Public universities are not for-profit businesses with an easy-to-understand bottom line: their financial reports are not designed to convey information to the public fully or to reflect all the costs of teaching and research. Financial reports do track every dollar in accordance with the accounting rules required by auditors, but they do not…

When "crisis" and "extramural funding" are mentioned, most academics think about problems such as the low percentage of proposals funded by federal agencies (now approaching single digits in many fields) or inadequate indirect-cost recovery rates that fail to reimburse universities for all costs of research. These are great problems draining…

Given the financial burden they are taking on, parents and students are not interested in debates over tenure or academic freedom lest these distract them from the immediate goal of preparing to earn a living. Overburdened undergraduates-- students working twenty to forty hours each week to pay the bills and still taking out student loans--greet…

Faculty members have a legitimate interest in the amount of budgetary appropriations devoted to salaries and the rank of those appropriations among other institutional priorities. Faculty must protect academic affairs from peripheral activities and must examine the manner in which priorities are developed. (MLW)

If faculty and other groups are to play a significant role in the budget process, the administration should format the budget to invite discussion. A properly prepared budget can serve as an excellent means of consensus building on campus. A new technique known as "framework" budgeting is described. (MLW)

Faculty members must understand the actual finances of educational institutions in order to achieve less biased allocations. Increased faculty awareness of total resources can help shift allocation patterns, making institutional resources more effective in accomplishing the mission of higher education. (MLW)

The American Association of University Professors' collective bargaining office and Collective Bargaining Congress are described. Their program includes services designed to prepare collective bargaining chapters to effectively address resource allocation issues that will be determined in contract negotiations. (MLW)

Detailed knowledge of how an institution obtains and expends its resources forces faculty to look at the whole picture of an institution. The budget process should be one in which the various institutional interests achieve mutual recognition and consensus about policies, people, and perquisites. (MLW)