University of Kentucky reduces number of expected furloughs, finds money to save jobs
The University of Kentucky’s next budget will have no reductions in force and fewer employees than expected have been furloughed, the university’s president announced Friday.
UK President Eli Capilouto said in the press release that he is directing portions of the university’s contingency fund, a pool of money generated largely when the university recently cut back on employee retirement funds, to help “augment the budget this coming year.” The move will save about 100 jobs, the university said.
University officials still predict a more than $70 million shortfall in the more than $800 million academic budget that begins in July, and the university announced that 100 more employees on the academic side were furloughed on Friday.
Separate from the academic side of the university, UK HealthCare expects a $131 million shortfall in the hospital’s $558.7 million spending plan for the current fiscal year and next, hospital officials said early this month.
Last month, UK announced furloughs of approximately 1,700 employees on both the academic and healthcare sides of the operation. Of that 1,700, about 200 non-healthcare workers and 700 healthcare workers were officially furloughed, the release stated.
But many of those healthcare workers have been able to return to work as elective procedures have been restarted and the hospital system has had more patient visits, the release stated.
Much of the university’s expected budget shortfall comes from a pandemic-induced enrollment drop in this fall’s incoming freshman class. At a Board of Trustees meeting earlier this month, officials projected a $27 million drop in tuition revenue alone.
The budget measures announced Friday “help protect our people, who are so critical to our mission of putting our students and their success first, while conducting research and providing care essential to the future of Kentucky,” Capilouto said in the release. “But these measures also are vitally important for our hometown, Lexington and Fayette County.”
The university and its payments to employees are essential to the local economy, Capilouto said, with UK salaries making up about 18 percent of the employee payroll in Fayette County. Job losses throughout the county have caused a huge drop in local income tax revenues for the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government.
UK administrators are also looking to provide more job security for graduate students who make up large portions of the university’s research and teaching staff.
No graduate students, working as an assistant to faculty, will lose their job as a result of budget changes, and the university will earmark $250,000 of the Student Emergency Fund specifically for the needs of graduate students.
Ash Baker, a member of United Campus Workers of Kentucky, the university’s recently created union that has been pressuring administrators to take pay cuts and let up on furloughs, said union members were glad to see provisions made for graduate students.
Baker, a graduate instructor in the English department, said the furloughs announced Friday will still be damaging to student and faculty success. In the English department some administrative staff, who Baker said were key pieces of the department, had been furloughed.
“It was a shock,” Baker said. “They’re beloved to us.”
This story was originally published May 22, 2020 at 3:38 PM.