Your daily dose of news, notes and links from around Kansas University.

• Thanks to a great Heard on the Hill tipster for this one. Kansas State University, apparently on the heels of great enrollment returns, is offering permanent, mid-year 2.5 percent raises for faculty and unclassified staff.

At Kansas State, like at KU, most faculty and staff haven’t seen raises since 2008.

“We are raising salaries for our high quality faculty members and our service-oriented unclassified professionals,” said President Kirk Schulz in a written statement. “We realize many people have been without salary increases for a considerable time. This represents a start toward getting our salaries up to where they should be to meet our K-State 2025 goals.”

At KU, I’m hearing, overall enrollment will likely be down this year. Though one of the options put forth by the Huron Consulting Group folks who are examining all kinds of areas of KU for efficiency and effectiveness involves increasing enrollment numbers, as I’ve talked about before. So time will tell if KU can hop on this bandwagon anytime soon.

• We have our U.S. News and World Report rankings in, and with them, a trove of data to sift through.

KU’s engineering program made a separate list of top engineering programs in the country, ranking in tied at No. 76 among programs that offer a doctorate (the last such spot that was ranked).

KU was tied with the University of Illinois-Chicago, the University of Connecticut, the Stevens Institute of Technology (N.J.), Clarkson University (N.Y.) and the Polytechnic Institute of New York University.

KU is nipping on the heels of Kansas State’s program now, which was just one notch above KU, in a big clump tied for 66th.

The scores were based solely on peer assessments. U.S. News sent surveys to deans and one faculty member at each accredited program, and asked them to rank programs with which they were familiar on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished).

KU, which didn’t make the list last year, got a 2.7 score and KSU got a 2.8.

• KU, which was listed on an unranked list of schools with strong study abroad programs last year in a “Programs to Look for” list, is no longer on that list this year.

• Washburn University made a nice list, too, getting a shout-out for having the fifth-least debt in the region, with an average of $17,017 among students who have debt.

KU’s figure, as I’ve reported in the past, is about $20,517, according to figures from the school’s financial aid office.

Northeastern Illinois University must have something figured out. Only 13 percent of its students have debt, and of those, the average debt is only around $10,976.

• The only debt you’ll owe here at the University of Heard on the Hill comes in the form of tips, which I gladly accept by email at ahyland@ljworld.com.