several universities have already cut positions. Two further points matter. 1. New administrative roles appear constantly. Fortnow attributes this to expanding regulations. That is only part of the story. Universities themselves chose to expand the administrative apparatus while holding faculty and student numbers relatively flat. Not every new administrative position was forced by external rules. 2. Collapsing birth rates mean fewer young people to educate. This is mathematical and not reversing anytime soon. Importing students from elsewhere only shifts the shortage to their home countries. The fertility decline is nearly global. Will we see more cuts like Fortnow’s? Universities in the US and Canada should not expect long-term growth under current conditions. On average they will shrink. The administrative overhead accumulated over the past decades makes the adjustment painful. Institutions face a choice: cut red tape and administrative staff, or cut people like Fortnow. Thus far, it has been a slow-moving, almost impossible to notice process. Increasing the number of foreign students has effectively hidden the domestic issue (slightly fewer students on average each year, and university attendance not rising). But this is unlikely to prove a lasting solution everywhere.