Tag: NebraskaLincoln

  • University of Nebraska-Lincoln faculty vote no confidence in chancellor

    University of Nebraska-Lincoln faculty vote no confidence in chancellor

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    Dive Brief:

    • University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s faculty senate on Tuesday passed a no-confidence resolution in the public institution’s chancellor, Rodney Bennett, in part over allegations of poor leadership and financial management. 
    • In a 60-14 vote, faculty approved a measure calling for Bennett’s removal and formally stating no-confidence over allegations of “failures in strategic leadership, fiscal stewardship, governance integrity, external relations, and personnel management.”
    • The no-confidence vote — UNL’s first — follows fierce debate at the university over Bennett’s plan to cut a handful of academic programs as part of a broader effort to slash $27.5 million from UNL’s budget.

    Dive Insight:

    The no-confidence resolution reflects faculty pushback against Bennett since September, when the chancellor unveiled a proposal to slash six programs — which he later reduced to four — as part of a budget-reduction plan.  

    Criticisms have focused largely on what faculty say is a lack of transparency about how, precisely, programs were judged worthy of keeping or cutting. They also allege that Bennett, who joined UNL as chancellor in 2023, has largely failed to include faculty in the decision-making process. 

    The budget process and timeline precluded “meaningful faculty and departmental leadership consultation” and “undermines the possibility of completing a thorough review of evidence, consequences, and public comments,” according to a Nov. 3 memo the faculty senate circulated ahead of the no-confidence resolution. 

    As to the timeline, Bennett announced his initial proposal on Sept. 12, and roughly two months later issued his final recommendation, which the University of Nebraska System’s regents plan to vote on at a Dec. 5 meeting.

    The memo also questioned Bennett’s approach to reducing UNL’s deficit, saying that his plan relies on “immediate cost-reductions and across-the-board cuts rather than multi-year fiscal modeling or revenue diversification.”

    “This system is a $3.5 to $4 billion enterprise, and we are damaging it for $27.5 million,” Faculty Senate President John Shrader said in prepared remarks at a Nov. 4 meeting. “These cuts are going to be devastating to this campus. So damaging to be irreparable.”

    The memo further said Bennett had been “noticeably absent” from several faculty senate meetings and accused him of having periods of sparse contact with the senate’s executive committee, despite UNL bylaws calling for him to meet twice a month with the panel.

    “Faculty shared governance represents one of many voices of institutions of higher education,” University of Nebraska System President Jeffrey Gold said in a statement emailed Wednesday. “We value the voice of UNL’s faculty; however, ultimate decisions rest with the Board of Regents.

    A UNL spokesperson said Wednesday that Bennett does not plan to comment on the no-confidence vote.

    In October, an academic advisory body of faculty, staff, students and administrators tasked with reviewing Bennett’s plan called for more time to consider alternatives to ending programs and voted against winding down four of the original six programs Bennett originally put forward for closure. 

    Bennett’s final plan spares two programs that were on the chopping block but still included two others that the Academic Planning Committee voted against eliminating. 

    “None of us want to be in this space, where the decisions we must make will inevitably impact the lives of individuals and change how we do some things on campus,” Bennett said in November when announcing his final proposal. “However, our reality is that UNL’s expenses have been greater than its revenue for many years.”

    The proposal would slash UNL’s statistics, educational administration, Earth and atmospheric sciences, and textile, merchandising and fashion design programs. 

    UNL’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which has actively opposed the cuts, lauded Tuesday’s no-confidence vote by the faculty senate. 

    “The faculty has made clear that this chancellor does not have what it takes to lead our flagship institution,” UNL AAUP President Sarah Zuckerman, who is an educational administration professor at the university, said in a statement Tuesday. “We will not accept a lack of transparency, the exclusion of faculty from decision-making, or the erosion of our university’s 156-year-old mission to educate Nebraska’s students.

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  • University of Nebraska-Lincoln leader reduces program cuts from 6 to 4

    University of Nebraska-Lincoln leader reduces program cuts from 6 to 4

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    Dive Brief:

    • University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s chancellor on Monday unveiled a final budget recommendation that would cut four academic programs at the university, two fewer than he originally proposed in September.
    • However, Chancellor Rodney Bennett’s new plan would eliminate two programs that a university committee voted to recommend keeping. His proposal also comes amid concerns raised by faculty over program evaluation metrics and the budget reduction process.
    • The program cuts would trim $6.7 million from UNL’s budget, mainly through doing away with roughly four dozen full-time equivalent jobs. Bennett’s proposal also calls for merging four academic departments into two new schools and reducing budgets at four UNL colleges.

