by Laura Glesby
City dev chief Mike Piscitelli: “Maintaining talent retention here in the city of New Haven — people coming here to work and live — is really important.” Credit: Thomas Breen file photo
Yale University plans to reduce the number of graduate students it enrolls by 13 percent for arts, humanities, and social science programs and by 5 percent for science and engineering programs, in response to a new national endowment tax.
Yale Graduate School Dean Lynn Cooley made that announcement in a Jan. 12 email. She stated that Yale will be reducing PhD student admissions for the next three years.
Cooley cited a “significant increase to the federal tax rate on university endowment income” as the reason for this reduction in PhD enrollment.
She was referencing a new 8 percent tax on the endowments of some universities (including Yale), which Congress passed in early July. The tax will require Yale to pay an estimated $280 million this year, according to a university announcement at the time.
Hearst Connecticut’s Natasha Sokoloff first reported on the enrollment cuts here.
Yale media relations director Tina Posterli elaborated in an email that the number of new enrollments will shrink by about 13 percent for humanities programs and 5 percent for science programs.
For context, in the 2024-25 academic year, Yale conferred PhD degrees to 160 humanities and social science students and to 296 science and engineering students. That year, Yale enrolled a total of 1,210 humanities and social science PhD students and 2,045 science and engineering PhD students.
According to Posterli, the reductions will impact only PhD students, not professional students (such as medical, nursing, and drama students) or master’s-degree students.
The university is reducing enrollment in humanities and social science programs to a greater degree, Posterli wrote, because those programs tend to rely more directly on the university’s endowment for funding, while STEM programs are more often partially funded by federal grants and external foundations.
“The effects of the endowment tax are detrimental to universities and to society at large,” wrote Posterli, “because it means fewer discoveries will emerge, and fewer curious, creative, motivated young people will have access to the education needed to carry out rigorous research that benefits lives across the region, country, and globe.”
Yale’s graduate student union president, Adam Waters, did not respond to a request for comment.
The impact of reduced grad student enrollments may have broader ramifications on the city’s housing market and small business economy.
According to data published on Yale’s website, a total of 967 students across Yale’s graduate and professional schools currently reside in university housing.
City Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli said that the enrollment reduction is “significant.”
The city’s economy “starts with people,” he said. “Maintaining talent retention here in the city of New Haven — people coming here to work and live — is really important.”
He said that the reduced enrollment in STEM fields could have impacts on the city’s bioscience and technology sectors, which he said draw substantially from the entrepreneurial efforts of Yale researchers.
As for the possible impact on retail businesses in the city, Piscitelli said, “It’s way too soon to forecast those impacts but never too soon to start planning.”
“One thing we draw inspiration from here is the ability of our small business community to be very nimble, to innovate, to pivot,” Piscitelli said.