Northern Kentucky University President Cady Short-Thompson believes the school is on an upward trajectory.
In late 2022, the university was in financial turmoil, facing a $24 million budget deficit. Former President Ashish Vaidya resigned after four-and-a-half years at the helm. This situation prompted the hiring of Short-Thompson in 2023. She is NKU’s seventh president and the first female president in the university’s history.
Fast-forward to today and NKU is in a much better financial situation, Short-Thompson said Tuesday while reporting a “structurally balanced budget” for the current fiscal year.
Short-Thompson outlined her vision for NKU’s future in a fireside chat with Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce President Brent Cooper Tuesday.
“Many of you are well aware of the fact that we were in a $24 million deficit position, and we are now, as of this fiscal year, balanced and structurally balanced we’ve made,” she said.
In the near future—around three years—Short-Thompson said her biggest priority is building out the university’s digital and physical infrastructure. Some of the examples she shared included building a 90,000-square-foot addition to the school’s science center and beautifying a campus defined by concrete architecture.
“I mentioned, a lot of what we’re focused on the immediate three years is about getting healthy, and we will spend time really just building into our infrastructure,” she said. “It doesn’t sound exciting to you, perhaps, to build into infrastructure, but when you have a tired infrastructure, it’s really exciting because it means that we will be far better equipped to do our work well.”
Short-Thompson is also focused on talent retention, which she says the university has excelled at in recent years.
“NKU retention rates are now at the highest they’ve ever been in our history,” she said. “NKU graduation rates are now at the highest they’ve ever been in our history. In other words, we’re doing our job, and we’re doing it well with and for our students.”
Short-Thompson said NKU is also investing more in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, known as STEM, and health and human services programs. This investment manifests through more funding for university buildings and academic curricula.
“One number that blew my mind the other day when I heard it is we have 2,700 students studying nursing right now,” she said.
In regards to funding, Cooper asked Short-Thompson if the university knew what role state funding plays in NKU’s future goals. For context, Cooper noted that the school had been historically underfunded by the state government.
“I don’t think a lot of people in the room realize how badly NKU was underfunded since its inception, and we were always the lowest of all the universities in the state in terms of what we received from the state and funding,” said Short-Thompson.
Short-Thompson said that NKU has received more money from the Kentucky General Assembly in recent years due to competitive-based funding, which allocates money based on performance metrics rather than a base allocation given to each institution. Some of the factors for competitive funding allocation include graduation rates, retention rates, degree production, and workforce readiness.
“Performance based funding has been a game changer for Northern Kentucky University, because, frankly, we perform well and we then earn additional funding from the state,” she said.
