The University of Toledo board of trustees yesterday approved a $743 million operating budget for the upcoming fiscal year that is the product of a new reallocation exercise to put more money toward UT's strategic goals.
The Fiscal Year 2009 budget includes $476 million for academics and $267 million for the UT Medical Center, formerly Medical College of Ohio Hospital.
It is the first university budget that is organized by academic and clinical functions. The budget had been separated into main campus and health-science campus operations.
The budget for FY 2009, which starts July 1, is the product of 29 budget reallocation hearings and a number of conversations that stemmed from those hearings.
The process brought up concerns that money would be taken away from the liberal arts and given to STEMM - science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine disciplines.
UT President Dr. Lloyd Jacobs urged the university community to follow the budget process and see that would not be the case.In the budget approved yesterday, no money was diverted from the college of arts and sciences.
And the provost was given an extra $3.3 million that mostly will be used to add faculty, some of whom could go to arts and sciences, Scott Scarborough, UT's senior vice president for finance and administration, said.
A total of $13.1 million was reallocated in the budget - $10.6 million specifically to advance aspects of the strategic plan and $2.5 million from administrative budgets to academic operations.
Some of that movement includes $500,000 from the president's budget reallocated to fund scholarships and $1.6 million in profits from auxiliary services, such as the bookstore and parking, redirected to fund information technology infrastructure replacements.
The budget changes primarily involve tweaking department budgets to take money that used to be for "back-shop" purposes and using it to fund initiatives more directly related to students and learning, Mr. Scarborough said.
The FY 2009 budget is about $31 million more than 2008 because of increased revenues from projected enrollment growth, tuition and fee increases for graduate students, and increased state support.
The biennial state budget passed in 2007 promised Ohio's public colleges and universities increases in state support - 5.2 percent the first year and 9.8 percent the second - in exchange for a zero undergraduate tuition increase.
There is a projected $10 million reserve at the end of the 2009 fiscal year.
Contact Meghan Gilbert at:
mgilbert@theblade.com
or 419-724-6134.
Search
advertisement
