One of the challenges in higher ed today - and certainly one that complicates shared governance - is that university finances are complex and, in many cases, becoming more complex. Very common for their to be genuine disagreement over numbers. www.chronicle.com/article/how-...
As a vote looms next week on the faculty union’s tentative agreement — with a smaller pay raise than desired — questions swirl over whether the university system could afford more.
A few weeks ago, it took me 15 minutes looking at CSU data to determine that the situation was far more complicated than the faculty union was making it seem. Doesn’t mean that the union didn’t have legitimate gripes so that faculty didn’t deserve a raise in better working conditions.
There isn't a universal metric for determining the "financial health" of a university. There are certainly metrics, but in many ways, financial health is an act of interpretation. It's possible for two well-informed people to read the numbers differently.