N.J. university cuts 31 jobs after financial aid chaos causes money problems

Rider University cut 31 jobs because of nationwide problems in processing federal student financial aid forms and other financial problems, campus officials announced.

The staff cuts announced last week will save the private university in Lawrenceville in Mercer County more than $2 million, school officials said.

Rider is the latest university to blame financial problems and enrollment dips on delays tied to the U.S. Department of Education’s attempts to improve its Free Application for Federal Student Aid — or FAFSA — forms that all students must fill out to receive financial aid.

Changes to the FAFSA led to delays in releasing and processing the forms, creating havoc in the college admissions process this year. For some schools, the confusion over financial aid led to lower enrollment rates for the fall semester.

Centenary University, a private university in Hackettstown, froze its tuition last month to help address the situation because some students were unsure how much federal and state aid they could receive due to the delays.

At Rider, no faculty members lost their jobs in the cuts, and more than half the cut positions were already vacant, campus officials said. Three of the 14 employees who lost their positions were offered other jobs at the university, officials said.

“When difficult decisions were being made about which positions to eliminate, every effort was made to consider student and other impacts,” said Rachel Stengel, Rider’s director of communications. “Students will not see an impact in their day-to-day experience.”

Two messages left with the faculty union were not immediately returned.

Officials at Rider, which enrolled about 4,000 students last year, have been open about financial challenges and enrollment problems at the university in recent years.

The school reached a contract deal with its faculty union in 2022, 10 days after professors threatened to walk off the job. The school also slashed tuition by $10,000 a year in 2020 in an effort to draw more students. In 2021, analysts at Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Rider’s bond rating and gave the private university a “negative” outlook as it struggled with it finances during the pandemic.