The University of Missouri offered a buyout to 261 retirement-eligible tenure track faculty members, and we now know 110 have accepted the offer. Those faculty members will receive a onetime payment of 1½ their base salary not exceeding $200,000. The program was designed to free up money to hire new faculty members as well as grant appropriate pay increases to current faculty.
Taking the buyout however, doesn’t mean that the faculty member will disappear from MU. Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin discussed that on KBIA’s Intersection last week.
“Many of these faculty have already chosen to enter negotiations with their department chairs or their deans about remaining at MU. Perhaps in a pure research mode, a pure teaching mode, something other than a pure tenured or tenure track faculty member.”
The hiring of new faculty as well as the rehiring process Loftin described will be done by department chair people or deans, with all hires having to be approved by the provost. The university has not set a timetable on when the new hires will be made, instead leaving that decision to individual departments.