photo by: University of Kansas

The skyline of the University of Kansas is pictured.

As the preliminary results of one cost-saving reorganization at the University of Kansas begin to roll in, leaders are now girding faculty and staff to prepare for another shuffling of university operations.

A KU spokeswoman recently confirmed to the Journal-World that 34 tenured faculty members applied to participate in an early-retirement program that the university launched in October.

The program is offering tenured faculty members who are at least 62 years old and have worked for at least 10 years at KU or a state agency a one-time, lump-sum payment equal to one year of their salary, if they agree to retire from the university in May.

KU spokeswoman Erinn Barcomb-Peterson told the Journal-World recently that a final number of faculty members who actually will retire under the program hasn’t yet be determined. While the deadline to apply for the program was Dec. 1, the university and the employees have until Dec. 23 to file the official “notice of retirement” paperwork. Those who enter the program would work through May 22, she said via email.

When the program was announced in late October, KU leaders said the program was in response to budget challenges that university leaders have been communicating for the past several months. KU officials, however, didn’t announce any target number of employees that they were hoping would take the early retirement offer.

In an interview in November, KU Chancellor Douglas Girod told the Journal-World that he hadn’t settled on a specific size that KU’s faculty should be going forward.

“I think we are just going to live our way through this and try to get to a place where we do what we absolutely have to do while we try to tighten up where we can,” Girod said last month.

In 2025, KU had 1,551 faculty members, unchanged from 2024. But since 2010, faculty positions have increased by about 200 positions, or 15%, which is a greater rate than enrollment has increased during that time period. Enrollment is up about 10% in that period.

Girod in November also said some of the positions lost through the early retirement program might be replaced depending on how the loss would impact university operations. But given that many of the early-retirees are among the most senior members of the faculty, a replacement likely would still result in a cost savings, he said.

In August, as the Journal-World reported, KU announced it needs to find $32 million in annual budget savings by July 1, which is when KU’s new fiscal year begins. Despite two years of record enrollments, KU leaders have been worried about funding threats on multiple fronts. State lawmakers may tighten state funding for higher education as Kansas’ budget picture has become more constrained. KU, along with many research universities across the country, is worried about significant losses of federal grant funding.

Additionally, universities across the country are bracing for what higher education leaders dub the “demographic cliff.” That refers to the fact that high schools will be producing fewer graduates over the next decade. Those lower high school graduate numbers are due to lower birth rates that began showing up in the aftermaths of the 2008 Great Recession. Next year marks the 18th year since that recession, and thus is the first that those lower birth rates will broadly result in fewer college-age students.

As KU is wrapping up the early-retirement program, Girod on Monday sent a message to all university employees notifying them that KU is moving into a new phase of implementation of its “One KU Initiative.”

That program is designed to dismantle many of the structures that have separated KU’s Lawrence campus from the university’s medical center campus in Kansas City, Kan.. Last year, Girod began to implement the program at the highest executive levels of the university. For example, KU previously had two chief financial officers — one for the medical center and another for the rest of KU. The reorganization resulted in KU having one chief financial officer, Jeff DeWitt, oversee the finances for the entire university.

In his Monday message, Girod said university employees will soon start hearing specific plans from department leaders to implement the “One KU” program across the university.

“In the weeks ahead, Cabinet leaders will begin introducing specific strategies and organizational approaches for transitioning their areas to a One KU model,” Girod said in the message. “You will see more detailed plans from institutional enterprises such as research administration, analytics and institutional research, strategy, finance, operations, and human resources, each designed to create a more agile and collaborative environment.”

In his message, Girod did not specifically state whether the initiative will result in employee reductions, either through layoffs or attrition. However, Girod has previously said that KU is likely to have a smaller workforce in the future due to demographic changes, but also because KU must do better in paying its employees market wages.

More than half of the $32 million in savings KU is seeking to find by July 1 would be used to invest in a pay plan to begin brining the compensation of select university employees up to market rates seen at other research universities or in the private sector, university leaders have said.

“When you think about it, you do ultimately need to get to a smaller workforce if you are going to get to a better-paid workforce,” Girod told the Journal-World in November.

In his Monday message, Girod didn’t get into any of those specific details, but urged KU faculty and staff members to be open to the changes ahead.

“I am aware that change brings questions, and it is natural to feel some uncertainty as we evolve how KU is organized and how decisions are made,” Girod said in the letter. “At the same time, each of us has an important role to play in this initiative, and I ask the KU community for a spirit of openness, engagement and shared responsibility.”