For the first time in 20 years, WKU will not rely on money left from previous years to balance the current budget under a spending plan for 2025-26 that the Board of Regents approved Friday.

The regents voted 9-1, with student Regent Sam Kurtz dissenting, to approve WKU’s $404 million budget for the coming year. 

The budget increases tuition to $6,036 a semester for in-state students, a 3.6% increase from $5,826; replaces course fees with college fees; proposes a 2% raise pool for faculty and staff and relies solely on revenue generated during the year to balance the budget.

“Presenting a structurally balanced budget without the use of carry forward is a tremendous accomplishment for a university that required discipline, fiscal conservatism and the willingness to tighten belts among every person on this university’s campus,” President Timothy Caboni said. 

When Caboni started his position at WKU in 2017, the university had a shortfall of over $40 million, which led to years of budget cuts, two rounds of early-retirement incentives and other measures to bring that shortfall down. Much of that budget hole was filled each year by millions of dollars of carry forward money, or funds that had been budgeted in previous years but were not spent. 

Susan Howarth, the executive vice president for strategy, operations and finance, said the 2025-26 budget represents the second year of a two-year, $24 million plan implemented in 2024-25 to erase the last of the shortfall. 

During the current budget year, which ends June 30, WKU made $13.5 million in permanent budget cuts that affected almost every facet of the university; implemented a Voluntary Separation Incentive Program for 57 employees, which will generate $3.7 million in savings for 2025-26; and cut its transportation budget by $300,000. All together, the cuts added up to $18 million, Haworth said.

“Every faculty member, staff member and organization made hard choices about what not to spend money on,” Caboni said. 

Those 2024-25 cuts left another $6 million to be made up in the 2025-26 budget. That money will come from these areas, Howarth said:

• Transferring 50% of salaries from vacant positions each month until $4 million is accumulated. Across the university, vacant positions account for as much as $8 million to $12 million in savings a year.
• Cutting down maintenance by $750,000. Howarth said the state’s asset preservation program, which helps cover major maintenance projects, allows the flexibility to reduce the amount of money the university budgets for maintenance out of its own funds.
• Assessing a 13% overhead charge on some revenue-dependent operations, which will generate about $600,000. 
• Reducing by $1 million WKU’s reserve for pensions for employees in the Kentucky Employee Retirement System. Fewer WKU employees are under the KERS system, Howarth said, and the state has approved the reduction. 

Those moves close the gap in the two-year “budget realignment strategy,” Howarth said. 

While the university budget was approved with a 2% payroll pool for faculty and staff wage increases starting Jan. 1, that won’t be certain until the fall, Howarth said, when officials can make sure revenues and enrollment hit targets in the budget. 

The budget projects a freshman class of 2,800 students, or a slight increase over the 2,788 in the fall 2024 freshman class. 

Another major change in the budget is the implementation of college fees, which will replace 799 different course fees that WKU has used in years past. The new college fees range from $15 per credit hour for classes taken in Potter College of Arts and Letters, College of Education and Behavioral Sciences and Ogden College of Science and Engineering, to $20 per credit hour for classes taken in College of Health and Human Services and Gordon Ford College of Business. 

The new college fees, Provost Robert “Bud” Fischer said, will simplify the fee structure and will generate money to allow each college to adequately fund changes and innovations needed in its curriculum and staffing.

Caboni contract extended

Also on Friday, the regents approved 10-0 extending Caboni’s contract until June 30, 2029, and increased his salary to $524,700, an 11% increase to his base salary. Caboni can also earn an annual performance bonus of 10%, based on several factors.

He also will receive a deferred compensation plan of “the monthly cash value of eighteen percent (18%) of the annual base salary … into a 457(f) compensation plan account.” The supplemental retirement plan is “an incentive for the president to remain with the university for the term of this agreement…,” the contract says. 

Chair Currie Milliken said Caboni earned the raise and the contract extension.

“We commend him for his efforts and accomplishments,” Milliken said. “We want to continue this work with him.”