    Dive Insight:

    Ultimately, Bennett proposed axing UNL’s departments of Earth and atmospheric sciences; educational administration; statistics; and textiles, merchandising and fashion design — all as part of an effort to save $27.5 million annually to address a structural deficit. 

    He spared two programs that he recommended cutting earlier: landscape architecture, and community and regional planning. The University of Nebraska System’s regents plan to consider Bennett’s final recommendations at their December meeting. 

    Bennett’s initial proposal — and how he arrived at his recommended cuts — drew opposition from affected faculty and other stakeholders.

    Based on hearings and nearly 3,000 filed comments, UNL’s Academic Planning Committee — made up of faculty, staff, administrators and students — voted in October to oppose closing four of the programs in Bennett’s original plan. 

    Two of those programs — statistics, and Earth and atmospheric sciences — are nonetheless on the chopping block in Bennett’s final plan. 

    The committee didn’t oppose Bennett’s plans to cut the educational administration and textiles programs, or to merge UNL’s departments of entomology and plant pathology into one interdisciplinary school and the departments of agricultural economics and agricultural leadership, education and communication into another.

    However, the committee called on Bennett and UNL leaders to extend the timeline for making existential decisions about any of the programs. 

    “We strongly recommend to the Chancellor, the President, and the Board of Regents that the approval of any budget cuts be delayed allowing time for units to identify creative alternative solutions that reduce or prevent the need for these cuts,” the committee said in an Oct. 24 memo. But Bennett and UNL leaders appear undeterred and are sticking with their original timelines. 

    The committee also pointed to concerns raised by UNL stakeholders about the metrics and data that officials used to decide on programs. 

    Faculty members have said that the data was incomplete and sometimes incorrect and that the administration wasn’t transparent with them about how programs were being statistically evaluated. They also contended that the programs’ full value to the university and state weren’t taken into account. 

    UNL officials reviewed the programs “in accordance with performance metrics that align with UNL standards and external accountability frameworks,” Bennett said in a public message Monday. “The metrics were also shaped through extensive consultation in the spring with academic deans, college leadership teams, department executive officers and the APC.”

    Still, some faculty continued to slam the metrics for a lack of transparency. 

    “What are these new performance expectations, and where do we find them?” Sarah Zuckerman, an educational administration professor at UNL and head of its American Association of University Professors chapter, said in a Tuesday blog post titled “No Real Metrics, Only Vibes.” UNL’s AAUP chapter has actively opposed the cuts. 

    Zuckerman added, “This feels like not only have administrators changed the rules of the game while it is still being played, but they didn’t bother to tell us.”

    UNL’s faculty senate plans to consider a no confidence vote for Bennett on Nov. 18 over his handling of the budget cuts.

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  • University of Nebraska-Lincoln committee opposes most academic program cuts

    University of Nebraska-Lincoln committee opposes most academic program cuts

    An academic advisory group at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has opposed most of the program cuts recommended by the institution’s chancellor and is calling for more time before considering major budget reductions. 

    A majority of the Academic Planning Committee members voted against eliminating four of the six programs put on the chopping block by UNL Chancellor Rodney Bennett in September as part of an effort to save $27.5 million annually. 

    The 21-person committee — composed of 10 faculty members as well as deans, administrators, staffers and students — officially issued its recommendation to Bennett in an Oct. 24 memo. 

    Bennett plans to issue his final recommendation in the coming weeks, and the University of Nebraska System regents will consider it in December. 

    In the memo, the committee pointed to concerns raised by faculty about the process Bennett and other UNL leaders used to determine which academic programs to slash. Those issues largely revolved around potential problems with the metrics and the short evaluation period used to make permanent decisions. 

    “We strongly recommend to the Chancellor, the President, and the Board of Regents that the approval of any budget cuts be delayed allowing time for units to identify creative alternative solutions that reduce or prevent the need for these cuts,” the committee said. 

    In a note Friday, Bennett thanked the committee for its work and said, “I am now carefully reviewing the APC’s recommendations and continuing consultations with our shared governance partners before finalizing the budget reduction plan.”

    A ‘top-down’ process for judging programs

    Over the past month, the academic planning committee has been collecting feedback from UNL stakeholders through hearings and nearly 3,000 submitted comments, the memo noted.

