"We won’t decide on the impacts to campuses until we know the amounts of any general fund changes that might become necessary," McRae said in an email.

***

UM spokeswoman Paula Short said the university employs roughly 2,900 full-time equivalents, including 600 full-time faculty and 200 non-tenured, part-time faculty. She said the buyout offer would go to a subset of non-faculty members.

Earlier this year, UM offered two separate rounds of buyouts to faculty members, and it counted 41 fewer faculty members from last school year to this one. The figure included those who took buyouts as well as instructors who retired or left for other reasons.

Staff Senate President Maria Mangold said one difference between the offer that will be made to staff is it isn't going to be limited to employees who are closer to retirement. She also said the Staff Senate is in full support of the offers.

"We went to the administration pretty emphatically saying that there are a lot of staff who have approached us saying, 'If we had something similar to the (faculty offer), we would definitely take it,'" Mangold said.