A message from James W.E. Rush, Vice-President, Academic and Provost and Jacinda Reitsma, Vice-President, Administration and Finance.
Colleagues,
We are writing to update you on our development of a three-year plan to return to a balanced budget. We have recently shared high-level information on our strategy with finance committees of Senate and Board and now want to update the wider community.
As you know, for many years the University has carefully stewarded our finances, and focused on fulfilling our core mission and giving everyone who comes to learn, live and work at Waterloo a high-quality experience.
However, the conditions that created our budget difficulties do not show signs of improving. We expect existing revenue constraints on provincial government grants and domestic tuition rates, and uncertainties related to international enrolments to persist through our planning period of the next three years. Indeed, that is what we have been led to expect by government.
Keeping focused on our shared vision for Waterloo’s future is crucial to making good choices now. Achieving the vision of Waterloo at 100, and managing our current situation, demands that we be guided by our values. We must continue to think differently, act with purpose and work together on solutions.
At the heart of our three-year plan will be an effort to reduce duplication and improve efficiency, including through recent and ongoing reviews of units (portfolios of the Vice-President, Research and International, the Associate Vice-President, Academic, and the Associate Vice-President, Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs, and the Plant Operations unit) and functions (Communications and Marketing, Finance, IT). As these reviews are completed in the coming weeks, we will start similar reviews of other administrative areas. As part of these processes we are seeking to obtain appropriate benchmark data on administrative operations to compare to peer institutions.
Though we have important work underway on seeking new sources of revenue, strategic enrolment management, and will soon start with leadership from academic colleagues to look at future-focused design and delivery of academic programs, this work cannot address the near-term challenge we face.
It is a reality that our plan must include a reduction in the number of people who work at the University over the next three years. Salaries and benefits are the majority of our expenses. We must find ways to change what we do and how we do it, and this will mean the discontinuation of some roles. Actions like our hiring freeze are already helping us to save money while evaluating which empty positions need to be filled and which can be reconsidered or restructured.
The University is a large, complex organization, so role reductions will differ on a unit-by-unit basis based on organizational need. There is no single action we can take to achieve the necessary reductions. We expect a wide range of activities will help us make the changes we need over the next three years. As we refine our strategy, we will continue to be guided by our desire to treat all our hard-working employees with respect and concern in difficult circumstances.
We will continue to develop the three-year plan over the next few months. You can check in on information about our planning on a new budget website that will grow as we have more to share.
We know that you may have questions. We encourage you to raise them with your leaders or send questions to budget@uwaterloo.ca and we’ll do our best to get back to you with information.
We will present a full update on next year’s budget at our Senate and Board meetings in April and we expect to have more detailed updates for the whole community around that time.
Thank you for everything you are doing, and will continue to do, to help us on our path back to a balanced operating budget.