PROVIDENCE – Brown University has laid off 31 employees and plans to leave 36 vacant positions unfilled as the school cuts millions of dollars from its budget for the next fiscal year.

In addition to the job reductions, Brown has instituted a wage freeze and a hiring freeze, The Brown Daily Herald reported.

The university did not get rid of any jobs in academic departments, and some of the individuals who received termination notices are being offered other jobs at the university, Beppie Huidekoper, Brown’s executive vice president for finance and administration, told The Herald.

Brown had 3,636 full-time employees and 993 part-time workers as of last November, according to university figures.

In February, the Corporation of Brown University, which oversees the school’s administration, approved a $758.7 million budget for the 2010 fiscal year, an increase of less than 1 percent from this year, when the budget grew by nearly 6.7 percent. The university expects to reduce its spending by $80 million to $90 million between now and the fiscal year that starts in July 2013.

“We know we aren’t done yet,” Huidekoper told The Herald.

The total cost of tuition and fees for on-campus students at Brown will rise next year by 2.9 percent to $49,128, which the school says is the smallest increase it has instituted in nearly half a century.

Brown has experienced a rapid turnaround in its financial fortunes in recent months – just last May, officials expected the university’s revenue would grow by an average of 5 percent each year over the next five years.

But in January, Brown President Ruth Simmons said she expects the value of the university’s endowment will have fallen by nearly 30 percent, from $2.8 billion to $2 billion, by the end of June – a far cry from the average annual returns of 16 percent the endowment had earned in recent years.