ESU’s outgoing president, Ken Hush, faced backlash in 2022 after laying off tenured faculty.
Ethan James Scherrer/Wikimedia Commons
Ken Hush, outgoing president of Emporia State University in Kansas, is donating roughly $1.4 million—equivalent to the last four years of his salary—to the university.
Since taking the helm in 2021, Hush oversaw a controversial workforce-management policy that included firing 23 tenured faculty members. The American Association of University Professors publicly censured ESU for that decision, and some of the laid-off faculty sued. Emporia officials, including Hush, defended the job cuts, saying they were needed to address a budget deficit and falling enrollment.
Enrollment plunged in the fallout from the cuts, but according to ESU’s statement this week, the university has now eliminated a $19 million budget deficit and grown enrollment 6 percent since fall 2024.
Hush’s donation is one of the largest one-time individual gifts in ESU’s history, according to an announcement the university posted on its website Wednesday. The nonendowed gift from Hush, who is set to retire next week, will be paid out over the next three years. The money will support scholarships, new student recruitment and university operations.
“This gift is in appreciation for the meaningful impact ESU has had on our community and on me, both as a student and in my role as president. It has been a great honor to serve my home state of Kansas, in my hometown of Emporia for the institution that has changed so many lives for the better,” Hush said in the announcement. “Emporia State is focused on [students] like never before. We cannot afford to go back to the old ways of higher education that focused more on the institution than those the institution is here to serve.”
Hush—an ESU alumnus and longtime former executive for Koch Inc.’s carbon and minerals division—became interim president in 2021 and permanent president in 2022. Hush in July announced plans to retire at the end of this year.
On Thursday, The Emporia Gazette reported that the Kansas Board of Regents selected Matthew Baker, who has served as vice president of student affairs at Northwest Missouri State University for the past 14 years, as ESU’s next president. Baker is slated to begin serving in early March.
