WRITER: Chad Lawhorn

Following no confidence vote, Girod sends university-wide message explaining pay strategies, athletic spending

Days after an informal online poll resulted in more than a thousand votes of no confidence in his leadership, University of Kansas Chancellor Doug Girod sent his own online message to the university community. Among the themes: Spending on athletics is important, KU has been increasing faculty and staff pay, and the times may be tense but they can still be good. “What comes next for KU will not be simple ...

Union contract would guarantee KU professors at least $7OK salary; other wage details not guaranteed past first year

If you are any type of professor at the University of Kansas, you shall make at least $70,000 per year, recently-released details of a proposed contract between KU and its faculty union show. However, if you already are making that amount, you might not receive anything more than a 1% raise, and that is only guaranteed for the first year of the three-year contract, according to the new documents. As reported ...

Nearly 80% of respondents express no confidence in KU leadership, but online survey methods criticized

More than 2,000 people have spoken in an informal online survey regarding the quality of leadership at the University of Kansas. Most — nearly 80% of respondents — said they had lost confidence in the chancellor and the university’s top financial officer. How seriously people should take the results, though, has become the subject of its own debate. A spokeswoman for the chancellor’s office said in a ...

A look at which Kansas counties have the highest wages and the best match between earnings and home values

Now that gas prices have you again thinking of ways to save money — carpooling, an electric vehicle, boarding a horse in the guest bedroom — I figured you might appreciate some new data on wages. Specifically, there’s new data out that shows what a worker in Douglas County earns on average versus a worker in Johnson, Shawnee or any other county in the state. The numbers from the Bureau of Labor ...

Kansas House committee makes key changes to bill that will keep KU, other universities under the oversight of Board of Regents

KU will remain under the supervision of the Kansas Board of Regents after a Kansas House committee on Thursday significantly changed a bill that was designed to help universities move at the “speed of innovation.” The House Committee on Higher Education Budget approved HB 2798, which puts the bill on track to be voted on by the full House and then move to the Kansas Senate for consideration in the coming ...

Girod traveled to the White House to discuss future of college sports, but he thinks Congress holds the keys

The wild world of college athletics — think $20 million per year in revenue sharing with student-athletes — has leaders at Kansas State and Wichita State going to their universities' checkbooks for help. The top finance officers at K-State and Wichita State this week told a committee of the Kansas Board of Regents that they plan to transfer several million dollars out of their universities’ general funds ...