Bill introduced to allow universities to fire professors for ‘financial reasons’
A new bill that would allow university employees to be removed for financial reasons passed out of a House subcommittee on Tuesday morning.
House Bill 490 would add provisions to state law allowing universities to remove employees for “bona fide financial reasons,” including financial exigency, low enrollment in an academic program, and “misalignment of revenue and costs” in a program. Critics of the bill say it’s another attack on tenure, a year after the Kentucky state legislature passed a law implementing a new performance evaluation system for university employees.
“House Bill 490 is a fiscal responsibility bill that allows university boards to make sound financial choices related to decisions about faculty removal for financial reasons,” said Rep. Aaron Thompson, R-Russell, a sponsor of the bill.
University boards would establish a process for removing employees for financial reasons, which would go into effect by July 1 of this year if the bill becomes law.
When asked if there was a specific incident that prompted filing this bill, Thompson said it was to have a consistent policy across all state universities and the Kentucky Community and Technical College System.
United Campus Workers, the union for Kentucky university employees, spoke out against the bill last month, saying “further weakening faculty tenure undermines the core mission of our public universities.”
“When faculty can be removed for shifting financial reasons, academic freedom is chilled, shared governance is sidelined, and decisions about education are driven by cost-cutting rather than student learning,” UCW said in a statement. “This approach will only harm student and worker outcomes on campus and lead to the further corporatization of our universities.”
Last year, House Bill 424 became law, which some university employees also said threatened tenure promotion and the jobs of tenured faculty. That bill gave schools the ability to fire employees who fail to meet “performance and productivity” standards.
Multiple state universities were contacted by the Herald-Leader for comment on the bill on Tuesday morning.
“The university has a process for review of proposed legislation that may impact higher education. That process is underway and we will assess this legislation as part of that,” said University of Kentucky spokesperson Jay Blanton. “UK — like most universities — has long had a process for removal or dismissal of faculty and financial exigency has been one of the established reasons for such a decision. We won’t have any further comment on this specific proposal, though, until we can fully review it, discuss with members of our campus community and also with the bill’s sponsor.”
“The University of Louisville is monitoring the bill and does not weigh in on pending legislation,” said Amanda Carroll, UofL spokesperson.
This story was originally published February 10, 2026 at 11:19 AM.