UNK administration is proposing large cuts to the Honors Program’s housing and cash scholarship funds. If the proposed budget were approved, it would reduce the program’s ability to keep students on campus, attract incoming freshmen and provide financial assistance to current Honors members.
Ben Lefdal, a UNK junior in the Honors Program, said the large cuts would be detrimental to the program.
“Currently, the Honors Program room scholarship fund is about 100 room scholarships, which totals to approximately $645,000,” Lefdal said. “A recent proposal reduces that room scholarship fund to $100,000. The final proposal presented to one of our ladies here in the program was anywhere from $50,000 to $85,000. In terms of cash scholarships, the funds were generally between $250,000 to $300,000. The new amount given is $135,000, so I describe (the cuts) as catastrophic – because they kind of are.”
Chancellor Neal Schnoor was contacted for this story, but he redirected questions to Kelly Bartling, UNK’s vice chancellor for enrollment management and marketing.
Bartling said the University has a $4.5 million budget deficit, and many areas will be affected by the cuts.
“The $4.5 million budget deficit (means) we need to look at all revenue streams and all sources of funding in order to get to the $4.5 million,” Bartling said. “That includes personnel cuts, savings and cutbacks on our operational funds and revenue increases wherever we can find new sources of revenue. So one way or another, we either have to bring in revenue or spend less, or a combination of both, ideally.”
Bartling said this issue will lead to cuts in more than just the Honors Program.
“Everyone’s scholarships are going to somehow be affected by the problem that we’re having,” Bartling said. “Everyone across the board is going to feel the pain, disappointment and frustration that we can’t continue to do scholarships or discounts in the way that we have in the past. The reality is that every dollar that we remit somehow or another equals another dollar that we’re not able to pay somebody to work here.”
According to the UNK website, tuition remission is the waiving, reducing or eliminating of tuition charges. It serves as financial aid for students who meet specific criteria.
Bartling said these problems are being navigated by an entire team of individuals.
“This approach has been approved by the chancellor’s leadership team,” Bartling said, “So the chancellor, the vice chancellors, our athletic director, our associate vice chancellor for student affairs, our alumni and foundation director – that’s the chancellor’s leadership team. They’ve approved this, (but) we’re still working out the details on the final approach for Honors, which needs to happen in collaboration with the senior vice chancellor and the Honors director.”
Bartling said this plan needs to be finalized by February.
From 2021 to 2025, the University has increased its tuition remission given to students by about $3.7 million.
Angela Hollman has served as the Honors Program Director since January of 2020 and will be resigning effective December 31, 2025.
Hollman said it appears like funding is gearing more towards general admissions, rather than toward specialized UNK programs.
“There’s a problem with the tuition remission budget,” Hollman said. “Chancellor Schnoor just sent that out in an announcement. We know they have gone over budget for the last few years on the tuition side. It seems like they’re taking (away) the ability of the programs like KLOP, KHOP and Honors to offer room scholarships, and they’re putting them onto their merit scholarships instead.”
Harrison Kuta, a junior Honors student, said he thinks there’s a correlation between the proposed cuts and the increase in tuition remission.
“It’s kind of odd that they’ve added like $4 million in the last few years to general admissions that equates to the deficit,” Kuta said. “I feel like that adds questions as to why they’re cutting some of our programs.”
However, Bartling said the nearly $3.7 million increase in tuition remissions isn’t correlated to the $4.5 million cuts UNK is having to make.
She said there are a variety of reasons why UNK has to make changes.
“There’s so many factors surrounding our current budget situation, some of it is legislative funding,” Bartling said. “We have revenue shortfall from decreasing enrollment, (and) we’ve got increased costs surrounding utilities, salaries and health insurance. It’s kind of a perfect storm of a difficult economy and wage inflation. The cost of everything is going up, and then we had at least two years of no tuition increase. I want to be clear – I don’t want the cost of tuition to increase, but when it doesn’t, then it leaves revenue flat with costs going up, and something’s got to give.”
Changes to Current Honors Students Scholarship Funding
If these cuts were put in place, one main concern for the Honors Program will be financially assisting current students.
Honors students can reapply for yearly scholarships that help them pay for UNK housing. Since the final budget for the Honors Program hasn’t been set, it is unknown how continuing scholarships will look in the future.
Hollman said the program won’t have the budget to cater to both incoming and current students.
