Tenure-track faculty down, non-tenure-track up
358FY22 → 321FY27−10%
filled tenure-track positions in the six colleges, FY22–FY27
Non-tenure-track 147 → 215 (+46%).
Positions →See the key trends from this analysis →
Ask about a salary, a department or college average, a budget line, a trend, or a comparison between universities. Answers come only from the source documents, with a table or chart when the numbers call for one — or click a suggested follow-up.
Open a college for its headcount, pay, individual salaries and departments.
What the budget books, the class schedule and the peer reports show, in four areas. Each card links to the full report with its rules and sources.
Non-tenure-track 147 → 215 (+46%).
Positions →Student credit hours rose +12%; average class (all classes) 19.9 → 23.8 seats.
Course offerings →What it suggests open lines were removed from the budget rather than refilled.
Vacant positions →What it suggests most of the increase came through promotions and market or equity money, not general raises.
+14.2% without promotion money. 142 of 180 saw no change in budgeted pay in FY26 and 117 in FY27.
Faculty pay →What it suggests experienced, higher-paid faculty are being replaced by lower-paid hires.
Faculty pay →| College | Tenure-track | Non-tenure-track |
|---|---|---|
| Barton | +8.7% | +46.6%† |
| Liberal Arts & Sciences | +13.1% | +36.1% |
| Fine Arts | +14.2% | +13.7%† |
| Education | +23.5% | +37.5%† |
| Engineering | +30.9% | +49.3%† |
| Health Professions | +42.1% | +19.8% |
| Rank | Whole university | Business |
|---|---|---|
| Assistant professor | −18% | −20% |
| Associate professor | −15% | −32% |
| Professor | −13% | −24% |
Peers pooled by headcount; department chairs included and deans excluded on every side.
Peers →What it suggests while the number of faculty fell over the same years.
On a like-for-like band, 20 → 38 since FY21 while Nebraska–Lincoln went 32 → 23.
Senior administration →92 → 154 without NIAR and the Division of Research. The $100K line is fixed, not inflation-adjusted.
High-paid staff →Over the same span, all-funds instruction −2.5% since FY24, while the President’s Office General Use budget rose +85% and Intercollegiate Athletics $3.2M → $13.9M, including a new $6.7M General Use operating line.
Budget →Every figure here is computed from the public source files (WSU budget books FY2019–FY2027, the class schedule, KansasOpenGov payroll, peer budget reports) and checked by the same audits as the full reports. Periods differ by card and are shown on each one. Percentages are changes in the stated measure, not judgements. † marks a group of fewer than ten people. Direction only: nothing here establishes cause. Each card links to the full report with its counting rules; the Context button on a card holds the Budget Office’s explanations and reader comments.
every figure on this page comes from these official publications
Unofficial, independent, not affiliated with any university, and not guaranteed accurate — do your own assessment. This site is a personal, independent compilation of publicly published budget books, budgeted-employee reports and state payroll records. It is not affiliated with, reviewed by or endorsed by any university, and nothing here is an official figure or statement. The numbers were extracted by software and the answers are generated by an AI assistant; both can contain errors (mis-read lines, mis-matched names, mis-classified titles, mistaken interpretation), and salary figures are budgeted or payroll amounts, not what any person ultimately earned. Nothing on this site is advice, and it must not be used for any employment, compensation, evaluation or other decision. Treat everything as a starting point: ask the data box your own questions, plot what you want to see, and verify against the official documents listed under Data sources at the top of the page.
What data this site holds. Wichita State budgets and budgeted employees for FY2019–FY2027, set against the published budgets of Kansas State, Oklahoma, Nebraska–Omaha and Colorado State. Budgeted salaries by name, rank and department for every faculty member at Wichita State, the University of Kansas and the University of Nebraska campuses (UNL, UNO, UNK), and for the non-faculty staff named in the Wichita State budget books. Actual income (calendar-year total pay received, from state payroll records via KansasOpenGov) for every employee at the three Kansas universities, Wichita State, Kansas and Kansas State, for 2021–2025. Questions in the Ask box are answered only from this data.
How the figures were computed. Every number on this site was extracted from the source documents and calculated by deterministic, re-runnable scripts — the same inputs always give the same figures, and no number was typed by hand or produced by AI. AI is used only to phrase the Ask-the-data answers from those precomputed figures. Where a figure is an estimate (promotion increments from the budget books’ medians, hire-year vacancy budgets), the page says so where it appears.
This site is a personal, independent compilation and analysis of publicly available documents: the annual operating budget books and budgeted-employee reports published by Wichita State University, the University of Kansas, Kansas State University, the University of Nebraska system and the University of Oklahoma, enrollment factbooks, and the State of Kansas payroll records published through KansasOpenGov. It is not an official publication, statement, or position of any of those universities, the Kansas Board of Regents, the State of Kansas, or any of their offices, and has not been reviewed or endorsed by them. The author is a faculty member acting in a personal capacity.
Figures were extracted programmatically from PDF and spreadsheet documents, linked across years and across sources by name, and summarized by software. The "Ask the data" answers and the "why this salary changed" explanations are generated by an AI assistant from that data. While figures were cross-checked against the source documents during preparation, extraction, name-matching, title-classification, department-merging and AI-interpretation errors are possible, and some figures (hire-year vacancy budgets, split budget lines, merged department names) are the author's reconstructions, explained where they appear. Budgeted salaries are what a budget book funded a position at, and payroll figures are calendar-year totals as published by the state; neither is a statement of what any individual ultimately earned, and none of it is advice. Nothing on this site should be used for any employment, compensation, evaluation, hiring or other decision about any person — readers should verify against the original source documents linked in this page's footer. Everything is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, and the author accepts no liability for errors or for any use made of it. Names appear only as they are printed in those public records; anyone who believes a figure about them is wrong is invited to point to the source line and it will be corrected. Category labels ("Instruction," "Academic Support," "Institutional Support," etc.) and their plain-language descriptions reflect WSU's own budget-program definitions; the "faculty salary proxy" language used for Instruction is this author's characterization, not an official designation, since the Instruction program also includes some non-salary instructional costs.
Headlines, framing, and commentary throughout this page reflect this author's interpretation of the underlying public data and are offered for informational and discussion purposes only. They are not statements of fact about any individual's or office's conduct, are not intended to imply wrongdoing, and should not be relied upon as financial, legal, or official institutional guidance.