As promised, a separate post on all the capital spending projects at NU.
Of all the things the independent financial report from October 2025 included, possibly the least sexy was that NU’s bond rating is in the top 8% of all colleges and universities. This is the only ranking NU tops, btw.
But it turns out that perhaps it was the most important, as NU is looking at a billion dollars in capital renovation projects at UNL, including $600 million for the stadium and nearly $400 million for Selleck Quad.
This push to make up for the long-deferred maintenance joins the $2.4 billion, with a B, new hospital and the now (maybe?) $600 million Clarkson deal. This brings the capital project/hospital buy-out up to FOUR BILLION DOLLARS.
I am fairly dubious that they have fundraised four billion-with-a-b dollars for this building spree, which means they’re probably financing these projects much like you and I are mortgaging our homes.
So that’s a lot of debt to finance, even if they somehow have all the funds secured “internally” for the Selleck project. Given we are no longer living in an era of cheap lending, that’s a lot of interest payments to make. A better bond rating, just like a better credit rating, increases your chances of lowering your interest rate.
Ironically, on December 5th 2025, Inside Higher Education reported that all three rating agencies downgraded the entire higher education sector due to the “uncertain policy trajectory,” which sounds like a very strange way to say, due to the coordinated attacks on higher education by the current presidential administration.
Yet this cut-to-spend maneuver does not seem to be isolated to Nebraska. Julia Schleck, previously an English professor at UNL, reported from the national AAUP conference last week that there are consulting companies going around telling universities how to “lower their risk” and increase their bond ratings by… You guessed it, cutting academic departments.
So, what you are saying is that my department, which cost only $1.7 million to run, but turned a modest $30,000 a year above those costs, was canned to maintain NU’s bond rating by demonstrating some sort of fiscal responsibility and unnecessary austerity to the lords of Wall Street?
That goes a long way to explain why they cut EAS (without a coherent case) but magically retained most of the faculty and why four tenured EDAD faculty were mysteriously moved to TLTE with a master’s program that could be run by 1-2 PoPs. Looks like a cut on paper but maintains a bunch of highly research-active faculty, even if it destroyed the only geology and meteorology programs in the state (but hey, Oklahoma will offer Nebraska students in-state tuition to go there instead) and the only Ph.D. program in educational administration. But hey, they can still count those faculty members’ grants and research metrics, even if they don’t understand that having a department of like-minded colleagues and graduate students actually makes that productivity possible.
I still have a lot of theories and questions as to why the other EDAD programs got cut, as well as TMFD and Stats. A lot of them have to do with administrators being scared of/wanting to suck up to the presidential administration because these cuts were disproportionately of faculty of color, non-native born faculty, and women, as well as faculty who teach or engage in research/creative activity that touches on creating a more inclusive and equitable multiracial society. Cool, thanks, I hate it. But I guess in some consultant’s mind, complying in advance with the fascist, white supremacist tendencies of the current administration reduces “risk.”
Listen, I have zero qualms saying NU’s leaders have demonstrated their willingness to get in line with a clearly anti-education presidential administration and destroy higher education in Nebraska, and especially anything that might set off the anti-DEI detectors. WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO DO, FIRE ME? Again? Anyway, I already quit (more on that later).
And unlike Doane University, which required the faculty they just fired to sign a non-disparagement agreement to get some severance pay, or Rodney Bennett’s bogus buyout that was basically an NDA on steroids, no one has offered me a bunch of money to shut up and go away. However, I am open to taking $1.1 million and shutting my mouth about NU’s leadership forever. Have your lawyers call my lawyers.
Not a Financial Problem, a Management Problem
Whatever NU and UNL leaders insist, this absolutely preposterous amount of debt financing they are about to engage in suggests that there is more than enough money in the banana stand. However, what is being spent on is not the core activities of the university. It is making the quad look better, so ESPN will come more often for game day, and more students might choose UNL instead of an SCC school. As the new UNL student regent said, as quoted by Chris Dunker of LJS, “”I think it will change the atmosphere on gamedays for students and for fans walking on campus,” he said. “I think students are really going to enjoy this and it will be a huge draw.”
