I am in no mood to work, thanks to extreme amounts of pain that greeted me and has not quite gone away. So I've been reading about the university. I'm considering sitting in on the Regents' meeting this afternoon, partly out of curiosity, partly because I hate rumors, and partly because I find people fascinating.
People have all sorts of strange ideas about funding, which colleges are strong or weak, who gets paid what, etc. I learned a few interesting facts today:
1. The All Funds Budget for the university for 2008 is estimated at $1,879,734,300
2. The state funds as a percentage of the total state appropriations has dropped over the last 20 years from 16% in 1998 to around 9% in 2008. And, of course, the legislature wants to cut more in the next few weeks/months.
3. In 2007, the university received around $33 million in grants for instruction; $237 million for research; $39 million for public service; $2 million for academic support; $27 million for student services and administration; and $562,000 for institutional support.
4. Most of the above grants are restricted in nature - they can only be used for the project they were given for. So, for example, research money given to the CS department cannot then be used to pay the English professors their salaries. Or money given from the federal government to pay for an outreach program to Native American students cannot be siphoned to pay the Art professors.
5. Most of the instructional costs, administrative costs, and "institutional support" come directly out of state funds, unless there are specific gifts/grants given for those aids.
6. If the $100 million cut goes through, added to the $20 million the U already cut this year, it would be the equivalent of cutting 15% of the overall budget.
7. In 2007, Grad students made up 20% of the university staff; Faculty, 19%; "Classified staff," 40%; Professional, 19%; and Administrators, 2%.
7. In 2007, the U awarded 7,782 degrees - 5,568 Bachelor's degrees, 1,382 Master's, 461 PhDs, 17 Specialists, 161 Law degrees, 74 Pharmacy, and 119 Medical degrees.
8. Of those 7,782 degrees, 1,863 came from the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences (my college). That means that SBS graduated around 24% of the total graduates in 2007. 1,572 were undergraduate degrees, 219 were MAs, and 72 were PhDs.
9. Aside from the college of management, which graduated 1,200 students that same year, SBS graduated the most undergraduates by over 1,000, in most cases. Whoo-hoo, go SBS! (Maybe they won't eliminate us, then, yeah???) Where SBS falls behind a bit is in the graduate degrees - which makes sense, since our programs are typically much longer, often struggle to get funded from anywhere, and require intense, original field research that can take one to two years on top of coursework, plus writing a 300-page book. Science graduated 84 PhDs in 2007, and SBS 72.
10. The U's investment income dropped 90% from 2007 to 2008. Yay, economic downturn. :-/
Interesting stuff, really. I wish I understood more of the economic crapspeak so I could get more out of the more in-depth financial stuff. I hope that SBS' fairly large teaching load, and successful graduation rates, will keep the college safe from any drastic action. You never know, though.
2 comments:
I wish more people (including ME!) would take time to research all the info when something like this is going on. I'm impressed. You don't just whine; you know your stuff.
Thanks. I try not to whine. This particular situation is so huge, so all-encompassing, I wanted more information. I had some people trying to tell me that science grants "pay for" other departments, some people think that athletics money come from state funds... and most of them are all wrong. So I read. And read some more. And then I went to the Board of Regents meeting and listened and took notes. And tomorrow I get to go to a departmental meeting as well. I hate second-hand information and despise rumors, so this works for me. :-)
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