Do you know the name Eli Capilouto? The odds are good that if you do then you go to, or live near the University of Kentucky. For those of you who are not in the know he is the current president of the University of Kentucky. Under his administration the school will be cutting back on a serious number of jobs. The jobs are being cut in order to help the company to cut back on the amount of money that will be spent on the staffing of the university.

The school has decided to cut back on staff, and to force an increase in the amount of tuition of that the students are forced to pay the same time. While the school did not give a total number of layoffs in terms of the absolute numbers of jobs to be cut they did give percentages that tell the extent of the damage. The school is getting ready to cut back about five percent of workers in the administrative areas of the school. They are also getting ready to cut back on 3.3 percent of the academic units staff as well.

In an email sent to the workers the president said the following, “As part of UK’s budget for 2012-2013, we’re providing 90 days of notice to those employees who are part of a reduction in workforce in various areas across the campus. I am urging deans, unit heads and managers who are administering this process to treat those impacted with dignity and compassion during a very difficult time for everyone involved and for our institution. Efforts also are underway to exercise options available to maximize access to benefits on behalf of those impacted. These reductions in our workforce are in the wake of a $20 million reduction in state support for the 2012-2013 year and another $24 million in additional increases in fixed costs for items such as utilities, student financial aid, benefits and limited strategic investments.”

We know that the impacted workers are being given 90 days notice before they are officially put out of a job. This means that the layoff numbers are probably high enough to qualify as a mass layoff action. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.” Under the terms of a mass layoff action the company that is getting ready to cut back on workers has to give extra notice in order to give the workers, and the surrounding community, time to adapt to the loss of income that will come with the loss of the jobs.

The students will have to deal with an increase of about six percent in overall tuition for the coming school year. As you can imagine this move is not one that is very likely to be popular with the students of the school. According to the current fee schedule undergraduate students who are from the state pay per semester $4,564.00 and non-resident students pay $9,370.00 per semester. So the increase will not be horrible, but it will be noticeable to the average student who is struggling to pay tuition.