UNC-Chapel Hill Wants to Restructure Admin Roles, Sparking Layoff Fears

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recently initiated an administrative restructuring plan that has prompted concerns among staff about possible layoffs amid growing financial pressure on colleges around the country.

In a discussion of the university’s budget at the May 21 Board of Trustees meeting, Chief Financial Officer Nate Knuffman presented the “ServiceFirst” plan, which he said aims to implement a “shared services” model across the university. Shared services models generally centralize administrative operations, rather than housing specialized staff within departments or schools. 

UNC-CH’s plan will begin with an examination of administrative units such as finance, human resources, information technology, communications, and research administration, according to Knuffman’s presentation.

“We’re highly decentralized,” Knuffman said. “We want to be able to think Carolina first—not just at the unit level—and ask units to think that way. Then, we can achieve some savings.”

About two weeks later, Knuffman and Scott Savage, the associate vice chancellor for organizational strategy and performance, gave a more detailed presentation at UNC-CH’s Employee Forum, which advocates for university staff. Savage, who was hired in March to the newly created position, said that while UNC-CH is still developing metrics for evaluating its operations, the goal is to be “100 percent optimized.” Knuffman and Savage said the review process would start this summer, and the implementation of any recommendations will begin in fall.

Multiple attendees asked whether the restructuring would lead to job losses. Knuffman and Savage told employees they couldn’t say if the process would include layoffs.

“It’s a tough time for higher ed,” Knuffman said in response to a question about the possibility of layoffs. “We’re not immune from some of those impacts, and we do have some pressure to operate as efficiently as possible—but we are not there yet.”

Rebecca Howell, the incoming president of the Employee Forum and the director of study abroad programs at UNC-CH’s law school, told The Assembly that many staff worry ServiceFirst is a consolidation plan that will lead to job cuts, either through layoffs or leaving vacant positions unfilled. “Staff are definitely scared,” Howell said.

University officials announced the ServiceFirst initiative as part of a broader plan to respond to increasing financial uncertainty at the state and federal level. In March, the trustees directed the university to sequester $50 million to offset potential federal funding losses—equivalent to 4 percent of UNC-CH’s spending. Both the state House and Senate budgets propose multi-million-dollar reductions to programs across the UNC System.

UNC-CH is not alone in looking for savings. North Carolina State University earlier this year announced a hiring freeze. Duke University has begun a round of buyouts, which it says could lead to layoffs as the school tries to cut 10 percent of its budget. And UNC System President Peter Hans recently directed campuses to cap employee headcounts at April levels and said chancellors must approve all new faculty and staff hires, The News & Observer reported.

A UNC-CH spokesperson told The Assembly that ServiceFirst is focused on making administrative work that is common to all departments “more efficient and consistent.”

“While cost-savings is one of the drivers of this initiative, operational effectiveness is the primary goal,” the spokesperson said. “We know this process may cause concern for people around campus, but it is too soon to say which positions will be impacted.”

Phase 1

Knuffman said at the May Board of Trustees meeting that UNC-CH is examining several areas for potential reductions and savings, including reviews of personnel actions and academic programs. He went into more depth on the ServiceFirst initiative, which he said Chancellor Lee Roberts helped inspire.

“The chancellor has really asked us to think about operating more efficiently with our administrative service delivery for the better part of a year,” Knuffman said. 

Finding ways to operate more effectively was one of Roberts’ priorities when he started as chancellor, a university spokesperson said in a statement. “When we started to experience external budget pressures in January 2025, that pushed us to move more quickly,” the spokesperson said.

According to slides presented at the meeting, ServiceFirst aims to “reduce duplicative structures and systems” and “enable cost savings through scale, shared tools and expertise.” Changes to academic and student services may also be considered.

Several committees and taskforces will meet throughout the summer to develop recommendations, with an anticipated implementation of “phase 1” in fall or winter and a “phase 2” implementation in spring 2026. Knuffman did not specify what each phase entailed. The university plans to present a detailed savings forecast at the July 30 board meeting, he said.

Knuffman made clear that the pressure to cut costs is coming from all sides. The university has already eliminated 77 full-time positions in response to grant funding cuts. In addition to pointing to the proposed state budget reductions and federal funding losses, Knuffman said the UNC System office directed all campuses to document their plans for savings and efficiencies by the end of May, which will in turn be used to “support a request to increase resident tuition next year.”

In April, Hans said he would direct campuses to reduce administrative costs. He requested campuses make cuts, for example, where spending for administrative roles exceeded the growth in the number of student credit hours, a measure of enrollment. Hans told The Assembly in April that the system’s goal is to use data on administrative services to “separate what is actual student support and what’s administrative bloat.”

At the UNC-CH Employee Forum meeting on June 6, Knuffman acknowledged that some staff felt “blindsided.” 

“We’ve been very consistent in trying to talk about the direction in which the institution is heading in needing to look at how we operate and how we deliver services,” he said, referencing previous discussions he and Roberts have led with various campus stakeholders.

Knuffman also said there is “no predetermined outcome on how we are going to operate at Carolina.”

“The only thing we have decided is we’ve come up with a name, so we have called it ServiceFirst,” he said. “But this is really an evolution of where we’ve been headed.”