That doesn’t sound like an educationally necessary investment. Once again, NU and UNL leaders are shunting financial support away from the core mission of the university (teaching, research, service to the state) to… football. And the med school, but also definitely football. The desperate attempt to get back into the AAU, while also bolstering football, suggests a very real fear of being booted from the Big 10 and losing all of that sweet, sweet TV money. Of course, investing in academics for AAU is at odds with pumping up the football team, creating this manic sense of trying to stick fingers in dams without actually addressing any of the real challenges of running a land-grant university in a low population density state without much scenery and kind of crummy weather.
Once again, instead of simply trying to be the best NU it can be, NU is trying to be something it is not. This demonstrates a lack of imagination, a lack of vision, and a lack of leadership.
Disproportionate Spending is a Symptom of Mismanagement
I did some Googling to see what else I could find on this bond stuff in higher education when I came across this absolute gem of a quote from Patricia McGuire :
Whenever I read about a closure, I check the institution’s most recent tax return to see deficit positions, endowments, large contracts, and top executive salaries. Invariably, the executive salaries are disproportionate. While this is not the sole cause of institutional closures, the failure to control management expenses, coupled with the belief that spending more on salaries must mean more creative or competent leadership, leads to great institutional sorrow when those hopeful bubbles burst.
Flatwater Free Press has covered NU/UNL’s excessive pay for administrators already, and many moons ago, I also wrote about the inflated presidential pay for NU.
It is pretty clear to me, at least, that NU does not have a cash flow problem; they have an investment problem. Which is to say, they cannot seem to invest in the things that actually matter: the faculty and staff that do the work day in and day out to educate and support UNL’s students.
Why Do I Still Care?
My friends in the AAUP chapter have tried numerous times now to gently tell me that this circus and these monkeys are not my problem anymore. They’re correct.
But I’m just not done being bitter about being fired to protect NU’s bond rating. That day will come, I hope, when I’m not bitter, but it isn’t, apparently, in the middle of a cross-country move while teaching and trying to get doc students across the finish line.
And, I suppose, in part, my inability to disengage is also because I believe so strongly in public education, in the mission of a land grant university, and in this moment, especially, the importance of both of those things for democracy. Nebraska has been my home for ten years, which is three years longer than any other place I’ve ever lived, including my childhood.
What is happening at UNL is not an isolated case; it is part of a larger national trend that has been cooking for a while now. So, to push back at UNL is to help push back everywhere. To let other university leaders know, faculty are paying attention to what they do and that they cannot just use phrases like structural deficit to scare us. Hey man, we know every public university isn’t funded 100% by state aid and that tuition, research, and other dollars have to make up the difference. It is literally the trajectory of declining funding for public universities since the burst of funding post WWII, not some sort of boogie man. The only actual way to remove the structural deficit would be for the state of Nebraska to fully fund its universities. Pigs will surely fly, or fry, first.
Budget Committee, Budget Committee, Budget Committee
It’s probably not going to be a cure-all, but Interim Chancellor Ankerson agreed in that March meeting to meet with a faculty senate budget committee. I beg you all, talk to your senator, have them write a new motion to create a budget committee if the parliamentarian didn’t like what I wrote, and was passed, in 2024. And then volunteer to be on the committee. Gang up on our business school colleagues to join the committee too.
The majority of our Big 10 peers have some type of committee for faculty to specifically engage with the budget. There are numerous models for such committees, as my colleague wrote about in 2024. Pick one and hold Ankerson to that promise. It is a step towards being able to resist further damage to the teaching, research, and service mission of the University of Nebraska. In this moment, a Faculty Senate Budget Committee is one of the few avenues we might have towards shared governance. And if she does suddenly forget that she said she would meet with such a committee, remember the words of Shirley Chisom, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
