A letter appeared in The Daily Orange on Wednesday regarding revenues and resources that are provided to Syracuse University schools and colleges. I am writing to provide a more complete picture of the financial resources that have been available to SU’s schools and colleges during the past five years.

The data included in the letter doesn’t represent the total growth of tuition revenue, and in turn misrepresents the share of revenue that has gone to schools and colleges and the administrative units.

Schools and colleges have many different sources of revenue. In addition to undergraduate tuition, other unrestricted resources include graduate tuition, course and student fees, overhead for research projects, Academic Plan and Chancellor Initiatives funding, New York State Bundy Aid and general university support (also known as subvention).

These sources do not include the $10 million in permanent, recurring funding that schools and colleges received in 2009-10 that were achieved as a result of the position eliminations and cuts made by central administrative support and auxiliary units. Additional central administrative support and auxiliary unit cuts also produced an additional one-time funding of $10 million that was provided to schools and colleges during fiscal years 2009 through 2011.

As a result of all these sources and savings, annual funding provided to schools and colleges (funds they have available to teach and support students and research) has increased by 29 percent, or $55 million, since 2007 to a total of $243 million annually. In addition, during this time, schools and colleges were able to increase their carryover reserve funds by $21 million, or 50 percent, to a total of $63.4 million.

This growth in overall support has resulted in an 18 percent increase in school and college dollars spent per student since 2007, providing additional funding to support enrollment growth.

In contrast, as a result of multiyear cost-reduction efforts, support to central administrative units (which includes academic support units) has only increased by 8 percent, or $8 million, since 2007.

Gwenn Judge

Director, Office of Budget and Planning

Syracuse University

Published on March 26, 2011 at 12:00 pm