The Board of Regents voted to eliminate four programs at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on Friday to address a $27.5 million budget deficit, despite a plea from dozens of faculty, students and community members to save the programs.
The Board of Regents approved UNL Chancellor Rodney Bennett’s proposal as is to axe Earth and atmospheric sciences 8-0, educational administration 7-1, statistics 7-1, textiles, merchandising and fashion design 7-1.
Outside the board room faculty and students in eliminated programs were crying and hugging each other.
Regent Barbara Weitz was the lone no vote on three of the program eliminations.
Additionally, the Board of Regents approved merging the Department of Entomology with plant pathology, while agricultural economics will consolidate with agricultural leadership, education and communication. The university said all current degrees offered will continue under the proposed consolidated departments.
The university is expected to save $6.7 million by eliminating about 50 positions within the associated programs and $2 million from the department mergers.
UNL Student Regent Libby Wilkins voted yes on all the cuts. Student regents' votes are recorded separately but do not count.
“If I vote no on this, all of these proposed program eliminations, other students and arguably more students would suffer from this,” she said. “The entire student experience would be different for every student, and I know that there are no alternative options that will address the budget shortfall without impacting 1000s of Nebraskans.”
“This hurts, this hurts every single one of us,” Wilkins added.
Bennett recommended the Board of Regents take action Friday because UNL is burning through its reserves.
“I strongly believe we cannot continue to spend beyond our means because of an unwillingness or inability to make hard budgetary decisions, and it would be irresponsible to continue delaying necessary changes while spending through our cash reserves,” Bennett said.
UNL will see the savings over the next few years as the programs are phased out, and delaying it would likely only make future cuts bigger, Gold said.
Regent Tim Clare, left, and President Jeffrey Gold at Board of Regents meeting in Varner Hall on Friday, Dec. 5, 2025, in Lincoln.
Regent Tim Clare of Lincoln agreed with Gold and Bennett that the university must take action now instead of continually “kicking the can down the road.”
“We're not making these choices because the programs lack value,” Clare said. “We are making them because we must ensure that the University of Nebraska can remain strong, sustainable and competitive for future generations.”
Regent Jim Scheer of Norfolk partially blamed the Nebraska Legislature for NU’s budget issues, since its funding to the university has not kept pace with rising costs and inflation.
The Nebraska Legislature approved a 1.25% increase, or $8.7 million, in state appropriations to NU over the next two years, which is less than the 3.5% increase the Board of Regents requested.
Gold said, adjusting for inflation, state appropriations now are 74% of what they were in 2016.
Scheer told the faculty and students who testified against the cuts that their energy should’ve been focused on the Nebraska Legislature to fund NU.
“I just I feel like we're taking the brunt as a board for the decisions,” Scheer said, “They are our decisions, but we're not the ones that are forcing it, the dollars are forcing it, and the lack thereof, and our lack of dollars are not because we spent tons of money other places, because we have less money.”
UNO Student Regent Drew Leisy, who voted against eliminating Earth and atmospheric sciences, said it shocked him to see the program on the chopping block.
“If we take this away from the state of Nebraska, I can really see the hurt that this will do. And that's why I’m voting No,” Leisy said. “I'm not willing to do this in the state of Nebraska.”
The board passed the cuts despite over 100 people speaking at the meeting, mainly against the budget cuts, which have been criticized by faculty groups. Speakers filled an overflow room and the halls of Varner Hall as public comment lasted over five hours and continued into the afternoon.
An overflow room at a Board of Regents meeting in Varner Hall on Friday, Dec. 5, 2025, in Lincoln. At least 95 people were signed up to speak at the meeting where the Board of Regents voted to eliminate earth and atmospheric sciences, educational administration, statistics, and textiles, merchandising, and fashion design at UNL to cut costs.
Cheers and applause could be heard as faculty, students and community members pleaded with the Board of Regents to save the programs and consider the broader impact eliminating them would have on Nebraska.
All of the eliminated programs were the only ones offered in Nebraska. Education administration programs are offered within the NU system and at the Nebraska State Colleges; however, the PhD program was unique to UNL.
Sherilyn Fritz, a professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences, said NU officials did not realistically consider the costs of eliminating the programs. Board documents cite that UNL could retain about 85% of students in impacted programs through alternative majors or minors; however, a poll of her own students says otherwise.
“We asked our students their plans, nearly 60% already planned to leave UNL, a tuition loss of well over $800,000,” Fritz said. “A conservative estimate, considering that over one-third of our undergraduates pay non-resident tuition.”
