The donor club is breaking records. The athletic department just signed a new media deal. And the university is laying off faculty and shutting down academic programs.
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All three things are true. All three are happening at the same school. And it's increasingly hard to connect the dots.

I've spent the past year working with athletic directors, university CFOs, donor club executives, and institutional fund raising leaders and the same pattern keeps showing up. Each group is showcasing its own scoreboard, and the scoreboards don't seem to sync up with each other.

The donor club looks like it's crushing it, and it is 

Kansas landed a $300 million gift from David Booth in August 2025, the largest in school history and one of the largest single gifts in the history of college athletics (imagery below). UCLA opened 2026 with a $17.3 million athletics gift. Mark Cuban wrote a check to Indiana for football NIL. If you're an athletics club leader, your dashboard looks strong. Donations are up. Donor count is up. New giving days are setting records.‍

The athletic department looks like it's keeping up

Virginia Tech is asking its board to push the athletic budget to $229 million. Michigan projects a balanced FY26 athletic budget at $266 million. Syracuse just hired three deputy ADs from Notre Dame, Toledo, and elsewhere. New media rights deals, jersey patches, field sponsorships, stadium namings, private capital inflows (Utah's PE deal being the first of many), and then of course you read what's supposedly being spent on football and basketball rosters. On the surface, things are flying. 

The university is quietly bleeding

Look one layer deeper at the broader institutions behind those same athletic departments: 

- Syracuse University eliminated 93 academic programs and put 175 faculty into voluntary retirement (April 2026).

- Clemson University trustees ordered cuts in April after a "misalignment" report showing expenses outpacing revenue across all four of its main revenue streams.

- University of Oregon is working through a $25 to $30M structural deficit in its educational and general fund, on top of layoffs from 2025.

- Portland State announced 52 layoffs and the elimination of two signature programs last week to close a $35M deficit.

Inside Higher Ed reported nearly 1,000 higher-ed jobs eliminated in April 2026 alone. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has modeled that in a worst-case demographic scenario, up to 80 additional colleges could close annually over the 2025 to 2029 period, more than double the current rate.

Why the three layers don't see each other 

When we say the enrollment cliff is here, here's what that actually means in practice:

Where a university plays major college athletics, students pay more. The math is simple. Athletics requires more capital to operate. There are fewer students going to college. So the students who do attend pay more in fees and tuition to help cover the cost of athletics. At Clemson, institutional support to athletics is now around $20M, and the university just instituted a new student athletic fee. Colorado is projecting a $27M athletics deficit for FY26 and needs $41M+ in institutional and student-fee subsidies to cover the gap. Iowa State is forecasting roughly $150M in athletic deficits over the coming years. Same playbook coming.

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Donor dollars are zero-sum. Total donations may be up, but if a donor writes a check to the NIL collective that then compensates a student-athlete via NIL, the university advancement dashboard will show a decline. The same dollar can't sit in two places. The smart money says this dynamic will likely accelerate.

Athletics inflation is accelerating faster than other revenue lines on campus. More specifically, athletics donations are no longer spread across multi-year facilities projects. These are now year-to-year payroll obligations, and the cost of players keeps rising really, really fast. A $20.5M revenue-share cap for this past year. $50M football rosters are now projected this coming season. The trickle down on this will impact departments at every level.
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It's unsustainable

What this really means: there's a growing concern that campus leadership believes the high-net-worth donors who drive the majority of giving may be growing tired. Too much financial responsibility spread across too few. This is likely one of the top reasons that campus leaders are evaluating private capital.

Grow the pie

Each of these examples focuses on a finite number of revenue streams. Each of these revenue pies is being cut into smaller pieces. There is no concerted effort to grow the pie. We first need to get everyone on the same balance sheet. Then build plans to expand the pie.