January 2024 Updates Q&A - Interim Vice President Day

This $7 million refers to the balance between revenues and expenses, which we call results of operations. Budgets also include ongoing investments in capital (building renovation, technology, etc.). The graph shows the entire budget for the university, including regional campuses, the medical school and auxiliaries (housing, dining, etc.) as well as the main Athens budget. The positive balance is largely in auxiliaries, where it will need to be reinvested in repair and renovation. Within our Athens and regional campus budgets, while faculty and staff compensation are a priority, there are also competing needs for increases in scholarships, health care and investments in additional staff (including faculty).  Providing equitable and competitive compensation (salary and benefits) to faculty and staff will require some difficult choices that will need to be made over several years. Provost Sayrs has already begun that work:

As she shared at our last University update in November, we completed a faculty compensation study in the spring of 2023 that resulted in two significant changes. One change was to raise promotional pay increases by $1,000 over the next three years. So, for example, the previous raise when moving from tenure-track Associate to Professor was $9,000. For FY23 that increase moved to $9,334. It moved to $9,667 in this fiscal year and for FY25 will go to $10,000. The second change was to increase the minimal salary threshold for assistant, associate and full professor. The compensation study also made recommendations related to bringing faculty salaries in line with market competition, and those recommendations are being considered as we develop the FY25 budget. Like the promotional increases, any implementation will have to be done in phases over time.


 

We do not anticipate any cuts to jobs or benefits as a result of budget constraints in the coming fiscal year. However, as we see inflation in our expenses and limited opportunities to increase revenue, we will need to continue our work to control costs. For example, every 100 students added beyond the budget generates approximately $1 million in revenue.  On the expense side, a 2% raise pool adds $7 million to the budget. So, it is easy for us to be quickly out of balance.  We have been able to increase efficiency for the last three years through tightening our budgeting practices in areas like vacancy savings and non-compensation expenses.

Regarding your comment about central administrative offices, most administrative units have not grown. We have made some targeted investments in areas such as out-of-state recruitment, academic recruitment and OHIO online in order to support enrollment strategies. There are also additional faculty investments for the increased enrollment but those take longer to bring in (particularly tenure track) so there will continue to be increases next fall.  In general, there is still going to be a need to keep staffing levels under control given the pressures on the budget discussed above.