UA News

A propsed redesign of the UA budget would change the way tuition funds flow to colleges on campus.

Under an ongoing budget redesign effort introduced to the Faculty Senate on Monday, undergraduate tuition dollars would be allocated to colleges based on their enrollment and the amount of teaching they do. 

Still in its early stages, the redesign "is probably the most complicated, in-depth redesign of the University budget ever," Provost Meredith Hay told the senate. She urged faculty members to be patient as the process moves forward in the months ahead.

The UA's Budget Redesign Committee is proposing a new budget model in which 75 percent of undergraduate tuition dollars would be directed to colleges based on the amount of instruction they do, in credit hours, and the rest would be distributed based on enrollment numbers in majors in those colleges. Net graduate tuition dollars would flow to the colleges in which the students are enrolled.

Leslie Eldenburg, vice dean of the Eller College of Management and chairwoman of the redesign committee, presented a brief overview to the senate of the Budget Redesign, which is the new name given to the Tuition Funds Flow Task Force effort that began on campus about a year and a half ago.

Under the UA's current budget model, a pot of centrally held funds, made up of tuition dollars and state allocated money,  is primarily distributed to academic units based on prior years' budgets and is also used to fund service costs on campus. In its redesign, the UA will work toward a model that would funnel tuition money to colleges more directly and divide service costs among the colleges, Eldenburg said.

The proposed UA redesign calls for closer "mapping" of how funds are generated and used at the college level.

"In that remapping, that closer mapping, we also develop some incentives to increase the services that we provide," she said.

For example, colleges that increase the amount of teaching they do would see an increase in tuition dollars flowing to their unit as a result. Likewise, units that reduce teaching activities would see a predictable decrease in tuition funds flowing to them, Eldenburg said.

The new model would also distribute costs of commonly used University-provided goods and services, such as library services, among colleges. The redesign committee is currently focusing on developing tools to determine how those costs would be allocated, Eldenburg said.

The UA has examined similar successful "responsibility-centered management models" at a number of other universities, including the University of Minnesota and the University of Florida, Eldenburg said.

The Budget Redesign is still in its early planning stages and no final decisions have been made. Hay has estimated the redesign will require about a year of study.  

Although Eldenburg opted out of doing a PowerPoint presentation on the budget redesign due to time constraints at Monday's meeting, a printed copy of the slideshow was available for senators and is expected to be posted on the Provost's Web site this week. Additional resources also are available on the site, including budget background information and a May 2009 report from the Budget Redesign Committee.

Eldenburg said she would attend next month's Faculty Senate meeting to provide an update and additional information.