University President Pat Long was able to sleep well on July 31 after the fiscal year ended in the black.
“There is no comparison to three years ago,” Long said. “We know where we are, we’ve done the right things, we’ll continue to do the right things. We just need to grow. That’s the big thing … overall, budget-wise, I feel pretty good.”
The university received the unofficial audit at the beginning of August and it indicated that Baker ended the year ‘very strong’ according to Long.
“We have two years of revenue over expense, so people did a great job of holding their spending and really helping us get to the place we are now,” she said.
Long said the university was able to pay down all the short-term debt that was owed and although the official audit will not be ready until September, the indicators are that the year ended strongly.
Chief Operating Officer Susan Lindahl said that while enrollment projections for the current school year were not met, the university administration was prepared to hold the budget, despite some big changes like the opening of an alumni center in the Phi Mu sorority house and continued construction on Denious Hall.
“I felt very pleased that we ended the year where we did,” Lindahl said. “Internally, we’ve got our numbers on target.”
While there are some big changes planned for the university this year in terms of construction, Long is entering the academic school year cautiously optimistic due to lower enrollment numbers than projected.
“I am holding my breath right now in terms of enrollments,” she said. “We’ve set our budget based on a certain number of students (at the Baldwin City campus) and based on our students on our other campuses, at our other schools. And right now, although our freshman class is much bigger than last year, we’re still a little under where I want us to be.”
Long said the two percent raises were put back into faculty salaries this year, new faculty and staff were hired and some re-carpeting and facility upgrades were completed on campus.
“These are things that we needed to do,” she said. “We’ve spent money in order to bring us back to a better level.”
