photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Strong Hall on the University of Kansas campus is pictured in September 2021.

Nearly every University of Kansas employee will receive a 5% pay increase for the next school year, KU leaders announced Friday afternoon.

The chancellor and other KU leaders for months have said it is their goal to give an approximately 5% increase to university employees, but had stopped short of promising an increase as state funding wouldn’t fully cover the extra salaries and wages.

On Friday, KU announced that the Aug. 21 paycheck would include a 5% raise for “most KU faculty and staff” who were on the KU payroll on June 30. In an unexpected development, KU said the pay increase won’t be a traditional merit-based increase where the size of the raise is determined by employee evaluations. Instead, everyone who receives a raise will get the same 5% increase.

“We believe the collective performance of all employees over the past 27 months merits an even distribution,” Provost Barbara Bichelmeyer, Chief Financial Officer Jeff DeWitt, and Vice Provost for Human Resources Mike Rounds said in an emailed message to university faculty and staff members “Each of you, in some way, went above and beyond to help the university educate and support students and continue our world-class research during an extremely challenging time.”

The 5% pay increase doesn’t apply to KU affiliate organizations, such as Kansas Athletics and the Kansas Union, the message said. However, leaders of those organizations will determine any pay increases for their employees.

The message also said pay guidelines for student employees will be announced in the coming weeks. It wasn’t immediately clear whether there were particular groups of KU employees that might not be eligible for the 5% increase, given that KU said “most” employees will receive the raise. For instance, graduate teaching assistants have been in contract negotiations regarding pay and other issues with the university. The Journal-World has asked for clarification on any groups that are not eligible to receive the pay increase.

Kansas Governor Laura Kelly’s higher education budget included a more than $100 million boost in funding for KU and higher education institutions in the state. However, the increased funding did not cover all of KU’s anticipated increases in general operating costs. KU had proposed a 1.1% tuition increase for the next school year, to help cover additional wages and other such operating costs. Kelly in May vetoed the tuition increases at KU and other state universities.

That left KU uncertain how it would cover the expenses of the additional wages, but Chancellor Douglas Girod said at the time KU would “figure it out.” DeWitt, KU’s chief financial officer, said at the time that KU likely would have to dip into reserve funds, which makes it critical that KU start seeing enrollment growth in the future to keep its finances sustainable.

Friday’s message didn’t detail how KU is funding the wage increases, but it held out the possibility for wage increases in the future. As reported, KU has undertaken a salary market study “to gather information on any pay disparities and inform plans to move our compensation to competitive levels,” the message said.

“We appreciate all you do to ensure the success of our students, our academic programs and the research community,” the message said.

KU’s Lawrence and Edwards campuses had about 8,300 full- and part-time employees during the last school year.