News > April 7, 2005

By Ally Diljohn

Old Gold & Black Reporter

The university board of trustees approved a $1.011 billion budget for the 2005-2006 fiscal year. The budget approved at the April 1 meeting included a 3.5 percent salary increase for faculty and staff as well as a 1 percent increase in the operating budget for the Reynolda Campus.

“Roughly half of all increased revenues will go to faculty and staff salary increases,” said Wayne Smith, a board of trustees member who oversees the Reynolda Campus budget.

The budget allows for $7.8 million more to be spent on salary and fringe benefits. According to an April 1 university news release, the increase in salary spending is the largest increase in the Reynolda Campus budget.

The total new budget for the Reynolda Campus is $269 million, a significant increase over last year’s allotment of $249 million.

According to Smith, obtaining competitive salaries for university employees is the “single highest priority” for the board. “We know that one cannot have a first-rate university without first-rate faculty” he said. “One can’t have a first rate faculty without competitive salaries.”

Senior Student Trustee Jamie Dean, agreed with Smith. “Competitive salaries help us to attract the most prestigious faculty,” he said. He also said that the increase “makes up for missed time.”

The faculty and staff had not received a pay increase this large in several years. According to university statistics, the last salary increase given was a 2.0 percent raise given during the 2003-2004 fiscal year. Some members of the faculty are not satisfied with this year’s increase.

“Raises during the last three years have been far less than comparison institutions. They haven’t kept up with the cost of living,” said Hank Kennedy, a political science professor and chairman of the faculty senate committee on university oversight said.

“This can not be considered a generous raise by any standard,” he added.

“Having some increase is better than nothing, which is exactly what our salary increase is for the current budget year” said Win-Chiat Lee, philosophy professor, and president of the university chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

There were varied opinions regarding the competitiveness of salaries at the university compared to those at rival institutions.

Smith said that the university salaries are comparable at the level of full and associate professor, but not at the level of assistant professor. Kennedy said that university faculty is “woefully underpaid.”

The increases in budgetary spending came a year after a budget freeze placed on the budget for the current fiscal year.

Money obtained from a series of cost-cutting and revenue generating initiatives put into place at the board meeting last April helped to rectify the budget issues.

According to an April 2004 news release, these measures included refinancing debt, increasing research revenues, cutting costs from real estate owned by the university, adding to the endowment trough gifts and maintaining enrollment at its full capacity of 3980. The money generated to supplement the formerly ailing budget is supplied in large part from tuition.

“It is the undergraduate tuition that drives revenue,” Smith said. A tuition increase was approved at the October board of trustees meeting. Tuition will be $30,110 for the 2005-2006 year, 6.7 percent higher than it previously had been. Undergraduate tuition was also raised 6.5 percent during the 2004-2005 year.

Despite the tuition increase, the university is still ranked in the bottom 15 percent of the 52 competitive private institutions in regards to tuition, Smith said.

A 17.1 percent increase in the value of the endowment also contributed to the available funds, according to Smith.

The gross budget for the Bowman Gray School of Medicine at the Hawthorne campus is $742.7 million.

The budget increased by 6.8 percent from the previous year. In past years the budget for that campus had been reported in terms of the net budget, and was 563 million for 2003-2004.

When reported in terms of a gross budget, the budget for the 2004-2005 fiscal year is $695 million Karen Richardson, senior media relations manager for the medical center said.