photo by: Shawn Valverde/Special to the Journal-World

The University of Kansas campus is pictured in this aerial photo from September 2023.

The University of Kansas may have a more than $100 million task in front of it as lawmakers begin their work at the Kansas Statehouse in Topeka.

KU technically is staring at a $155 million reduction in funding next year, unless KU leaders can convince both the governor and lawmakers to make some budget additions during the legislative session.

Alternatively, students may be on the lookout for a significant tuition increase, as KU and other universities across the state likely would turn to student dollars to try to make up some budget reductions.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly released her recommended budget for fiscal year 2026 on Thursday, and it included a mixed bag of news for the state’s higher education sector. The Kansas Board of Regents — which oversees all the state’s public universities and community colleges — is recommended to receive a nearly 10% increase in the funding that it uses for a variety of projects, including financial aid for students.

But when it comes to the individual budgets for each public university in the state, everyone of them is recommended for a decrease in funding compared to Kelly’s fiscal year 2025 totals. KU is budgeted for a 13% decrease, which is a middle-of-the pack number among the six Regents universities. Pittsburg State is budgeted for the sharpest decrease at nearly 25%, while Kansas State has the smallest at about 8%.

When you combine the increase in funding for the Board of Regents and the decreased funding for the individual universities, the recommending funding total is down about 12% or $587 million from fiscal year 2025 numbers.

The total impact of the reductions is hard to measure at this point because the past budget year included some large one-time expenditures by the state — such as $75 million for a new cancer center building on the KU Medical Center Campus — that were never intended to be funded again, and won’t put a strain on the university’s operating budget.

But the budget recommendation does include cuts to other areas — building maintenance appears to be one — that could create operational stresses for KU and the other universities.

The budget also calls for state employees to get a 2.5% pay raise in the next fiscal year, but whether that will be the case for university employees is unclear. During the last two budgets, state university employees have received an increase equal to half what most other state employees have received. In each of the last two years, university employees received at 2.5% increase, while most state employees received a 5% increase.

In a brief interview with the Journal-World prior to Kelly releasing her recommended budget, KU Chancellor Douglas Girod said the wage increase issue was a top issue for KU to discuss with legislators.

“Helping us get to competitive salaries is a big focus for us,” Girod said. “We largely got left out of that last year and we know we have a very big need there.”

Exactly what type of opportunities KU will have to lobby for those increases during the legislative session — which is scheduled to last into the spring — is unclear. This budget process will be unlike any other the state has had. Typically, the governor releases a recommended budget, and that is the main document the legislature works from. However, this year a key legislative committee also released its own recommended budget. That has created questions about how much the legislature will even use Kelly’s budget as it crafts the year’s spending plan.

Details about the budget crafted by the legislature aren’t as readily available currently. However, Girod said the expectation was the legislature-created budget would be pretty “bare bones out of the gate” because the intention was for it to be a starting point for a budget conversation. That means agencies and institutions — like KU and the Regents — would have to go before various legislative committees to make their case for specific funding additions.

Girod said he’s hopeful at least one of those hearings will specifically focus on pay issues at the universities.

“I think there will be hearings specifically on higher ed salaries, and we have provided them a bunch of data through (the Regents),” Girod said. “Hopefully that conversation will happen this session.”

If nothing changes throughout the session, a $155 million reduction in funding — or whatever the true number is after one-time expenses are factored out of the equation — almost certainly would lead to major cuts at KU. However, a more likely scenario might be that the shortfall is reduced significantly by increases in tuition charged to students.

The numbers in Kelly’s budget includes the amount of money the universities are projected to receive in tuition dollars from students, but those numbers are very fluid because tuition rates are not set until the summer. Importantly, those tuition rates aren’t set by either the governor or the legislature, but rather are determined by the Kansas Board of Regents. In the past, as state funding has declined, pressure has increased on the Regents to raise tuition rates to help stave off some cuts at the universities.

However, the Regents also have made it a high priority to limit tuition increases as multiple surveys show the public is valuing higher education less as the costs of a college degree have increased substantially. In recent years, the Regents have either held tuition rates steady, or increased them modestly. Tuition for the current school year at KU, for example, increased by about 3.4% from a year ago. But if KU saw a 13% decrease in its funding, university leaders likely would lobby for a significantly larger increase in tuition.

KU officials didn’t have any specific comments on the governor’s recommended budget on Thursday afternoon, as they were still reviewing the document, which numbers hundreds of pages. Instead, a KU spokeswoman pointed to a statement the university made prior to the recommended budget’s release.

“KU leaders anticipate asking the Legislature for stable base funding to enable KU to keep tuition steady for students and parents and to ensure students have the support services they need to succeed,” KU said in a statement earlier this week. “This is especially important given KU currently has its highest enrollment in history and expects another strong class of freshmen to join the university in fall 2025.”