LINCOLN — In the past five years, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has weathered $75 million in cuts. Cuts to staff. Cuts to university libraries. Cuts to colleges that have taught UNL students for more than a century.
But the pain from those cuts, spread over years, likely will be dwarfed by what’s to come, as the state’s flagship university moves to slash $27.5 million by the end of the calendar year.
The total, announced by Chancellor Rodney Bennett in early August, represents nearly 6% of UNL’s state-aided budget. It exceeds the budgets of some entire colleges, including the College of Architecture, the College of Journalism and Mass Communications and the College of Law — combined.
What, exactly, will fall on the chopping block remains to be seen. Under a timeline released last month, UNL plans to reveal its proposed cuts in the coming week.
Everything — including closing or consolidating colleges — is on the table, said Mike Zeleny, outgoing vice chancellor for business and finance. Previous reductions, he said, focused primarily on trimming from the top of multiple areas. That approach will not work this time around.
“It’s something that’s very challenging because it means that the university might not be providing that discipline or that area of study going forward,” Zeleny said. “And it’s really important that we serve the state and the industries of the state and the workforce, and in many areas, we’re the only such program in the state. So it’s really critical to look at all of the factors, but yes, it’s very possible that that could be a part of the reduction.”
Informing the process is the university’s desire to reenter the Association of American Universities, which ousted UNL in 2011 — making it the only Big Ten institution without membership. The university is using research metrics, based on AAU membership values, to help decide which areas should be cut.
and finance at UNL. Photo courtesy of UNL
“Looking at each program through that filter is a first step, and then the next steps include some of the more qualitative measures — the state’s workforce needs, whether something is unique in the state, student demand, future student demand,” Zeleny said.
John Shrader, president of the Faculty Senate, said he has concerns about the quick timeline for the cuts. His concerns are exacerbated by the rollout of these metrics. They’re aspirational rather than immediately achievable, he said.
“My problem is that they were defined before anybody whose job is going to be eliminated was given an opportunity to meet those metrics,” Shrader said.
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The University of Nebraska’s flagship campus has been heralded as an economic game changer for the Cornhusker state.
A February report by Tripp Umbach, a national consulting firm hired by the university, found that UNL had an annual impact of $3.1 billion on the state’s economy. It provided more than 25,000 jobs in 2024, and generated $84 million in tax revenue.
But maintaining that impact amid growing expenses and declining revenues has been a tightrope walk. UNL has faced a structural deficit for several years, driven by smaller-than-requested legislative appropriations and inflationary pressure on big-ticket items such as health care, insurance and utilities.
The university has made cuts to its budget every fiscal year since 2020. All but one of those cuts was less than $20 million; in fiscal year 2024, UNL cut $23 million from its operating budget. But when the Legislature approved a 0.625% increase in state dollars for the NU System this year, far short of the requested 3.5%, it became clear that those past cuts weren’t enough to steady the ship.
At the same time, Zeleny said UNL has taken on unfunded mandates by the Legislature — including tuition waivers for groups like first responders and families of deceased or disabled veterans. He estimated that costs the university around $4 million annually.
A reduction in international student enrollment has also chipped away at UNL’s budget surety. International students often pay more than domestic students who are eligible for scholarships and federal aid. In 2016-17, international students made up 11.1% of UNL’s student body — a number that plummeted to 6.8% by the fall of 2023. International student enrollment is expected to drop further this year amid an increasingly hostile environment toward immigrants at the federal level.
In all, the university has seen a decrease in net tuition of 6.1% from fiscal year 2020 to 2025.
“So it’s been a perfect storm of reasons,” Zeleny said.
To avoid future cuts, UNL would need increased tuition revenue and state appropriations, Zeleny said. But at the moment, there appears to be little political appetite for the latter. Gov. Jim Pillen initially proposed a 2% cut to the university system’s appropriation this year before the Legislature ultimately approved the 0.625% increase. The state is grappling with its own budget deficit.
Zeleny said it’s difficult to predict state appropriations, but added that they’re more likely to see an increase if they can identify shared priorities.
“I think it’s really important to look at how the university and the state can best work together to accomplish the growth goals,” he said.
