Budget tops $900 million with money for new staff

The University Board of Trustees met from Jan. 23-24 and, following the recommendations of the Priorities Committee, approved a $900 million operating budget for the 2004-05 academic year, including slightly more than $2 million in new spending for a range of campus needs.

To help fund the new expenditures, the trustees also approved a 4.8 percent jump in undergraduate tuition, raising total undergraduate fees, including room and board, by 4.5 percent to $38,297 for next year.

The budget now totals just over $900 million and represents a $40 million increase over last year's $866 million figure.

The trustees' approval of the budget is largely a formality, as the trustees have several opportunities to voice their opinions to the Priorities Committee before the final budget is submitted. In fact, in the history of the University, the trustees have never rejected the budget proposed by the committee, Durkee said.

Taking effect on July 1, it includes virtually all of the University's yearly expenses, including faculty and staff salaries, funding for academic departments and programs, financial aid and the budgets for Public Safety and OIT.

A significant portion of new spending will fund what Provost Amy Gutmann called "essential staffing" needs. These needs include additional undergraduate admissions officers, dispatchers for Public Safety and staff members in a handful of other offices.

Additionally, the trustees allocated more than $275,000 for preventative maintenance of the University's prox card system, which controls access to all undergraduate dormitories and some academic buildings, said Vice President for Facilities Michael McKay.

Financial aid has also increased to allow the University to keep its "commitment" to students receiving assistance, said Vice President and Secretary Robert Durkee '69.

Students on financial aid will not incur any additional burden as a result of the fee increases, he added.

In the Undergraduate Admission Office, new funding will be used to pay the salaries of two new admissions officers, said Dean of Admissions Janet Rapelye.

The admission office also received funding for two different recruiting efforts.

The budget provided permanent funding for the Humanities Symposium, which brings high school students with interests in the humanities to campus each fall for tours, lectures and other special events. Previously, the symposium had been paid for by a one time allocation.

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The office also received funding so it can begin courting high school sophomores who score exceptionally well on their PSATs by sending them recruitment letters.

"Virtually all of our competitors have done that," Rapelye said referring to sophomore recruitment, "and our absence is noted."

For years Princeton has been contacting students who scored well on the exam during their junior year, but the additional funding will allow the admissions office to expand the effort, Rapelye said.

The Department of Facilities was given nearly all of the $300,000 it requested to maintain the prox card system on campus. "The system can be that much more effective if it's well maintained," McKay said.

He added this allocation would allow his department to provide preventative maintenance rather than simply reactive maintenance.

The funding would allow for a "significant improvement" in the performance of the system, as there would be fewer doors left in alarm and thus less time when people could come and go as they please, he said.

The Graduate School will benefit from a new assistant dean of academic affairs, who will perform administrative tasks beginning with the admissions process and continuing all the way through the logistics of granting degrees.

This new assistant dean will also play a role in a nascent drive to increase enrollment, retention and graduation of underrepresented minorities, Dean of the Graduate School William Russel said.

To help achieve its goals, which tentatively include raising minority enrollment by two to four percent, the Graduate School will focus not just on admissions, but also look to better understand the situations from which applicants are coming and their career goals after a Ph.D., Russel said.

Rapelye said this year's new efforts for undergraduates will be supplemented with future programs to recruit students. Though she was unsure what format the programs would take, Rapelye said she intends to seek funding for more on-campus recruiting in areas besides the humanities next year.

To that end, she said she has already begun talking with various department chairs to gauge their specific needs.

Moreover, she is hoping to increase awareness of the University's financial aid policy to "make sure that every student qualified to come to Princeton would consider coming to Princeton."

However, with limited resources, several funding requests received less than they desired this year. Specifically, Gutmann said that the University wants to do more to fund library acquisitions and increase backup and storage facilities in OIT to deal with what she called, "the precarious environment we're in with all these viruses going around."

She also mentioned that the University would like to find funding to allow international students to make two round trips home each year rather than the one they are currently allowed.

"There are always things we wish we could do," Gutmann said, but sometimes "we just can't do them."

Of the $900 million in the budget, 36 percent will come from interest on the University's endowment, 21 percent from student fees, 10 percent from private gifts, grants and annual giving, 16 percent from sponsored research, 9 percent from auxiliary activities and the remaining 8 percent will come from grants that support the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Gutmann said.