On July 1, NCAA Division I schools could start paying their athletes just like any other university employee.
The cost is already causing tensions in Kansas, where faculty and staff are fighting to raise their own low pay.
The salary pool is capped at $20.5 million, but schools can distribute it as they see fit.
That money is in addition to any name, image and likeness payments — NIL for short — the athletes may already receive.
KCUR discovered that KU Athletics’ finances are so bad that the new student-athlete payroll is coming out of the university general fund, made up of tuition money and state tax dollars.
Kansas Athletics was $11.9 million in the red last year, and projects a $14.9 million deficit this fiscal year.
Tensions over using general funds to cover Athletics payments came to a head Monday night when the Faculty Senate and University Senate called for a no-confidence vote in Chancellor Doug Girod and university leadership.
“These concerns stem from ongoing arrangements regarding the new football stadium and related development, national policies driving unanticipated changes to the pay structure of student athletes and programs,” an email to senators said.
Senate leadership said it will give the results of the vote to the Kansas Board of Regents on Wednesday.
The faculty and staff also called for “an external audit of KU finances.”
In 2024, 14% of KU’s general fund, about $168 million, came from state tax money. About a quarter came from tuition.
State Sen. Dinah Sykes from Lenexa, minority leader and member of the senate education committee, was very clear that pay for athletes “should come out of athletics.”
She was “surprised” the money was coming from the general fund.
All this comes as United Academics of the University of Kansas, the new faculty union, is engaged in fraught negotiations with KU.
Last week, the university offered a one percent across-the-board pay hike. After two years of negotiating, KU said that was its last, best offer.
If the sides can’t reach a deal by Thursday, the university said it will declare an impasse.
In a December budget document, the university said it wants to “achieve market pay for all employees by FY 2029.”
But Emily Casey, Assistant Professor of American Art and Culture and a union official, doesn’t believe that.
“The university does have money to put towards pay for the members of our union, faculty and academic staff,” she told KCUR after a union meeting Monday night.
She didn’t begrudge KU athletes potentially making millions of dollars a year while KU faculty are among the lowest paid of any major research university in the county. One study ranked KU 113th out of 120 universities. By comparison, Bill Self is listed as the highest paid college basketball coach in the country at $8.8 million a year.
“We have never been in the business of making judgments about how other folks on this campus get paid. The athletes here do hard work,” she said.
Casey said the union has had victories. The university agreed to minimum salaries that raise some members’ pay by $8,000 a year. It has a $1.5 million pool for merit increases. KU has also agreed to academic freedom for all members, not just tenured faculty.
KU Athletics’ financial future may not improve soon. “Athletic funding pressures impacting university support” is listed among challenges facing KU, according to the December Financial Status Update obtained by KCUR.
“Is that an expected expense? No. Is that what we designed for when we prepared for that? Clearly not,” Girod told KCUR.
He also said KU was one of the few schools that actually got money from athletics to cover tuition and other expenses.
But that money disappeared with the new $20.5 million athlete payroll and the costs of rebuilding the David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium.
KU is finishing work on the east side of the stadium and will soon embark on building a hotel, student housing and outdoor event plaza – all part of an almost billion-dollar public-private partnership called the Gateway Project.
KU projects it will make $1 million in revenue in 2027 and soar to $7.3 million by 2030. Details of the deal between KU and the developer have not been released.
The project has been criticized for a lack of transparency.
Girod said the school gains in the long term by covering those expenses with university general fund money.
“The impact of it is very significant in driving enrollment and driving the student experience, which is what drives enrollment,” he said.
While enrollment is up, KU projects a decrease due to a looming “enrollment cliff,” or projected major decline in student populations because of a declining birth rate that began in 2007.
