A title such as the "Summary of Unrestricted Unallocated Budgeted Funds" may conjure an image of an abstract and unintelligible financial statement. This document is the last on a long list of documents (many of which have equally cryptic tiles) buried on the Duke Financial Services website. Although it contains information that illuminates so much, given its form and location, I would be surprised if more than a dozen students have ever taken a look at it.
But until this year, this annually released and (formerly) very detailed document outlined all of the major expenditures and sources of income that are part of Duke's operating budget over a 10 year period. The summary outlined the operating surpluses and deficits of all non-academic departments, including Residence Life and Housing Services, Duke Dining, Tele-Video (which sells cable TV and telephone service to students) and many others.
Who cares? Well, up until this year, this report outlined just how much the University was "making" off of each major non-academic division-how much Duke was sapping us for money and in what ways-and then gave some idea as to how that money was used.
The newly released version for Fiscal Year 2004, however, now contains almost no useful information and most of the full page sections have been collapsed into single lines.
Administrators said the report was changed (and the older, more detailed reports were removed from the Internet) because of the hiring of a new vice president of finance, a new financial reporting system and changes in "generally accepted accounting principles." Vice President of Finance Hof Milam said that given the changes in GAAP and Duke's new system, continuing to report the data "cannot be cost justified."
So, instead of making some futile plea for Duke to maintain its already paltry level of fiscal transparency, I'm going to go through just what information was previously reported in the hopes that people might take notice. Here's what used to be available:
The biggest non-academic moneymaker for the University was Tele-Video Communications. Selling cable TV and phone service to students netted the University a full $3.3 million in FY 2003 (it peaked in FY 2001 at $3.9 million). As the only telecommunications provider for the three-quarters of undergraduates required to live on campus, Duke is raking it in by charging inflated rates for telephone service and $300 to $400 per academic year for access to anything beyond public access TV-services which are free at many other universities.
RLHS was the second biggest moneymaker, with a FY 2003 surplus of $2.0 million (it peaked in FY 2002 at $3.7 million). This is especially striking because, in the RLHS budget, the single biggest expense is debt repayment. This amounts to about a third of all housing revenue, according to Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta. Has the cumulative $17.6 million of housing revenue marked as "surplus" over the last 10 years been diverted from RLHS? Could students be footing less of the bill for Keohane Quad, Bell Tower and other construction projects?
In addition, (as I reported last year) a confidential FY 2000 budget shows that housing was, after repaying debt and generating surplus, putting $4.2 million into "reserve" accounts. Considering all this, maybe it's not necessary to charge $7,600 per year for a single room.
Other major FY 2003 moneymakers included the Duke Stores ($1.1M) and the renting out of Fuqua's executive conference center ($1.0M).
So, where does this money go? It isn't directly diverted anywhere specific, but there are a number of departments that require significant subsidies from the general "pool" created by the surpluses. The single biggest leech is athletics, which in FY 2003 required $5.7 million in support. The sports that, for the most part, no one cares about, require support to the tune of almost $1,000 per undergraduate per year.
Far smaller subsidies were given to the Duke Press ($651,000), University parking ($240,000-imagine that!), auxiliary services administration ($156,000) and Dining Services ($130,000).
Interpreting this information is a matter of opinion, but having the detail lets us see through statements such as the one John Burness, senior vice president for government affairs and public relations, made earlier this year. He said correctly: "Duke's 'auxiliary services,' which include dining, housing, parking and many other functions that support students, had a surplus of less than $1 million on a budget of about $124 million." But with athletics and other divisions counted as auxiliaries, as these financial reports indicate, the picture is much more complex.
Both the old and new versions of this document are posted at: http://elliott.dorm.duke.edu/Chronicle/
Elliott Wolf is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs every other Tuesday.
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