President Kennedy announces CU system staff furloughs

Dear Colleagues,

I very much appreciate all you are doing to continue system administration’s important role in providing services to the campuses and adding value to their efforts to serve our students and state. Sometimes our work here occurs behind the scenes, but it is no less critical to CU meeting its mission.

We are all aware of the extremely challenging financial conditions COVID-19 brought about. Personnel costs are more than 70 percent of our expenditures. As part of our early mitigation efforts, my leadership team at system administration joined me in taking a 10% pay cut through furloughs, as did the campus chancellors and their leadership teams.

The campuses are making further cuts across their workforce, and it is appropriate that we join in this shared sacrifice and be seen as good partners. To that end, all system administration employees who make more than $60,000 annually will take one furlough day per month, (which equates to about a 5% cut), effective July 1 and continuing until further notice. This is one of several actions we are taking to stabilize our budget.

You may have seen that we had some good and bad budget news this week. The federal CARES act allowed the governor to provide some $450 million in funding for higher education (CU’s share is $127 million). We appreciate the funding and particularly the work of Colorado’s Congressional delegation, which went to bat for our state and university.

We also learned that Colorado higher education will take a one-time $493 million cut (58%) in state funding (CU’s share is $140 million). The federal relief funds will definitely provide help to campuses as they work to educate, retain and graduate students, but they do not replace the state cut, and there is strict guidance on how the funds must be used.  Additionally, we face considerable uncertainty about our other major revenue streams – fall enrollment, research funding and auxiliary revenue (from campus operations such as housing, dining, parking, etc.). At the same time, efforts to ensure the health of our communities and to deliver more content digitally will increase costs. We will know more about our budget as we get closer to fall.

I fully appreciate the difficulty of furloughs at a time when I know COVID-19 has increased the workload and stress on many of us. Yet I believe it will give us a better chance to sustain our operations in the long run and to avoid deeper cuts that would weaken our enterprise. Employee Services will send out more detail regarding how the furlough will be implemented.  We do not want you to work on your furlough days; they are a day without pay AND a day without work.

I appreciate you being part of the CU team and your willingness to help ensure we can emerge from this crisis as a stronger university. Thank you for what you are doing and will continue to do.

All the best,

Kennedy on furloughs