St. Thomas Provost Richard Plumb held a budget forum Oct. 29, stressing transparency and assuring students, faculty and staff that the university had a balanced budget last year.

Plumb, along with members of the financial staff, presented both last fiscal year’s budget as well as this fiscal year’s projected budget. The way St. Thomas handles the budget has changed in the past year, as part of the St. Thomas 2020 plan.

“The committee recommended that we create an incentive based (budget), to decentralize some of the decision making process,” Plumb said.

The old budgeting process took place with all the funds coming into the administration, and the administration deciding where the funds went. All revenue went through administration before it was distributed.

Plumb described the new budgeting from the 2018-2019 fiscal year as giving funds directly to the different schools and colleges to better distribute the funds based on department needs.

“We have our personnel, and then the funds to support them, we need to be able to place our personnel and place our funds in such a manner that it supports the vision and the mission of the institution,” Plumb said.

Another goal of the new budgeting process was transparency, Plumb said.

Overall, the budget was balanced from last year, as is normal for a non-profit. All revenue goes back into the institution.

In regards to the 2019 fiscal year results, the projected budget was extremely close to the actual budget, according to Controller Katelyn Shehu. The freshman class was the largest in history, so the revenue from tuition was higher than 2018.

The numbers from graduate students are lagging behind what was budgeted; however, this is on trend with national numbers, according to Nora Fitzpatrick, associate vice president of the university budget.

Graduate students are currently projected to enroll in about 2,000 less credits this fiscal year than the last. This was attributed to the fact that higher education is struggling nationwide.

Abby Sliva can be reached at sliv7912@stthomas.edu.