“We were able to reposition the funding so that it both benefited students coming in and students that were still here,” Hollman said. “Which I strongly believe in because I don’t think you should get people here and then cut off the flow, especially if you have students who are really going above and beyond and serving the program and University. Currently, the proposed new scholarship model will impact the current students’ fund – as in we won’t have any to give. We won’t have the budget for it. We’ll have to reposition it and just give it to the freshman coming in.”
Hollman said current continuing scholarships allow students who perform better in college than in high school to also have financial assistance.
“(For) students coming in, you’re looking at what they did the past four years and that may or may not be a good reflection of what they’ll do in college,” Hollman said. “It’s often a good predictor, but not 100%. We like to have the ability to recognize students who maybe didn’t come in as a shining star, but then you can tell in their freshman year (of college) that they’re just knocking it out of the park. So it just gave us the ability to recognize those talents.”
UNK has finalized its merit scholarship award amounts and criteria for the 2026-27 school year. There are multiple tiers of scholarships that each have different requirements. The harder the requirements, the higher the award amount given.
Bartling said UNK increased the number of tiers and also the dollar amount each tier will provide to students. However, she said despite increased award amounts, fewer students will qualify for these scholarships because of the more difficult qualifications for each tier.
Bartling said the new merit scholarships could be a better alternative for Honors students when it comes to housing.
“The other thing to keep in mind is that under this proposal, students are going to receive these room waivers for four years, whereas under the Honors Program currently, it’s typically for one year or two years,” Bartling said. “In many respects, some Honors students are going to benefit from this proposal versus how we are currently doing this.”
Another barrier the Honors Program will have to navigate is being able to house students on campus.
Men’s Hall is a UNK dorm filled solely with Honors students.
Lefdal said living in Men’s Hall is a central part of being in the Honors Program.
“Men’s Hall and the on-campus experience is really a key part of the Honors Program,” Lefdal said. “Being able to be in Men’s and just see your fellow Honors people on a daily – like that is a big part of what we do.”
Caleb Rother, a junior Honors student, said he doesn’t have a four-year housing scholarship, so it would be hard for him to justify living on campus without the renewable housing scholarships.
Kuta said this is also the case for other students.
“Some of my best friends are only on campus because of these room scholarships,” Kuta said. “It’s not feasible for them to be on campus because apartments are cheaper (and) many people would prefer to have their own space, but they choose to stay for the community and also because of the scholarships.”
Concerns for Freshman Recruitment
Normally, programs like Honors, KHOP and KLOP are able to add additional monetary incentives for students to come to UNK.
These funds are at risk with the proposed cuts.
Rother said he’s concerned that funding is going toward general admissions, rather than specialized programs.
“We are taking away funding from our high-performing programs and pre-professional tracks, and we’re giving that toward general admissions, which has consistently proven to underperform,” Rother said. “In general admission, we excel from having strong pre-professional programs and programs like Honors, which really encourages these top students to come.”
Rother said it’s important to fund excellence programs in order to bring in excellent students.
“You look at President Gold, president of the whole NU system, (and) his vision for us is to be the undergraduate excellence campus, and we do that by having programs that incentivize excellent undergraduates, not general admissions,” Rother said. “We want general admissions, obviously, but we can’t be punishing our excellence programs in doing so.”
There is also a large concern that recruiting for the Honors Program will be more difficult in the future.
Rother said without the ability of programs like Honors to offer scholarships like they are now, there will be nothing drawing students to UNK in the financial aspect.
“The concern is UNK is not special in offering that (amount for merit scholarships),” Rother said. “Fort Hayes offers that, UNL offers that, any community college and state school would offer that, even a lot of private schools offer basically the exact same scholarship. It becomes very difficult to recruit those high-achieving students, especially when you take away the ability for a program like Honors to do proper recruiting.”
Hollman said specialized programs like the Honors Program are what draw students to UNK.
“We can talk about, of course, Kearney’s an awesome place to be, but when we have those extra incentives to offer to get students here, it’s impactful,” Hollman said. “If you’re comparing apples to apples and you’re looking from the standpoint of a high school senior, Lincoln looks really attractive, or an Ivy League school that’s giving you full tuition will look really attractive. Then it’s ‘How can Kearney compete with that?’ Well, we’re competing with these specialized programs.”