    Many questioned the validity and usefulness of the statistical metrics and data used to evaluate programs, while also accusing the administration of not being transparent about those measures. 

    Those metrics led to Bennett’s proposal that UNL permanently eliminate degrees in community and regional planning; Earth and atmospheric sciences; educational administration; landscape architecture; statistics; and textiles, merchandising and fashion design.

    In past budget deliberations, deans were given a target for reductions and could design unit-specific ways to meet goals, a process the committee described as “bottom-up.” 

    “In the current process, metrics were used in a ‘top-down’ approach to identify lower-performing units, and then a holistic review of those units was undertaken by upper administration,” the committee said. 

    Moreover, leaders only shared metrics to make program decisions confidentially with deans and the academic planning committee, which left faculty scrambling to understand those measures. 

    “No one was able to fully validate the metrics, either through confirming the accuracy of the underlying data or via analysis to confirm that the metrics were statistically valid ways to quantify the desired performance indicators,” the committee said. 

    For example, faculty from multiple units said that programs were revenue-positive, meaning cutting them would cost the university more in lost revenue than it saved in expenses. Others pointed to the extension work done by programs that make them important to the state and help UNL fulfill its mission as a public land-grant university. 

    But the comments from faculty and other UNL stakeholders weren’t just critical — they were also creative, suggesting alternative ways that programs and the university could save on costs or generate new revenue, the committee said. In fact, every unit had ideas of ways to generate revenue and save costs.

    “Given that a budget deficit has been looming for years, it is unfortunate that the process was invoked with so little time to engage the creativity and collective intelligence of the full University community,” the committee said. “When the energy of our faculty, staff, students, and stakeholders is unleashed on the problem of the budget deficit, creative and selfless solutions can emerge.”

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  • University of Nebraska-Lincoln to slash $27.5M from budget

    University of Nebraska-Lincoln to slash $27.5M from budget

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     Dive Brief:

    • The University of Nebraska-Lincoln plans to cut $27.5 million from its budget — possibly including eliminating or merging academic programs — by the end of the year to address an ongoing structural deficit.
    • “Despite our best efforts to live within our means, our revenue has not kept pace with expenses,” UNL Chancellor Rodney Bennett said in a campus message on Monday. He attributed the shortfall to insufficient state funding and declining net tuition revenue combined with high inflation.
    • The flagship university is among the many higher education institutions cutting their budgets amid an uncertain financial landscape. UNL will also extend its hiring freeze for at least the second time and likely offer employees a voluntary separation package this fall, Bennett said.

    Dive Insight:

    A planning committee composed of administrators, faculty and student representatives plans to discuss potential budget cuts this week. Bennett will then take the committee’s recommendations and propose a final budget plan to the head of the University of Nebraska system by the end of October, he said. 

    The plan may recommend degree program cuts or mergers that will allow UNL to capitalize on its “existing strengths,” the chancellor said.

    Moving forward, the university will prioritize growing extramural grants and contracts and increasing tuition revenue through higher enrollment and student retention, he said.

    UNL officials also hope to see additional revenue from a tuition hike approved by the University of Nebraska system’s board in June.

    In-state undergraduate tuition at UNL will increase from $277 to $291 per credit hour for the 2025-26 academic year. For out-of-state students, the cost will rise from $888 to $932.

    In the same vote approving the tuition increase, the system board cut more than $20 million from its budget.

    Like Bennett, the system board cited “a legislative session in which the university received modest funding increases that do not fully cover inflationary pressures, rising employee benefit costs or strategic investments.”

    The University of Nebraska relies heavily on state funding. In the fiscal 2024-25 year, a fifth of the system’s operating budget — just under $700 million — came from state appropriations.

    However, recent increases to the state’s higher education funding have been nominal and have not kept pace with inflation.

    Earlier this year, Nebraska’s Legislature raised the University of Nebraska’s state funding by 1.25% over the next two years. The bump fell well short of inflation and the system’s requested increase of 3.5%.

    But that’s still a significant improvement over Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen’s initial proposal. Pillen, who served as a system regent for a decade, sought to cut the system’s funding by 2%, which would have amounted to a loss of $14.3 million. 

    On Wednesday, Bennett referenced the series of austerity measures the university has undertaken in recent years and expressed hope that the next round of cuts could help UNL achieve operational stability. 

    “I want to realize a future for UNL in which faculty and staff are not repeatedly asked to do the same quality and amount of work with fewer resources — but rather are provided the support and opportunity to excel beyond current levels of success,” he said 

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