Other Key Take-Aways from the Analysis

1. Expenses for Administration have increased more than twice as much as expenses for Instruction since 2018. 

2. The cost of salaries for those involved in instruction have decreased as a proportion of expenses since 2016. The cost of salaries for those involved in administration as a proportion of expenses have increased since 2016. 

3. The number of employees in management has increased more quickly since 2017 than the number of staff not classified as management, which has increased more quickly than the number of full time faculty. (Since 2017, the number of employees classified as "management" in IPEDS data has increased ~28%; the number of employees classified as "all-other non-instructional staff" has increased ~11%; the number of employees classified as full-time faculty has increased ~8.5%.) 

4. Compensation and benefits as a proportion of the budget have not increased at a very high rate in the last 3 years, and have increased less quickly the costs for all other expenditures. (1.1%, 2.8%, and 3.7% year to year since 2023 for comp & benefits; compared to 6.2%, 7.1%, and 5.5% since 2023 for all other expenditures). 

5. UM-Dearborn has seen a decrease in enrollment since 2020, but 7 of 12 Michigan public universities have seen bigger drops. Only one (Michigan Tech) has seen increased enrollments since 2020.

6. International student numbers have dropped, and may drop more. But most of UM-Dearborn's enrollments are undergraduates, and most are in-state or in-US. While international enrollments have been dropping since 2023/2024, the 2026 international enrollments were still higher than, or in-line with, the numbers from 2014 through 2022. This is not ideal, but also not an obvious emergency justifying cuts.

7. UM-Dearborn has been solidly disadvantaged in state appropriations, relative to other MI publics (and relies more on tuition and fees for revenue than any other Michigan public). However, this does not mean that our state appropriations are expected to decrease, and the appropriations are not as hard to predict as has been suggested. 

8. The University Budget is usually focused on only the General Fund, but there are unrestricted revenues outside the General Fund so it is not appropriate to budget as though the General Fund were UM-Dearborn's only revenue. Instead, all unrestricted funds should be considered for budgeting purposes. (For example, Pell Grants are usually counted in "other revenues" outside of General Funds, and given that UM-Dearborn has the highest proportion of Pell Grants of all the public universities in the state, that is a sizeable amount of revenue that may not be included in an exclusively General Fund-focused budget).  

9. Though UM-Dearborn has the highest proportion of undergraduates with Pell Grants in the state, our graduation rates are much higher than might be expected with that student profile. In other words, UM-Dearborn is doing a very good job with its instructional mission -- normally the more Pell Grants a university has, the worse their graduation rates, but UM-Dearborn outperforms these expectations. UM-Dearborn faculty and staff are effectively fulfilling the University's instructional mission, even with underfunding by the state and with a constant drumbeat of financial austerity.