photo by: Grace Hills/Kansas Reflector

Emporia State University President Ken Hush spoke on March 12, 2025 to a government efficiency committee of the Kansas Legislature

TOPEKA — Emporia State University president Ken Hush defended this week faculty and staff firings as well as academic program reallocations as overdue changes tied to imposition of a market-oriented business model at the university.

Hush, a former president of a Koch Industries company hired to lead his alma mater in 2021, said aggressive administrative reform to address ESU’s financial, enrollment and political realities ran counter to an ESU culture with a vested interest in avoiding rehabilitation. He said his work showed how a higher education reformer could be punished for seeking change, he said.

Hush’s allies in the Kansas Legislature approved back-to-back $9 million special earmarks to help the university endure an enrollment-decline backlash. The appropriations were denounced by at least one legislator as special-interest government bailouts. It was the ESU president’s dismissal of tenured and tenure-track faculty in 2022 that triggered three years of state and federal court litigation and introduction by ESU’s general counsel of a bill in the 2025 session that would retroactively undermine tenure rights across Kansas.

“The cost of inaction has been huge,” Hush said during a presentation to the Senate Committee on Government Efficiency on his philosophical approach to university leadership. “It should have been done a decade-plus ago. It’s massive and it’s painful now.”

Overland Park Sen. Cindy Holscher, a Democrat on the Senate committee, asked Hush whether he was finished downsizing the faculty at ESU.

“I don’t know,” Hush said. “That’s probably the honest answer to the total university. We feel comfortable where we’re at.”

He said the ability of fired ESU faculty to press their case in court meant additional dismissals were on hold. ESU relied on a process approved by the Kansas Board of Regents during the COVID-19 pandemic emergency that eased due-process guarantees of faculty at the six public state universities, including University of Kansas, Kansas State University, Wichita State University and ESU.

“On the faculty, we’re stuck,” Hush said. “No more efficiencies there until someone decides on litigation.”

In December, U.S. District Court Judge Julie Robinson rejected a motion filed by ESU to dismiss a lawsuit filed by former faculty. Robinson said court precedent demonstrated a property interest existed in tenure held by Kansas higher education faculty.

In other words, Hush told legislators, ESU’s use of the Board of Regents’ policy making it easier to jettison tenured faculty “didn’t work.”

The ESU model

During the presentation at the Capitol, Hush focused on what he referred to as the ESU model of reform that emphasized zero-based budgeting, trend analysis and profit-and-loss assessments. He said the objective was to right-size ESU rather than simply downsize the university. He said he didn’t want the Legislature to cut state appropriations to ESU, but he expected to capture savings to invest in university priorities.

Leaders of ESU had to be reeducated to a way of thinking that better represented interests of students and taxpayers, he said.

Significant change was essential, Hush said, because community surveys showed the word salad describing ESU included “mediocrity,” “no financial acumen,” “slow,” “no accountability,” arrogant,” “inaction,” “dictators versus team,” “low expectations” and “not data driven.”

“We got problems, and culture problems,” Hush said. “Basically, what we were doing over the years — we were preserving the institution.”

Hush said transformation was initially aided by a three-person subcommittee that allowed ESU to discuss reform ideas. The advisory panel was comprised of state Board of Regents member Wint Winter and former Board of Regents members Mark Hutton and Cindy Lane, Hush said. He said work of the subcommittee was terminated to end conflict with the Kansas Open Records Act.

“They were our team throughout this entire process,” Hush said. “Unfortunately, the three-person committee was disbanded a year ago. We’re sitting here — it’s tough — because we have no one to bounce it off of. It put pressure on us — not having a sounding board.”

Hush said decline in the U.S. college-age population meant colleges and universities were in fierce competition for enrollment. He said the shrinking supply of potential students was juxtaposed with growing demand among higher education institutions. The state’s research universities — KSU, KU, WSU — have a student recruiting advantage by offering medical, law, agriculture and aviation degree programs and because they have bigger endowments to award scholarships, he said.

He said enrollment turf wars were ongoing: “It spells out full competition. Head-on fighting for students.”

‘Piled higher and deeper’

Hush said he reached out to Emporia and Lyon County government officials to generate additional resources for ESU. He turned to the ESU Foundation, which “stepped up” for the university on several occasions.

“My God,” he said, “they had $120 million sitting over there. I don’t know what they’re waiting for. They ought to be reinvesting.”

Hush said he was frustrated ESU, Flint Hills Technical College and the Emporia public school district didn’t work more collaboratively to deliver instruction in basic courses. In September, Hush sent a letter to a local economic development agency suggesting state legislators could force merger of the technical college with ESU. In that correspondence, he said the Emporia Regional Development Association ought to give $500,000 annually to ESU if it was able to offer $100,000 annually to Flint Hills.

“Here we are — we don’t even work with them,” Hush said.

Sen. Patrick Schmidt, a Topeka Democrat on the Senate efficiency committee, asked whether Hush was considering a hostile takeover or some form of affiliation with Flint Hills.

Hush said there were ongoing talks with Flint Hills through a mediator.

“It’s a natural merge,” Hush said. “We don’t approach it as an acquisition. It’s work in progress. It’s open discussion. We have to do something.”

Sen. Douglas Shane, a Louisburg Republican on the efficiency committee, said the presentation by Hush was a welcomed anomaly. Shane is in his first-term as a senator.

“This has probably been my favorite presentation this entire session,” Shane said. “It’s very refreshing to hear a university president speak so candidly and having taken such a strong leadership position in their institution.”

Shane said conflict existed between university administrators and faculty. The senator earned from Kansas State a veterinary degree and a doctorate in pathobiology, and worked on KSU’s Olathe campus as an animal health professor.

“Sometimes a Ph.D., for some folks, just means piled higher and deeper,” Shane said. “I think you’ve been able to see that in an academic environment, in any university environment, change is really, really hard.”

• Tim Carpenter is a reporter with the Topeka-based news service Kansas Reflector.