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Maine’s flagship public university plans to lay off an unknown number of faculty and staff to address an expected multimillion dollar budget shortfall next year, University of Maine leaders announced.

To deal with the expected $19 million gap, the university will also eliminate one-fifth of currently vacant positions, consolidate some course sections and decrease instructional budgets. In the long term, cost-cutting measures could include caps on course sizes and closing programs with low enrollment.

The university said it plans to generate new revenue by increasing enrollment, which has been declining for years even though the university system as a whole recently reported an increase.

In a letter Thursday, President Joan Ferrini-Mundy and Provost Gabriel Paquette said UMaine’s operating costs have risen faster than state funding or tuition revenue and that federal changes have impacted research funding and financial aid.

“We recognize that such personnel actions are painful for those directly impacted and for the overall morale of our entire university community,” they wrote.

University of Maine spokesperson Samantha Warren said there are no details available at this point about which positions will be eliminated, or when they will be announced. The university will present its budget proposal for the next fiscal year to the board of trustees in January.

Ferrini-Mundy and Paquette said UMaine has looked at different cost-saving measures for years, but the next budget cycle will be different. Reserve funds have dried up, operating budgets have been dramatically reduced, and the use of one-time funds and savings has been maxed out.

“Our university has done outstanding, difficult work to make reductions and reorganize for efficiency, and we recognize that comes at a cost,” they wrote. “Progress has been made, but we must continue to seek permanent, structural solutions both by increasing revenues and reducing expenditures.”

The academic affairs department, which includes faculty and accounts for about half of the university’s budget, has committed to reducing its base expenses by $10 million.

Decisions related to the other units in the university, “will be announced in the coming weeks.”

The decisions stem from the university’s strategic planning process, which it has been engaging in since 2024, to deal with modern shifts in higher education, declining enrollment and revenue struggles. The university announced in March that cuts would be coming, in addition to a 4% tuition increase, to address an expected shortfall.

UMaine Professor Brian McGill said the announcement is demoralizing to hear.

McGill — who is president of the faculty senate but spoke for himself because he hadn’t yet discussed the announcement with other members — said his colleagues are likely to have questions for university leadership about whether the school truly has reached a last-resort situation that justifies layoffs, and whether these measures will actually provide long-term financial security.

Jacquelyn Gill, a professor of biology and ecology, described the news as gutting, and said none of her colleagues is expendable. She’s hoping for more transparency about how the university reached such a dire financial situation.

Gill also gestured to the university system’s recent signing of a two-year, $1.39 million contract with OpenAI to make the artificial intelligence platform ChatGPT Edu available to students, staff and faculty.

“I see that and I think: How many of my colleagues could we retain for a million and a half a year? Which of those is more important?” she said.