Numbers Don't Lie But You Have to Ask the Right Questions

One of the cards that administrators like to use when paying for things that they want while saying that there isn’t money for what others want (need) is the idea that the money they have to spend somehow exists in inviolable separate bundles. They use this mantra to indicate that their hands are clean, but that they are bound to, in an amazing coincidence, pay for the things they wanted at the expense of others.

This has been demonstrated time and time again to simply be untrue in the strongest, most direct sense of the word. There are (at least) two important things to keep in mind about university finances:

1. Yes, there are some rules from the state regarding money that has been appropriated for specific expenditures not being redirected toward other expenditures. However, we have to keep in mind that all that this means is that we need to ensure that our administration asks for the right things. Legislators don’t wake up in the morning and decide they’d like to fund an unplanned rec center. They have been asked to and once they have determined that they would like to fund such an enterprise (for a whole set of reasons that I hope to be able to address later) that money is set aside for that.

2. There are two systems of accounting at work here. One that is mandated by the state and the other that is set up internally within the university. The one used within the university is changeable and is being misused. The budget is a projection of the ways in which the university would like to spend money, not a reflection of how it has been spent. Right now, it is being used by upper admin to claim that there is simply nothing that can be done to change the way the money is spent and to protect executive expenditures at all costs (pun intended and tragic).

As an example, Kim Record’s basketball pipedream is being funded out of available resources to the tune of $8 million. That money is not legally restricted to funding athletics, it has simply been budgeted for it. It could be redirected (yet another topic I’ll have to cover later) or at least scaled back - possibly tied to her ability to demonstrate a newfound ability to retain employees...

UNCG is also holding approximately $85 million in unrestricted funds that could have been used, for example, to ‘repay’ the money we had to give back because of the ‘accidental’ incorrect projection of student numbers. Instead, the execs put on their long faces and cried crocodile tears as they asked the rest of us to suffer.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Professor of Accounting from Eastern Michigan State laid it all out in great detail, just as he has done for several other universities, and has shown that UNCG didn’t need to go under the knife.

As the Board of Trustees promises the incoming chancellor a salary increase while the message comes down to the rest of us that yet again there will be not only no pay increases but continued shaving of whatever meager budget has been left, I think it’s only right we ask for a full accounting. And while the Bryan Foundation may be footing the bill for the upgrade the chancellor’s mansion, I think it’s time we ask if they would consider donating that money to other university causes more vital to its continuing mission.

And as the legislature hands down more budget cuts while the BoG springs for a tuition increase, it’s definitely time for Jan Zink to reconsider her $150k ice sculpture expenditures (or whatever other frivolous folly she has dreamed up in the meantime).

Heck, I'd even chip in for a dictionary for the execs so that they can use the same definition of the word "civility" as the rest of us.