UNLV offers buyouts to staff members to cut costs
UNLV is offering buyouts for some of its long-term faculty and staff in the latest effort to cope with budget cuts affecting the university, officials announced Friday.
Nearly 300 professional faculty and staff, including 200 tenured faculty, are being offered the buyouts, University of Nevada, Las Vegas President David Ashley said.
"We need to develop some flexibility for what's coming down the road," he said. "We wouldn't do this if we didn't have financial stress right now."
The buyouts announced Friday are not the first this year and will probably not be the last, Ashley said.
Ninety-seven employees were offered buyouts during the spring and summer, and officials plan on offering buyouts in the near future to classified staff, which mostly consist of lower-level office workers and support staff, Ashley said.
UNLV is being forced to cut roughly $60 million over its 2009-11 biennium as the state budget shortfall has ballooned to more than $1 billion.
Officials at the university have said they will also be forced to slash class sections and eliminate part-time faculty in order to cope with the cuts.
The buyouts this week are aimed at longer-serving professional staff.
Those eligible must be either:
• At least 60 years old with at least 10 years of service to the university, or:
• Have their age plus years of experience total at least 75.
The employees would get 110.5 percent of their salary for the next year and have their termination take place nearly immediately, according to information on UNLV's Web site.
Ashley said the extra 10.5 percent comes from the amount the university would normally pay into the employee's retirement account.
He expects between 10 and 50 people to take up the offer, saving the university between $1 million and $5 million per year.
Because of the current uncertain economic climate, "not everyone's going to be interested in it," Ashley said.
Other institutions in Nevada have offered similar buyout incentives, including the University of Nevada, Reno and Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno.
