Thursday, September 25, 2008

A Major Budgeting Gap at Yeshiva University

Here is some Orthonomic reading of interest. YU is facing a $24 *million* budget shortfall for the coming year. In the last 5 years YU has increased spending on changing university culture, acquiring real estate, and adding faculty. But now things aren't looking up. Investments have lost ground, fundraising is going to be tough, and salary increases are written into contracts.

No doubt universities have to spend big bucks to make themselves attractive, and that means investing in programming, infrastructure, and faculty. But YU draws its students from one basic demographic, one that is already stretched to the limit. Tuition plus room and board at YU is already a whopping $40,000. I don't know what the enrollment is at YU, but $24 mil seems like a lot of ground to make up even if fundraising is successful. One wonders just how price sensitive the product is because I can't imagine the shortfall being filled in without tuition taking a major jump.

Since I don't have much to say, I will just take this opportunity to wish all my readers a L'Shana Tovah U'Metukah. May we all be blessed with life, health, happiness, and (yes) parnasah to help make this joyous life of Torah and Mitzvot just a bit easier.

5 comments:

concernedjewgirl said...

Amen!
And to you too, Shana Tovah U'Metukah!

Anonymous said...

Time for YU to dig a bit into that famed endowment. It's certainly not time to raise their tuition...

I look at my 17 month old and wonder if I'll be able to afford sending him there 16 years from now.

Rebecca said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Unfortunately with the current woes on Wall Street, it is only going to get worse before it gets better.

Mark

Anonymous said...

"Unfortunately with the current woes on Wall Street, it is only going to get worse before it gets better"

Agreed-an interesting experiment track the YU endowment form around 1945 to the present and compare itto changes in the DJ Industrial average-I guess that the changes would track the index much closer than who was or was not thePrez of YU.

mycroft