University of Louisville Closing Employee Gym to Save $1 Million Per Year
“university said in the unsigned message that faculty and staff can get discounted memberships of $15 per month at Planet Fitness”
Why did employees have their own gym in the first place? Can’t they use the same facilities as the students?
WDRB News reports:
University of Louisville to close employee gym, saving $1 million a year
Citing budget constraints, the University of Louisville will close Humana Gym, its employee fitness center, to save $1 million a year, the university said in a campus-wide message on Thursday.
The university also laid off Patricia Benson, the director of its Get Healthy Now employee wellness program, and moved the program’s other employees to the Human Resources department, U of L spokesman John Karman confirmed. The wellness program continues, Karman said.
The university said in the unsigned message that faculty and staff can get discounted memberships of $15 per month at Planet Fitness, an athletics program sponsor, or join the Student Recreation Center for $24 a month. The Humana Gym costs $15 a month, according to the message.
The move was announced on the same day the university’s board of trustees raised the compensation of U of L President Neeli Bendapudi by 12 percent to $875,000 a year. As part of the justification for the raise, trustees cited improvement in U of L’s finances relative to when Bendapudi started a year ago.
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Comments
good plan to cut expenses where possible. But very bad optics to raise the president’s salary at the same time.
Have to agree with the question of why there was a separate employee gym to begin with.
Since retiring from the military, I have been enrolled in two different universities and have traveled to a number of universities as part of my academic studies and I have yet to see a separate gym for employees (for the athletic teams, of course there is a separate facility). Both universities had discounted memberships which brought the cost to faculty/staff down to about what the students were paying for student service fees. As an alumni, I would pay more than these facilities than what a local gym would cost.
I thought one of the big issues with increasing college costs was the sports palaces that the student fit & rec centers had become.