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While athletic departments across the country lay off employees, UConn has largely avoided any layoffs. There's a reason why... (Borges)
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CL82
NCAA Men’s Basketball National Champions - Again!
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- No full-time department employees have been laid off. Any staff reductions of union members would have to be negotiated between the university and its various unions. Athletic director David Benedict has no say in such decisions, though he admits if athletics employees weren’t unionized, UConn would likely be on that same list along with Memphis, Vanderbilt and others.
- Some full-time employees have taken pay reductions in the form of furloughs. It has already been announced that Benedict would take a voluntary, 15-percent pay cut and will not take any cash bonuses, and he will take additional reductions, as well. (High-paid coaches like Dan Hurley, Geno Auriemma and Randy Edsall are members of the American Association of University Professors union and are covered by their collective bargaining agreement).
- It’s not abundantly clear how much UConn was helped or hurt, financially, by not having a football season. “There was some loss in revenues, and some loss in expenses,” Benedict said. “In this case, I don’t think that’s going to significantly impact things. There are offsets there, on both sides. There’s not a significant impact.”
- Any type of Big East bubble would more likely occur around mid-January, when residential students begin returning to campuses for spring semester. UConn’s spring semester begins on Jan. 19.
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UConn's AD budget reveal this coming summer is going to be interesting, to say the least.
By the way: it may be a question of unions in Conn., but the unionized employees in NY state also have furloughs and the like. Non-voluntary.
I saw a breakdown today from my school. Costs of new technology for online learning, PPE, Covid testing etc.: $32m. Drop in tuition funds from lack of int'l students: $25m. Increase in tuition revenues from a huge bump in students (freshman and transfers): +$12.5m. 25% reduction in state subsidy: $45m. No payment whatsoever for state's excelsior (free tuition program): $9m. State withholding of tuition revenues from previous year (2019-2020) to balance the state budget: $19.2m loss. CARES Act revenue: +$24m. School used this money to give students refunds in the amount of $32m so all in all, an $8m loss. Room & Board is supposed to be revenue neutral, but the school made purchases for last spring and this fall ahead of time that has caused a huge deficit with few students on campus. Much of this deficit was made up by renegotiating contracts with vendors. But still a substantial loss.
All told, the losses are in the hundreds of millions. They are in the red, but they have cut expenses by a total of 22.4%, most of which are from lower expenditures on room & board, some from furloughs, an across the board 10% cut to every unit for instructional support, pauses on planned projects, force majeure erasure of contracts, and a hiring freeze in the face of big wave of retirements from older faculty and staff. Most of these expenditure cuts are not easily repeatable in the future, especially the planned projects, room & board. Not sure how you can run a university without faculty but I'm sure there are smart people trying to figure that out as the hiring freeze will be extended indefinitely.
The only saving grace is that more and more people see the wisdom of paying state tuition for a university education. Otherwise, I don't even know what to say.
By the way: it may be a question of unions in Conn., but the unionized employees in NY state also have furloughs and the like. Non-voluntary.
I saw a breakdown today from my school. Costs of new technology for online learning, PPE, Covid testing etc.: $32m. Drop in tuition funds from lack of int'l students: $25m. Increase in tuition revenues from a huge bump in students (freshman and transfers): +$12.5m. 25% reduction in state subsidy: $45m. No payment whatsoever for state's excelsior (free tuition program): $9m. State withholding of tuition revenues from previous year (2019-2020) to balance the state budget: $19.2m loss. CARES Act revenue: +$24m. School used this money to give students refunds in the amount of $32m so all in all, an $8m loss. Room & Board is supposed to be revenue neutral, but the school made purchases for last spring and this fall ahead of time that has caused a huge deficit with few students on campus. Much of this deficit was made up by renegotiating contracts with vendors. But still a substantial loss.
All told, the losses are in the hundreds of millions. They are in the red, but they have cut expenses by a total of 22.4%, most of which are from lower expenditures on room & board, some from furloughs, an across the board 10% cut to every unit for instructional support, pauses on planned projects, force majeure erasure of contracts, and a hiring freeze in the face of big wave of retirements from older faculty and staff. Most of these expenditure cuts are not easily repeatable in the future, especially the planned projects, room & board. Not sure how you can run a university without faculty but I'm sure there are smart people trying to figure that out as the hiring freeze will be extended indefinitely.
The only saving grace is that more and more people see the wisdom of paying state tuition for a university education. Otherwise, I don't even know what to say.