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Short of increased state funding, UNL will have to continue to make hard choices. Chief among them this year was the decision to freeze salaries and increase tuition by an average of 5% across campuses. If they had offered a 3% raise to staff, it would have required another $9 million in budget cuts, Zeleny said.
But that reasoning is a hard pill to swallow for faculty and staff, especially when morale is already low on campus, Shrader said.
“And it creates much more divisiveness among the faculty and its relationship with administration when you start making the faculty feel like it’s their job to close the deficit, because it’s not,” Shrader said.
UNL also is looking to cut salary costs by offering voluntary buyouts. Under that program, tenured faculty 62 or older who have served for at least 10 years will be eligible to receive 70% of their base salary in exchange for retiring. The NU System as a whole has 432 eligible faculty spread across its campuses — UNL, including the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, has 219 faculty eligible. Applications are due Sept. 30.
“It’s a mixed blessing, for sure, because we lose a lot of talent that has been serving the university and the state for a very long time,” Zeleny said. “But the other part of the mixed blessing is it frees up resources for, unfortunately, in this case, budget reductions, but also, investment in strategic priorities.”
This isn’t the first time the university has offered faculty buyouts. They were offered in 2010, 2014 and 2019 — but each time, the amount offered to faculty to incentivize retiring has decreased. That makes this year’s offer less attractive, Shrader said.
“I think that the terms they’re offering are underwhelming to a lot of faculty members,” he said.
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The budget crisis faced by UNL and the NU System at large is far from unique. Multiple peer universities, including the University of Missouri-Columbia, the University of Kansas and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities have announced budget cuts this year.
“Many, if not most, large universities in other states are cutting budgets even more as a percentage than we are,” Zeleny said.
State legislatures in other Midwest states also have taken proactive steps to reduce university budgets. Indiana and Ohio both passed legislation pushing for closure of programs with low enrollment, prompting Purdue University and Ohio State University to cut multiple programs to comply.
And federal funding cuts under the Trump administration have added yet another stressor to higher education. Lingering uncertainty over the future of federal funding has hamstrung planning efforts for many colleges and universities.
The cuts in neighboring states offer a window into possible actions UNL could take to close its deficit. Shrader said he wouldn’t be surprised to see significant program consolidation or closures.
“And I think it’s very likely, almost certain, that the proposal includes the merging of colleges,” Shrader said. “I do not gamble. I do not bet on anything ever. But if I did, I would bet on that happening.”
11 Comments
“In the past five years, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has weathered $75 million in cuts. Cuts to staff. Cuts to university libraries. Cuts to colleges that have taught UNL students for more than a century.”
You forgot: Cuts to illegal DEI programs. Cuts to racialized “diversity” offices. Cuts to superfluous administrators. Cuts to programs with too few students to justify the cost. Cuts to physical libraries that students are less likely to use. Cuts to the farrier program. Cuts to the livery stable management program. Et al.
Interesting how the author cherry picks which cuts to highlight. Sensationalizing the situation?
Programs don’t necessarily cost the university that much money (and consequently, cutting them doesn’t necessarily save much money). If we have faculty who specialize in Equine health and teach classes in animal science, then cutting the farrier program doesn’t cut those faculty salaries — it just reduces opportunities for UNL students. Most program cuts might save a partial administrative assistant and a partial advisor (since small programs tend to have advisors who work across multiple programs).
The DEI programs and diversity offices were pretty minimal to begin with and were cut before this series of cuts began.
It’s harder to cut costs at the university than you’d expect given the way the system works. Let’s take underwater basketweaving as an example — a fictional program with 5-6 courses — most undergraduate students in the program get a minor, but there is a basketweaving major as well that requires courses in flying basketweaving and trance basketweaving and so on. This program might live in the basketweaving department, and the department might be relatively small – 10 professors, a part-time administrative assistant, and maybe 10 undergraduate students per year that major in basketweaving. Most metrics at the university don’t take into account minors, but suppose it’s a relatively popular minor — about 60 students per year.
