Streamlining reflects nuance in student enrollment, inflation in operational costs
By TIM CARPENTER
Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — Wichita State University president Richard Muma alerted faculty Thursday to prepare for a minimum 3% budget reduction and likely dismissal of campus employees despite celebrating the overall highest enrollment in university history.
Muma said in a message to the university community that nearly six months of internal debate on the budget centered on ramifications of a crash in international student enrollment, the nationwide decline in high school graduates, failure of state funding to keep pace with rising operational costs, the increasingly competitive fight for research funding and surging monetary demands of collegiate athletics.
He indicated budget adjustments at WSU would be targeted and occur in the current fiscal year as well as the the fiscal year starting July 1, 2026. The Kansas Board of Regents, which has authority over WSU and other public state universities in Kansas, submitted a reduced budget request to the 2026 Kansas Legislature in response to political pressure to hold down expenditures in the upcoming fiscal year.
“We are projecting a minimum 3% general use budget reduction,” Muma said. “While the specific steps will differ across (WSU’s) divisions, this will likely require a reduction in our workforce in some areas.”
Muma’s disclosures about WSU’s budget follow statements by University of Kansas chancellor Doug Girod about plans to cut spending by $32 million on the Lawrence campus and reduce spending by $39 million on the KU Medical Center campus in Kansas City, Kansas.
Approximately half of the reduction on the Lawrence campus would be rolled into bringing compensation for some faculty or staff closer to market rates of pay, he said. For example, he said, the Board of Regents approved KU’s proposal to provide maintenance workers on the main campus in Lawrence and a satellite campus in Overland Park with at least a 4% pay raise.
Girod said the 2026 session of the Legislature would be important, and early indications were that it would result in another tight budget year for state universities in Kansas.
The announcement by Muma came on heels of Wichita State’s Oct. 1 report that touted “record-breaking enrollment this fall, continuing a decade of extraordinary growth.” He said the student headcount at WSU and WSU Tech hit 25,147 this fall. He said the tally reflected five consecutive years of growth at WSU.
“This surge in enrollment reflects what we’ve known all along,” Muma said two months ago. “When you prioritize access, affordability and student success, students will choose Wichita State.”
In Thursday’s statement, however, Muma said the reality of higher enrollment was “headcount alone does not always translate into revenue growth.” He said WSU wasn’t the only university in the region experiencing comparable challenges.
In the commentary shared with WSU personnel, Muma emphasized the erosion of international student enrollment at WSU and linked it to problems with securing student visas. WSU typically enrolled graduate students from about 100 countries but recently placed an emphasis on recruiting engineering students from India.
“Because of changes in the way student visas are issued, we have experienced declines in international students and are predicting an acceleration of this dynamic for the foreseeable future,” Muma said.
The administration of President Donald Trump made it more difficult to obtain a student visa in 2025, and the change had an influence on first-time graduate student enrollment in the United States. The Institute of International Education’s survey of 800 U.S. higher education institutions said enrollment by new international students fell 17% this fall.