Colleges and universities across the United States are staring down significant debt. While NIU’s roughly $32 million deficit is not an anomaly, it is something to watch.
NIU ended the fiscal year 2024 with around $77 million in total holdings and has plans to decrease the deficit – including cutting low-enrollment courses, selling non-essential property and building stronger relationships with community colleges – according to the Northern Star.
While $32 million sounds like, and is, a large number, students should not spend their walks to class worried about whether the university will still be standing in the coming weeks.
Madison Sheets, a first-year criminology and sociology major, emphasized the importance of knowing about NIU’s financial situation.
“I feel like it should just be more known that NIU is in a deficit like that, just so people know and can be prepared for that,” Sheets said.
NIU does disclose its financial data and reports to the Board of Trustees.
George Middlemist, vice president and chief financial officer, explained university transparency with its Board of Trustees is key for success.
“When universities have a significant issue, it’s generally because they haven’t been very transparent,” Middlemist said. “They haven’t been informing the community. They haven’t been getting engagement to help solve the problems, and so they have waited until it’s a critical, it’s at a critical mass, and then they don’t have much other options than to do some extreme things.”
The NIU community should be paying attention to Board of Trustees meetings because the board is a substantial part of the body governing NIU. It is important for students and faculty to have a greater understanding of what is happening at the university on a financial level.
“We are committed to achieving that balanced budget, and, you know, are equally committed to doing that by something that, by strategies that are academically responsive and fiscally responsible,” said Laurie Elish-Piper, executive vice president and provost.
While the university is working to reduce the deficit and create a budget that best fits student needs, the students need to be actively engaged in what is happening regarding NIU’s financial situation.
Mark Van Wienen, president of NIU United Faculty Alliance and English professor, emphasized that faculty and staff can place some trust in administrators.
“There is, let me just say, an element of faith that we place upon the administrators, the president and the Board of Trustees on down that they somewhat at least know what they’re doing,” Van Wienen said.
Van Wienen also said that faculty understand, however, the importance of asking questions of decision-makers to get an understanding of what is happening on campus.
“We are going to be asking questions and trying to bring our, you know, intelligence to bear on the question in collaboration with those who are the financial decision-makers at the university,” Van Wienen said.
It’s smart to have some nerves about how the deficit could impact NIU in the future.
Asking questions is crucial to understanding an issue – and any type of financial issue is difficult to wrap your head around.
We should be trusting our administrators to do what is best for the student body and employees, but our trust should not be blind faith. The purpose of college is to question what is happening, why it is happening and what we can do to help – evaluating our own university is no different.
