Dive Brief:
- Kent State University plans to lay off up to 45 staff members in the coming weeks as it tries to close an estimated $18 million gap in its fiscal 2027 budget, President Todd Diacon said in a public video message last week.
- The public Ohio institution is set to finish its current fiscal year with a roughly $1.5 million surplus on a $720 million budget. “That is far, far preferable to running a deficit,” Diacon said. But he added, “It doesn’t meet my goal of finishing the year with a 1% surplus.”
- Diacon pointed out that the university’s board does not allow it to run a budget deficit and said Kent State is typically among the most financially healthy public institutions in Ohio.
Dive Insight:
Kent State’s president framed the university’s forthcoming cuts in the context of broader financial challenges across the higher education world, citing recent program cuts at East Carolina University and job cuts at University of Maryland.
He also said it was important to balance the institution’s budget without dipping into its savings — that is, to close fiscal years with positive margins between revenue and costs.
“If you have a structural deficit and you don’t correct it, it’s just going to get worse and bigger, and grow exponentially,” Diacon said.
In recent weeks, university leaders have been looking to slash up to 10% of Kent State’s expenses to head off a multimillion-dollar deficit taking shape in their projections for the fiscal 2027 year, which begins July 1.
Officials plan to eliminate open positions, end some vendor contracts and cut back on travel, among other moves. But to fully balance the institution’s budget — after cutting expenses nearly every year since 2017 — the university needs to make workforce reductions for the first time since then, according to Diacon.
The layoffs represent a little over 1% of Kent State’s roughly 3,400 employees.
“If you’re one of those employees who receives that notice, that’s 100% of your world,” Diacon said.
Most cut employees will receive 90 days of severance pay.
At the same time, Kent State plans to invest existing funds into academic areas that generate tuition revenue. Diacon highlighted the university’s aeronautics and engineering college — which he said has experienced “phenomenal growth” — as well as its fashion program.
It’s also providing 2% raises for nonunion employees for fiscal 2027, as well as bringing back a version of site lunches for on-campus employees, Diacon said.
Enrollment on Kent State’s main campus has been relatively steady, while the regional campuses have seen declines that necessitate cost management, according to Diacon. Between 2019 and 2024, enrollment at the main campus has fallen 4.8% to 26,374 students, per federal data.
The institution also has seven satellite campuses throughout Ohio. From 2020 to 2024, fall enrollment declined across those campuses by 17.8% to 8,482 students, according to institutional data.
Diacon took pains to explain that Kent State was fairly healthy financially, saying at one point that the institution was “nowhere near” financial exigency, a process for financially distressed colleges to quickly shed programs and tenured faculty.
“I don’t have that concern because we keep on it year after year,” he said. “We make the adjustments year by year, and we don’t spend our reserves, we don’t spend our savings.”
