Budgets are how institutions express their priorities. This week, University Senate will hear the report from the Senate Budget Committee and accept its report and recommendation for accepting the administration’s proposed budget for next year. What will be missing from the process is a discussion of how Syracuse University is allocating revenues internally.

Tuition charges are increasing at SU. Throughout the last several years, the administration has been employing a set of budget rules that systematically gives first priority in allocating those increased revenues to administrative purposes, then to financial aid; and academics gets the residual. The administration gets its percentage of the total listed tuition price regardless of whether students actually pay it. Sound strange? It is.

The result is that over the last four years, the administration has steadily assigned more revenues to itself. From 2007-08 to 2010-11, the annual revenues from actual undergraduate tuition assigned to administrative purposes have increased from $78.6 million to $100.9 million, an increase of $22.3 million and a 28.4 percent increase. During that same time, the annual revenues from tuition charges going to academic units have increased from $184.4 million to $190.1 million, an increase of $5.7 million, or 3.1 percent. If you are interested in the details, see http://subudget.wordpress.com. At a time when the student body is increasing in size, these trends are matters that should be a part of discussions and that the administration should have to explain.

Jeff Stonecash 

Political science professor