Kyra Mauntel, a sophomore geology major from New Haven, Missouri, is one of those students planning to leave for the University of Arkansas.
“Plenty of my peers will be leaving as well and heading to other colleges that still offer their desired major, as this is more than just a degree to us,” Mauntel said.
She said she decided to pursue her childhood dream of becoming a geologist at UNL after her mom’s co-workers raved about the university and its geology program graduates.
“They had an overwhelmingly positive response and claimed I would receive an amazing education here,” Mautel said. “On top of this, they mentioned all the amazing opportunities outside of the class, namely, research clubs and internships.”
Mauntel said that UNL’s reputation is at risk by eliminating Earth and atmosphere sciences, which geology falls under.
“You are ruining UNL’s national reputation permanently,” Mauntel said. “If you eliminate the department, no one will recommend this college to their students with well-regarded programs in crisis unnecessarily.”
Josef Koubsky, a senior at Millard West High School in Omaha, said he planned to come to UNL to study geology and didn’t consider going anywhere else until he heard of the budget cuts.
“It really led me to believe that I am only $11,000 in tuition and $14,000 in housing and meal plans, and not a real person,” he said.
Koubsky said he wanted to stay in Nebraska for his education and his career, but without the program, he will look elsewhere.
“I would not change my major to stay in the state because I'm interested in geology, and that would take all of the money that I would pay out of state as well,” he said.
The financial aspects of the budget cuts themselves were questioned when the UNL’s Association of American University Professors released a financial audit of the NU system, which found it in “strong” financial health.
Dakota Taylor, community outreach coordinator for the department of textiles, merchandising and fashion design, questioned why the university proposed cutting programs that generate revenue.
She reported that textiles, merchandising, and fashion design generate $2.10 for every dollar the university invests in them, with $1.5 million in external research and extension grants, $209,837 in NU Foundation support and $1.56 million in tuition revenue. Their operating budget for last year was $1.39 million.
“We are an academic unit that pays for ourselves and then pays it forward,” Taylor said.
The Daily Nebraskan found in the leaked spreadsheet that every program eliminated appeared to be profitable. Under a header titled “total_realizable_base_tuition_less_budget_2024,” every program that the chancellor proposed eliminating generated more money from tuition dollars than the department costs to run.
The budget cuts made Kelsy Burke, a sociology professor who’s been with the university for 10 years, consider leaving UNL for the first time.
“When I look at the incredible scholars who would be fired as a result of these proposed cuts, leaders in their field, award winners, recipients of millions of grant dollars, and when I look to the contributions of these departments, to our students, to the state, to our local schools, our businesses, our agriculture, our safety, who is to say that my department will not be next?” she said.
Burke said she wants the university to continually reinvest in academics, in a similar fashion to how Nebraska Athletics gave football head coach Matt Rhule a contract extension to stay amid speculation that he might leave for Penn State.
“What a model of optimism and growth this provides for us, giving this coach an incentive to further develop roots, to grow into excellence,” Burke said. “Just think what could happen if our university would put the same faith and commitment and incentives to our academic mission.”
Justification for cuts
NU officials have told The Daily Nebraskan that the university's income has not kept pace with rising operating costs and inflation, due to declining net tuition and stagnant state funding. Including the cuts passed on Friday, UNL has cut more than $100 million from its budget over the past five years.
Bennett said he didn’t believe UNL should continue to have across-the-board cuts that would touch every department on campus and put forward a plan to make strategic cuts.
Board documents cited the programs’ poor scores on teaching and research metrics as justification for their elimination, a justification several faculty members and the Academic Planning Committee dispute.
Bennett said the programs “fell below expectations.”
Statistics faculty reviewed a leaked document containing the metrics and claimed to have found several errors.
“Statisticians are usually pretty quiet people, but this semester, I've seen what it takes to get us pissed off,” Susan VanderPlas, an associate statistics professor, said. “You really just have to come for the data.”
Susan VanderPlas, an associate professor of statistics speaks at a Board of Regents meeting in Varner Hall on Friday, Dec. 5, 2025, in Lincoln.
VanderPlas broke down some of the statistics faculty findings to The Daily Nebraskan in October. She pointed to the number of degrees awarded as one of the flawed metrics. The undergraduate statistics program, which started in 2021, was included in the calculation. However, since its first students won't graduate until this spring, the metric made the department's numbers look worse than they actually were.
Other errors they found included numerous data errors, such as misplaced decimal points and incorrectly typed data.
VanderPlas said faculty from around the country sent in letters of support for the statistics department.
