FY17 Budget Axioms and Guiding Principles

Note: These axioms and principles are for the current budget shortfall in FY17 only.

Axioms

  • As a land-grant university with very high research activity, we must preserve our academic, research and extension missions.
  • We must stay student-centered.
  • Using data to guide our difficult decisions is imperative as we become a more efficient university.
  • Communicating more effectively and frequently is of utmost importance.

Guiding principles

  • The FY17 budget shortfall will be backfilled using cash on hand (available reserves) rather than paying it down in future years with future revenues.
  • We will use a formula that takes both reserve balances and General Revenue Allocation (GRA) received to calculate how the responsibility for covering the shortfall will be assigned.
  • We will include resources held in unrestricted operating accounts as well as those in unrestricted plant funds that were carried forward from FY16 into FY17 in making the calculation formula for the reserves aspect. We will use the net amount of positive and negative balances for each C/S/D, i.e. all account balances will be in the calculation, not just those with a positive value.
  • For the GRA component of the calculation we will include FY17 general revenue allocations (GRA).
  • Reserves and GRA will not have equal weight in the calculation formula. We will assign 70 percent of the weight to reserves and 30 percent of the weight to GRA.
  • Auxiliaries are to be included in calculating the amount collected from all units and will be treated the same as academic and other campus units.
  • The Hospital, as a separate business enterprise in many ways, will provide support in assisting with the shortfall, but the amount will be determined through a discussion with what is reasonable given the different demand in that industry to hold cash on hand.
  • The General Revenue allocated for campus based scholarships, fellowships and waivers is exempted from the GRA part of the calculation.
  • A number and the details on how it was calculated will be given to leaders at the College, School, Division level indicating the amount of the shortfall that will be their responsibility to cover. From there, CSD leaders can use our principles or their own set of principles to determine how they will arrive at their number.