The University is lifting its two-year hiring freeze for new staff, announced Vice President for Business Affairs Randy Livingston and Provost John Etchemendy last week in a memo to senior administrators.

The freeze — which did not apply to faculty recruitment — began during the fall of 2002, when departmental budgets were being slashed by up to 12 percent, as a way to prevent layoffs. Its conclusion signals a more positive outlook for the University’s finances.

“The hiring freeze imposed a significant administrative burden on managers trying to hire new employees,” Livingston said. “Now that the budget outlook is stronger, we want to reduce the administrative overhead.”

While the freeze was in effect, all job openings were placed on hold, and schools and administrative units were required to clear job postings with their respective dean, vice provost or vice president. According to Livingston, this policy “forced organizations to be very considerate in deciding to fill open positions.”

Only two areas — the School of Medicine and Residential and Dining Enterprises — were unaffected by the freeze and have collectively added 363 positions, resulting in a University-wide net growth in staff employment of nearly 3 percent. Livingston noted that the freeze was effective in Stanford’s central administration, where staff positions fell by approximately 5.5 percent, or 120 positions.

“We believe the hiring freeze did slow the pace of hiring across campus, especially within the central administrative units, and this made it easier for units to deal with the budget cuts that came soon thereafter,” Livingston said.

Since the freeze’s inception, the University has gone from a $17 million operating deficit for fiscal year 2002 to a projected surplus of $18.5 million for the upcoming year.

Livingston and Etchemendy said in the memo that the impact of the University’s economic difficulties on existing staff had been minimized through the hiring freeze, as well as through a freeze on salaries. But they also cautioned administrators to remain prudent in their hiring practices and to think carefully before filling old positions that have been left unoccupied since the freeze began.

Livingston told The Daily that the freeze had not significantly affected student life or staffing in individual departments. In fact, he argued, even with the freeze gone the pace of hiring will not increase, but the process will be simplified.

“The hiring freeze did not stop Stanford from hiring — we hired hundreds of staff during the past two years to fill open positions and replace people who left,” he said. “With the end of the freeze, we still expect units to be cautious in hiring, but we’ve eliminated much of the administrative overhead.”

In the School of Humanities and Sciences, the hiring freeze had minimal effect.

“We allowed many exceptions to keep the core business of the school running. Partly we had to do that becuase we’re so minimally staffed throughout the school anyway,” said Karen Nagy, executive dean.

She explained that because the school is comprised of many small units that even with one vacancy, “you couldn’t support faculty and students.”