Kuta said when determining which college to attend, he came to UNK because of the additional financial support the Honors program was able to offer him.
Lefdal also said the Honors scholarships are what brought him to UNK. Without them, he said students will have no incentive to join the program.
“The main issue right now is that the Honors Program – their scholarships are still the highest amount (of) scholarship you can get if you’re just getting to college,” Lefdal said. “What the new budget cuts will do is they will actually bring that scholarship down to the same as general admission scholarships, so there’s no reason to actually join anymore. If anything, it would be discouraged because you’d have to do extra Honors classwork and things like that.”
Kuta said requirements in the Honors Program add on to difficulties some students are already facing.
“You have to hold a high enough GPA, you have to take certain courses, (and) you have to meet certain parameters throughout your whole schooling,” Kuta said. “That can be hard to do for some people because it’s another thing added on to college when college is already hard as it is for so many students.”
Hollman said the Honors program hosts an annual event that brings in prospective Honors students and offers them awards. She doesn’t know what this event will look like in the future, or if it will even happen.
“We have a Scholarship Day where we bring anywhere from 40 to almost 50 students to campus in January,” Hollman said. “There was one year where 80% of them came to UNK. Usually, we get between 60-70% of those really high-achieving students to come to UNK. We will no longer be able to have the ability to scholarship those students like we were, and so I suspect that that will have a large impact on that group that we were able to bring to campus.”
Rother was one of these students, and he said he came to UNK because the Honors Program was able to support him financially.
“I was offered full tuition scholarships from places like Brown and Yale,” Rother said. “The reason I chose to come here was because of the Honors Program. Currently, I’m working for MIT, but I choose to stay at UNK because the Honors Program has a really good community, (and) they are able to support me financially.”
Bartling said that she doesn’t believe price is the largest barrier Honors students will face when applying for colleges because they are eligible for many scholarships.
While yearly renewal scholarships are at risk, Bartling emphasized that no student here at UNK will have their current scholarships touched, and that all previous scholarships will be honored. So, if an Honors student is here on a four-year scholarship, that won’t be affected by changes.
She also said she believes students will still be drawn to UNK’s specialized programs.
“When it comes to KHOP and KLOP specifically, the largest drawing point of those two programs is that guaranteed acceptance into UNMC for KHOP and NU College of Law for KLOP,” Bartling said. “That, combined with the incredible experience they have here with those faculty and within those programs, makes those programs an amazing deal, even before you talk about the free money that goes with them. The same with the Honors program. We have a history and a reputation for having an amazing honors program here. People want to be part of that, we are known for it (and) it’s important to us as an institution.
How These Cuts Affect the Honors Program as a Community
Many Honors Program members said they believe these cuts negatively affect the Honors Program’s sense of community.
Hollman said a key part of the program is getting to interact with all different age groups and majors within Men’s Hall. She said she wants students to have an amazing experience with their time in the Honors program.
“We build the program around the student experience,” Hollman said. “I was an undergrad in the Honors Program, and I want students to have the same experience I did because it was awesome. So we’ve worked really hard to make the students’ first year experience meaningful and fun.”
Rother said another reason he came to UNK was because he had a sister in the Honors program who spoke very highly of the community. He has now been able to experience that for himself.
“It’s such a unique environment that you do not get in other dorms,” Rother said. “(During) my freshman year there were upperclassmen who would be out in the lounge, and I would talk to them. They would come knock on my door and say, ‘Hey, do you want to come play this game, do you want to swing dance, do you want to go do whatever’, and it’s just a very strong community.”
Kuta said having the majority of the Honors community in Men’s Hall allows underclassmen to seek advice from upperclassmen. He also said Men’s Hall allows people from all majors to get together and share ideas.
Hollman said she hopes the UNK administration continues to support the Honors Program in the future.
Bartling said UNK administration is working to do what’s best for all programs.
“I think people rightly are very passionate about making sure that the programs that are successful here at UNK continue to be successful,” Bartling said. “I think that everyone on the chancellor’s leadership team agrees with them and wants to do the best for our students.”
She said they’re trying to be as fair as possible to each organization, and that specialized programs are cared for at UNK.
“Honors students – we love you, we care about you, we want you to be happy here, we want you to help us recruit future students just like yourselves,” Bartling said. “We’re in difficult times at the University of Nebraska, and I think that we can focus on working together to do what’s best for everyone.”