You’d expect that this might be a pretty good target for cuts, right? It depends. There are plenty of “service” departments that teach general education courses for many different majors, but don’t necessarily have a ton of graduates from their departmental programs. English and Math are good examples — they seem like they have too many professors for the number of majors they have, but that’s because they teach majors from across a bunch of colleges. Cutting the programs in these departments doesn’t help much, because you don’t remove the need for those professors – you just remove the opportunity for people to get a major or minor in basketweaving, hurting the students without saving the university money. You could consolidate departments — create a department of Arts & Crafts instead of having departments for basketweaving, crocheting, and fiber arts, but again, this maybe saves a couple of department chair salary boosts compared to what those faculty would make if they weren’t chair, and possibly allows you to reduce the number of administrative assistants and advisors across those departments (but the salaries for those positions are pretty low). If the right conditions are met, maybe you can fire some of the faculty across the three departments during the reorganization, but that could make the situation worse if necessary courses for other programs aren’t taught, because larger undergraduate courses actually bring in more tuition than they cost to offer.
If you want to save a ton of money, you could close an entire college or research center outstate and quit providing education in that area, but that risks hurting the entire state as students leave to seek out those programs elsewhere and potentially don’t come back. Maybe UNL doesn’t need so many business graduates? Programmers? Teachers? Perhaps we don’t need research farms in Western NE or NCTA. After all, ag in Western NE is the same as in the eastern half of the state, right?
The magnitude of the cuts is hard to imagine – do we no longer need lawyers, journalists, and architects in this state? That seems unlikely. Ultimately the university is part of the basic infrastructure of the state, and a huge driver of the state economy. Massive cuts to the university budget will only hurt Nebraskans — business owners, teachers, and students.
I’m with you. The state should just close the university and pour their efforts entirely into football. Make sure students know they are not welcome there and that it is in their best interests (both professionally and livability) to get out of Nebraska as soon as they can.
I can say for sure that the cuts at the engineering department caused my grandson to leave his Ph.D.. program at UNL and move to Michigan State. That’s one bioengineer that won’t be back to Nebraska.
I’m surprised you didn’t go the whole nine and suggest they burn the books in the library to save on heating costs…
You too left out some things in criticizing DEI, like the many University programs that favor rural students over all others. How does that differ from the DEI ones you oppose?
I’d like to see more indepth added investigation. Give us stats. Percent of “fewer students”, which programs cut how much?, staffing rates, building costs, federal money percentages. Something is so wrong here. Keep digging and keep us informed.
There’s an old Chinese practice called “death by a thousand cuts.” That’s what’s happening to the University. The extent of the damage will be devastating and roll out far into the future. In agriculture it’s like eating your seed corn. In manufacturing it’s like turning off part of the production line. In business it is like closing one day a week. Higher education fuels the economic day-to-day operation and future growth.
The article never mentions the University’s overall budget which is $1,400,000,000. $27.5M is a large amount of money but it’s less than a 2% cut overall especially when they asked for a 3.5% budget increase. Good journalism should include all of the facts.
Many years ago, my daughter attended UNO and Kearney. Two schools in the same system who ran by different time systems. We quickly found out a class at one, although told it would count at the other, ended up not being true. So we paid for two exact classes. If that is still true or not I don’t know. The point is, its a new day and time to adapt. The university system that are state schools need to coordinate as one. One school \teaches a subject whether in person or electronically. Sports, if self supporting can do as the please at each school. If necessary, the $10 million given to UNL by Big Red sports should be used to support sports at other state schools. Have the foundation is run and how it’s donations are used needs new rules. Why does a university need a billion dollars, or more, in the bank? Because the ingrown university system who makes those rules are very resistant to change. Currently, the higher education system is being replaced by internships. Maybe it’s time that the university system started teaching by the same method. Big tech no longer requires degrees. Air Traffic Controllers, a highly complex and stressful profession, has always used OJT (on the job training) You would think that the most educated, diverse and creative employees in the world could come up with a different, better, system. And sooner or later they will have too. Better now when it is not an extreme monetary emergency than when it gets that bad.
I can understand some hostility toward the university for its efforts to make sure that all communities benefit from the benefits of career enhancement and social mobility offered by high education, particularly if you’re part of a community that has traditionally benefited from higher ed.
A generalized hostility toward the university, however, is indicative of a lack of discernment, at least— and perhaps of intellectual sophistication.