BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY

 
A weekly publication for the BGSU community

“Where does the money go?” was the theme of Chief Financial Officer Sheri Stoll’s well-attended April 8 forum, sponsored jointly by the Faculty Senate and Provost Shirley Baugher. And different facets of that subject topped the list of concerns of most faculty and staff who posed questions.

Stoll explained that the answer to this simple question actually is quite complex, since the University’s current financial situation stems from a host of past responses to factors in its operating environment. Both Stoll and Baugher emphasized that the critical task now is to collectively determine where the University wants to be in the future and to direct our resources and planning toward that end.

Both speakers stressed that there are no “right answers” for improving BGSU’s financial picture and that the best thinking about future-oriented priorities and options will flow from the campus as a whole, starting with the college compacts developed last fall and the exploratory and planning processes set in motion at the beginning of this semester.

The crux of BGSU’s financial challenge is the need to compensate for rising costs in virtually every aspect of its operations—from health benefits to utilities and the drain on resources of maintaining legacy buildings and making them an effective component of today’s teaching and learning. As Stoll explained, this task is made more challenging by two-year limits on increases in tuition and fees—an important part of BGSU’s revenue stream—and by last year’s enrollment decline that decreased tuition revenues. An increase in the University’s enrollment-based state share of instruction funds was not sufficient to balance the budget. The coming year’s expectation of a stable enrollment will help but is not enough to eliminate budget problems, she said.
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