Printers across the state are hoping to get a piece of $2.5 million in business being outsourced by Kansas University.

A request for proposals issued by KU after it announced it would shut down its Printing Services department drew responses from 22 printers, said Barry Swanson, director of purchasing.

“Not all of those are going to end up with contracts,” Swanson said. “We did have a good response.”

He said the majority of printers were in the private sector, but several regents universities and the state printer in Topeka also were in the mix. KU officials plan to offer contracts to several printers by the end of the month.

KU announced in January it would close Printing Services and lay off its 20 employees. Marilu Goodyear, the vice provost who oversees the presses, said 18 of the employees had been placed in other jobs, either on campus or at other printers. She said the human resources department continues to seek employment for the other two.

“Basically, it’s shut down as far as actual production is concerned,” she said. “Several staff members are still around to outsource jobs to other printers.”

The working presses will be sold through a bidding process.

That leaves KU turning to how to handle printing jobs in the future. Although demand for printed materials has declined, which KU officials said led to the Printing Services closure, Swanson said KU continued to print a variety of materials, including journals, brochures, newsletters, commencement program and viewbooks.

He said KU employees were reviewing the submitted proposals. The goal is to have guidelines in place for staff to work directly with printers.

“No final decision has been made,” he said. “I don’t expect to end up with only one vendor. I expect it to be some group of vendors, with instructions to campus for how they should use those vendors.”