Editorial: Girod owns budget solution

photo by: Journal-World Photo Illustration

Lawrence Journal-World Editorial

The University of Kansas’ plan to implement $20 million in budget cuts requires deft leadership from Chancellor Douglas Girod.

That means being transparent about looming staff cuts, university spending on athletics and how KU Endowment can and can’t be used to aid university operations. Most importantly, it means defining how KU can dramatically slash its budget while simultaneously jumpstarting undergraduate enrollment and reversing declines in the university’s academic ranking nationally.

To the university’s credit, the series of town hall meetings led by interim Provost Carl Lejuez have helped. Those meetings have allowed faculty and staff to raise questions and even offer solutions. But so far, the meetings haven’t been enough to allay growing unease about the direction of the university.

During a meeting this week, Lejuez said 150 positions would be eliminated during the next two years, mostly through attrition and buyouts. He said about 30 staff members would have to be laid off starting in the spring.

That plan has not gone over well with KU students, faculty and staff who vented their frustrations during an open forum at KU the day after the town hall.

They are frustrated that academics are being slashed at a time when KU, which recently committed millions more in salaries for a new athletic director and football coach, is increasing its investment in athletics. They are worried that KU is heavy at the top, and that highly paid administrators won’t be asked to make the sacrifices faculty and staff will. They fear that KU’s best and brightest are using KU as a stepping stone to better paying jobs at more prestigious schools.

They don’t understand why KU Endowment, which recently wrapped up the most successful higher education fundraising campaign in the history of the state and has total assets exceeding $2 billion, isn’t being tapped more to soften the budget cuts.

The concerns are reasonable and are unlikely to subside anytime soon.

Many of the fiscal problems KU now faces were years in the making, long before Girod took over as chancellor last year. The state has cut higher education funding, which used to account for 75 percent of student tuition, steadily for nearly two decades, to about 25 percent of student funds now. Tuition has increased year after year, prompting declines in enrollment at the Lawrence campus during the past 10 years. While KU was undertaking an unprecedented building spree, its foundation of undergraduate enrollment was cracking.

But while Girod isn’t to blame for the fiscal crisis, he owns the $20 million solution. The budget cuts will, in his words, allow the university to take control of its destiny. That’s appropriate since the cuts — and how they are implemented — also will likely determine Girod’s destiny as chancellor.

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