Chancellor Syverud Updates University Senate on Budget and Response to Federal Administration Policy Changes

I want to show you the National Championship Women’s Ice Hockey Club team [shows photo], which won the AAU championship last week. We’re proud of them. And we have some good news to start this report.

I also wanted to join in thanking the ESFAO [Employee Services, Fiscal Affairs, and Operations Committee] members and Doug [Yung] for their work. We did meet with them at length just before spring break, and we’re going to be meeting with them again before we submit the FY26 budget to the Board of Trustees for final approval. The reason for that is it’s a more intense process this year than past years.

I want to emphasize some of the points that Doug made. We ran a balanced budget in FY24, which ended nine months ago. We are running a balanced budget in FY25, which will end in three months. It’s pretty late in the year, so it’s pretty easy to see we’re going to be fine. We’re going to propose a balanced budget for FY26, and I’m not worried about that. I was worried about it in August, which is why I said what I said to the Senate in August and what I said to the University leadership team and to the deans, because of some of the foreseeable forces, which Doug illustrated in his report. If we’d done nothing since last August, we’d be facing a 3% budget deficit. By the way, 3% translates into millions of dollars. But if we can’t handle a 3% budget deficit humanely as managers and as a community, we’re not a very effective financial community, I believe.

Actually, we have been planning for months how to handle this. Obviously, there’s been additional wrenches thrown in the work by what’s happened with the federal government the last 60 days. Those have been remarkable wrenches for almost all our peers. That’s why you’re seeing these sharp announcements of Johns Hopkins laying off thousands of staff, of freezes of faculty hiring, freezes of graduate admissions. Really, I think you’ll see more of them, since a lot of academic institutions like to behave in a herd, and think behaving in a herd is the safe thing. I think you’ll see lots of institutions, including most of the AAU [Association of American Universities] doing things like this in the next couple of weeks.

My point to the ESFAO Committee and to you all is that we are in a different position because, let’s say, we’re fortunate in the sense that we don’t have an academic medical center heavily dependent on federal grants and the other agencies of the federal government that are looking closely at universities. We are fortunate, in a way that I never thought I would say, that our grants and contracts are heavily shifted away compared to our peers from NIH [National Institutes of Health] and NSF [National Science Foundation], which have been the most strongly acting so far.

That’s put us in a stronger position, but we’re also in a stronger position because we’ve been planning for this for a long time. Actually, we have been financially responsible for a long time, and that means that, I just need to say it again, we are not going to do some of the things you’re seeing elsewhere. We’re not going to have large-scale layoffs. We’re not going to have across-the-board hiring freezes. We’re not going to have deep budget cuts or other drastic measures in graduate programs. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have to be responsible as we’ve been all year in making a plane land with a balanced budget. Basically, what we’ve been doing since August is asking every unit, school, and college to identify efficiencies and realign their resources in ways that really make sense. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any changes, but they’ll be more consistent with the changes we do every year at Syracuse University in landing the plane or at least have been doing for recent times.

I think that calls for people to have a little bit of confidence. We are going to come back to the ESFAO with more concreteness as the plane nears landing in the next couple of weeks. The key moment, of course, is the presentation to the Board of Trustees committees going into the May full board meetings. Basically, it’s a boring headline for The Daily Orange and everybody else, but we’re going to propose a balanced  budget for FY26. It’s going to be both sensible and humane, and there’s going to be opportunities to talk about it before it’s finalized. That’s basically the way it is, and I feel pretty blessed to be in that situation.

What I don’t feel blessed to be in is 60 days into this raft of changes coming in policies from the federal government. I don’t want to communicate complacency in what I’ve said already. In particular since we last met, the Department of Education has both lost half its workforce and has launched investigations related to antisemitism and racism into dozens of higher education institutions. It’s not the only part of the federal government that’s doing that, but the most significant one. Syracuse University is not one of the institutions being investigated, but our peers are, and we’re watching those other institutions closely. We’re watching what’s going on at Columbia with particular attention and concern because it’s not just the scale of what’s being asked of Columbia, but the substance, including the academic substance, that’s being requested of Columbia in order to benefit from federal funding. So, we’re paying attention to that.

On March 6, the faculty, students, and staff received a communication from [Provost] Lois [Agnew] and me and others regarding new guidance from the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. Broadly speaking, that guidance took the position that consideration of race in any aspect of student academic or campus life is discrimination and a violation of Title XI, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That new policy went into effect on Feb. 28, two weeks after it was first communicated. This broad interpretation is being challenged in the courts, and we’re following that closely.

I just want to emphasize two things. Syracuse University will comply with the law as it develops, but we strongly believe all of our university programs do not discriminate against any group. We strongly believe none of our university programs discriminate against any group. That means we need to be careful and thoughtful in responding. We are working through our Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Mary Grace Almandrez in a Universitywide effort to determine our path forward under the new guidance. Rather than kind of knee-jerk responses, like we’re seeing Columbia forced to do, this includes a process by which we’re actually outreaching and consulting with faculty, staff, and students whose work has helped hold this place together as a university welcoming to all over the last years. That’s going to guide our long-term strategy.

It’s not something I can get done in a week. We have time to look at this closely. We are looking at it closely. We are consulting appropriately, but we’re doing it against, once again, a belief that at our core and at our best, which we have not always been at, we’re a university that welcomes all. How we do that in each era and under each administration has had to be savvy and has had to be wise. We’re in a situation where we have to figure out how to continue doing that now. I believe this community really wants us to continue doing that in the right way, and that’s what we’re feeling our way through.

I do expect, again, that there will be more changes coming from Washington in the next 40 days. It’s 53 days to Commencement. I expect in the next 40 days we’ll see more.

Dean Chandler-Olcott referred to “those persnickety accreditors.” I believe we will come to respect and need to defend our persnickety accreditors before the next 40 days are out. I say that as someone who chaired an accrediting body and was on the Middle States Commission as well. As persnickety as they are, they are largely driven by our peers looking closely at what it takes to deliver a great education to our students and to every student, not just some favored group. So, I think there’ll be more changes coming.

I think we’ll have to report more at the April 19 Senate meeting on the progress, both on the budget and on the response to federal issues. I’m very grateful to a really wide range of people with a wide range of views who’ve been helping us in the last two months. And I hope you keep hanging in there. Thank you.