Dear UW-Green Bay Faculty and Staff,
Today, Deloitte’s Financial and Strategic Assessment reports will be released publicly for 7 universities. The reports discuss the economic assessment and opportunities for us as well as Oshkosh, Parkside, Platteville, River Falls, Superior, and Whitewater. Attached you will find three documents. The first talks about our current economic assessment, the second potential opportunities for us, and the third, labeled UW Green Bay UFA, is a summary of the Deloitte reports along with a presentation I gave to the Board of Regents that provides context to those reports. We will discuss all of this at the Coffee Break on Tuesday, but below are some important things to keep in mind.
Documents can be found here:
UW-Green Bay Current State Assessment
UW-Green Bay Opportunity Report
First, the slide shown from Deloitte on page 19 of their Current State Assessment and again on pages 8 and 10 of the summary are crucial to put in context. It takes FY23, which was our worst year by far of the last 6 years, and projects out as if we have not made any financial adjustments in FY24 or planned reductions in FY25. As a reminder, in FY23, we purposely chose to spend down some of our tuition balance to support our mission. Page 11 of the summary talks broadly about adjustments we have made in FY24 and FY25 and page 12 outlines the projections for our tuition balance as a result, which shows a much more accurate and positive trajectory for us moving forward. We pledged to end our “structural deficit” by FY25 and I believe that we have done that with the understanding that changes to projected enrollment can always cause us to have to adjust. We used flat enrollment as a baseline for our numbers. The Deloitte reports are a snapshot of our financials in Fall 2023. It is important to recognize this distinction and the heavy lifting you have done in recent months to set the stage for us to move into the opportunities before us.
Second, the structural deficit as defined by Deloitte does not include any revenue that we generate through our Continuing Education Division. This revenue has been stable for some time now and we continue to seek to grow our presence here in the future as a unique revenue stream that we can rely on.
Third, on page 19 of the summary, I talk about our future plans to keep our budget on the plus side of the ledger and build on our mission. I discussed further growing our dual enrollment and continuing education work, continually examining the sustainability of our program array, developing Phoenix Innovation Park as an entity that drives enrollment and revenue, exploring additional revenue opportunities for athletics, and continually pushing ourselves to have the strongest possible student support network.
Finally, at the Coffee Break on April 16th, we will discuss some of the other findings in the financial assessment and opportunities. I have already met with governance leaders at the UC regarding the report. Nothing in the report is new to us, but having these things validated by a third-party source will be helpful for us to continue to have conversations about our future.
Please feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any questions that you would like clarified.
Best, Mike
The university financial assessments for seven universities and President Rothman’s statement are now live: https://www.wisconsin.edu/president/strategic-plan/