“The general consensus was, 'Who would be crazy enough to cut statistics in the age of AI?’” she said.
The concerns with the metrics, in part, led the Academic Planning Committee to vote against many of Bennett’s proposed budget cuts and call for a delay.
The Academic Planning Committee voted against eliminating Earth and atmospheric sciences and statistics, while approval to eliminate education administration and textures, merchandising and fashion design passed by 1 and 3 votes, respectively.
The Executive Graduate Council voted against eliminating all of the associated graduate programs on the chopping block.
Earth and atmospheric sciences is the only program on the list that has not met graduation requirements set by the Nebraska Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education. They’ve awarded 5.6 undergraduate degrees and 1.8 PhD degrees each year on average over the last 5 years.
The Nebraska Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education requires undergraduate programs to average 7 degrees awarded per year over 5 years, while graduate programs must average 5 degrees per year.
Proposed alternatives:
Several faculty members proposed alternatives to eliminating programs ahead of the vote that the Board of Regents did not consider on Friday.
“They did exactly what we expected, Elizabeth Niehaus, a professor of educational administration said. “They did not listen to a word we said.”
Several education administration faculty members joined together to propose an alternative to cutting programs. They proposed major restructuring of UNL and UNMC by centralizing administrative positions through the NU system. It mirrors how some other Big Ten schools are organized.
Specifically, they proposed eliminating the chancellor's offices at UNL and UNMC and other top administrative positions. Elizabeth Niehaus, a professor of educational administration, estimates it would save $6.5 million, a figure similar to the program eliminations.
“This proposal would involve very few position eliminations beyond positions that are already vacant, maintaining key staff doing the day-to-day work that makes our university run,” Niehaus said.
Niehaus told The Daily Nebraskan that NU may already be moving in that direction, citing the UNL-UNMC joint accreditation.
Joining the two campuses' accreditations did not require any structural changes, but in a frequently asked questions list sent to students last week, the university left the door open to changes.
“While joint accreditation does not require structural change, it provides an important opportunity to evaluate how we operate and how we can best serve students and the state,” the FAQ said. “Any potential changes to administrative structure would be thoughtfully considered, with a focus on long-term effectiveness, sustainability and mission alignment.”
Gold said in an interview with The Daily Nebraskan that the university was mainly looking at lower-level administrative changes to create more efficiencies across the NU system, but title changes among the top campus leaders may occur.
During the no-confidence vote against the proposal, UNL Faculty Senate President John Shrader hinted that Bennett’s time may be up.
Faculty Senate John Shrader, an associate professor of broadcasting and sports media and communication speaks at a Board of Regents meeting in Varner Hall on Friday, Dec. 5, 2025, in Lincoln.
“My understanding is that serious action is being discussed at this time to come to a resolution about the leadership of our campus,” Shrader told the faculty senate.
Bennett’s contract is ending this summer, and unless renewed by the Board of Regents, he’ll no longer lead the university after the school year.
Bhaskar Bhattacharya, the head of the statistics department, proposed merging UNL’s statistics department with the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s biostatistics programs to achieve similar cost savings.
Bhattacharya said it could be the first cross-campus department following the approval of the joint accreditation between UNL and UNMC.
The remaining budget reductions Bennett proposed are as follows, which did not require Board of Regents approval:
The College of Engineering will cut $225,000 and the College of Arts and Sciences will cut $325,000 in state-aided funding for graduate assistantships.
The College of Architecture will cut $700,000 in “streamlining operations, administration, staffing and curriculum.” This is a change from Bennett’s initial proposal to eliminate community and regional planning, and landscape architecture programs.
The College of Fine and Performing Arts identified $350,000 to cut from its budget as an alternative to Bennett’s initial proposal to create a shared director for the Glenn Korff School of Music and the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film.
The university will save $5.5 million from the Voluntary Separation Incentive Program, a buyout for longtime faculty members. University officials have said they’ve budgeted for around 70 faculty to leave through the VSIP.
The Division of Student Life will cut all of its state-aided funding, totaling $850,000.
The university will find $2.5 million in alternative funding for unfunded remissions, such as Regents Scholarship and scholarships for first responders and their children, for which the university doesn’t collect tuition dollars.
The Office of the Chancellor, Executive Vice Chancellor’s Office and Business and Finance will cut $2.95 million by eliminating administrative and staff positions.
The Colleges of Business, Engineering,and Journalism and Mass Communications will cut $750,000 in administration and staff position eliminations and reductions in operating expenses.
The university will also reduce its state-aided budget, money from taxpayers and tuition dollars by 1% totaling $4.61 million.