A quick and easy breakdown of how the university was impacted by budget cuts.
The budget for this academic year was released on Sept 15. There are two sets of budgets laid out, the University Operating Fund and the All Funds Budget. Each budget provides the expenditure and revenue breakdown.
The All Funds budgets dates back to the 2015-16 academic year to display all changes that the budget had gone through throughout the last five years.
Both the Expenditure and Revenue All Funds budgets have significantly decreased in various ways.
The budget released this past week does not reflect any Center Activities, Center Arts or HSU dining services funds.
The revenue budget, is based on how Humboldt state University receives its money, is $164.6 million. According to the 2020-21 All Funds Revenue budget, this was decreased by $58.2 million. This is the first major decrease since 2015 and the lowest the budget has ever been since the last recorded academic year, 2015-16.
Educational Appropriations, which is just another way of saying state and local funding, make up over 50 percent of HSU’s revenue. The amount of appropriations received for the 2020-21 academic year is $85.6 million, resulting from a $5.1 million decline. This is the first reduction recorded since the 2015-16 academic year.
A quarter of the revenue comes from higher education fees, which includes tuition, student health, AS fees, graduation fee, etc. This portion stands at $42.2 million which is an $8.2 million decrease from last year. This could be the result of COVID-19 causing drops in enrollment.
The expenditure budget, which is the budget based on what the university will spend their money on, is $180.5 million. According to the All Funds Expenditure budget, this was decreased by $43.8 million. This is the first reduction in the budget since 2015 and the lowest the budget has been since the last recorded academic year, 2015-16.
The salaries and wages of HSU employees reflects 44.5 percent of the budget. These include not just tenured professors and lecturers but also department chair members, assistants, teaching associates, support staff and the university president.
The Regular salaries and Wages budget did have an overall decrease of $8.9 million. With the budget dropping across the board, the president managed to increase his salary by $10,000.
This is also the first time the revenue budget was significantly smaller than the expenditure budget since 2015. The usual trend is having the numbers very close in amount with a maximum $5 million gap. This year’s budget has a $15.9 million gap.
