These are only a few examples.<\/p>\n
Attached to my testimony is information on the university that you may find useful.<\/p>\n
With respect to the university\u2019s appropriations, if enacted as written, the proposed budget makes no changes to the fiscal year 2025 appropriation approved by the General Assembly during the last legislative session for UConn. It makes one reduction to UConn Health. Overall shortfalls remain at $70 million for UConn and $29 million for UConn Health in the next fiscal year.<\/p>\n
The proposed budget includes an FY25 recommended appropriation for UConn and UConn Health that is $93 million less than our FY24 appropriation, and $64.2 million less than our request for FY25. The projected deficits at UConn and UConn Health are largely due to rising salary and fringe costs.<\/p>\n
During this session of the General Assembly, we are seeking an additional $47.3 million for Storrs and $16.9 million for UConn Health.<\/strong> The University has internal revenue gains and spending reductions already in place for FY25 but needs this additional support from the state to balance the budget.<\/p>\n Over the last six years, UConn has implemented $129.4 million in cost savings and spending reductions; UConn Health has implemented $143.3 million while simultaneously increasing clinical revenues by $335 million during this timeframe.<\/p>\n You may be asked how UConn\u2019s \u201ccore\u201d revenue \u2013 meaning the combination of state support, tuition and fees, grants and contracts, and investment income, stacks up against other public universities. (\u201cCore\u201d revenue does not include auxiliary sources such as housing\/dining, parking, etc.) A chart below illustrates this: UConn\u2019s average core revenue growth over the last five years is stronger than all but one of the comparator institutions listed, at 6%. Further, UConn\u2019s five-year average total core revenue exceeds five of the seven institutions listed. With respect to the state support portion of that revenue, UConn is exactly in the middle of the institutions listed over the five-year average, with three receiving higher levels of state support than UConn, and three receiving lower.<\/p>\n With respect to the percentage of UConn\u2019s total revenue (meaning all revenue, not \u201ccore\u201d revenue only) that is funded by the state, this number was artificially high for a number of years due to the impact of legacy fringe costs. Due to the new fringe methodology in FY24, the percentage of UConn\u2019s budget funded by the state will drop from 27% to 19%. The percentage of UConn Health\u2019s budget funded by the state will drop from 26% to 13%. Overall, the state will fund 16% of the budgets for UConn and UConn Health in this fiscal year.<\/p>\n With respect to tuition and fees, the percentage of the university\u2019s \u201ccore\u201d revenues generated by tuition and fees appeared artificially low at 20% prior to FY24. However, because of the new fringe methodology, this number will rise to 38% of core revenue during this fiscal year. That said, while tuition\/fee increases generate important and necessary revenue for the university, UConn\u2019s priority is always to do all we can to keep any tuition or fee increases as low as possible, both to help maintain access and affordability for our students \u2013 especially low- and middle-income students \u2013 and to avoid becoming so costly we are no longer a competitive value.<\/p>\n With regard to the wage reopener for all state employees that is currently being negotiated, any salary increases will require additional permanent state support. To be clear: the university supports our workforce being paid fairly and competitively; our request is that the state fund the full cost of any pay increases it negotiates, as it does for nearly every other state agency rather than passing most of these costs on to the university, and, by extension, our students.\u00a0 We will be asking the state to cover those increases for all our employees on a permanent basis. For context, the value of a 1% increase in salary for all our employees is $12.3 million. <\/strong><\/p>\n It is important to note that state financial support to UConn and UConn Health is 16% of our total budget. Every dollar in state support is spent on employee salaries. At UConn, 31% of our workforce is supported by state appropriated funding, while the remaining 69% are funded by the university. At UConn Health, these numbers are 19% and 81%. This data illustrates that UConn is doing more than our fair share of absorbing the costs of running a major flagship university that benefits our entire state.<\/p>\n There is no doubt UConn is a great university. But it’s even more than that, with campuses, alumni, and employees across Connecticut, it is built to inspire the global community that is UConn Nation. UConn’s talented students exceed expectations. Our expert faculty researchers, staff and alumni drive Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (CIE) for a better tomorrow. We fuel the state’s economy and are committed to benefiting the greater good. This is UConn.<\/p>\n We seek your support to ensure our continued upward trajectory on behalf of our students and our entire state.<\/p>\n Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UConn leadership shares funding request with legislative panel<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":173063,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[117],"class_list":["post-209895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 20:39:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209895"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209910,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209895\/revisions\/209910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/173063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209895"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=209895"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=209895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Picture1-300x152.png\")
<\/p>\n