University of Minnesota faculty and alumni decry ‘administrative bloat’ despite proposed budget cuts

University of Minnesota faculty and alumni are accusing the institution of having excessive administrative costs at a time when officials want to slice academic costs and raise tuition.

On Wednesday, the U’s Board of Regents will vote on the budget, which has drawn opposition from faculty and students for the 7% cuts to academic programs and a 6.5% jump in tuition for undergraduate, in-state students on the Twin Cities and Rochester campuses; at other campuses, tuition will rise 4% to 5%. It’s the biggest hike in 14 years on the Twin Cities campus.

President Dr. Rebecca Cunningham said 300 jobs will be cut across the campuses.

The budget “is not an easy one and these are not easy times,” she said at the Board of Regents meeting last week.

At the same time, critics of the $5.1 billion budget point to $60 million for strategic investments — a one-time allotment — and $15 million in recurring expenses for strategic investments, as evidence of bloat.

Teri Caraway, a political science professor, said she doesn’t recall a U president asking for so much discretionary income in the more than 20 years she’s been at the U.

“This is continuing a shift from academics to administration,” she said.

A U spokesperson said the money will fund the U’s new strategic plan and also is needed to account for a major change in how research is funded.

U leaders have said flat funding from the state and declining federal support for research contributed to the need for the budget cuts and tuition increases. Accounting for inflation, receiving the same amount from the Legislature as last year equates to a 3% to 4% decrease. And losses due to cuts in federal grant funding at the U have now topped $40 million, officials said.

There’s a bright spot for faculty: The proposed budget includes a 4% increase to salaries, though not everyone will see a raise — it will be given based on merit and to bring some salaries up to market rate.

Over the years, many people have accused the U of "bloated” administrative costs. For instance, national journalists and a left-leaning nonprofit said the U’s administrative costs were among the highest in the country more than a decade ago.

Now, critics of the latest budget have cited the hiring of a new vice president for strategic initiatives with a salary of $500,000 — the 12th such vice president at the U. A 13th vice president was approved in June, but that was a promotion in title only, a U spokesperson said.

A U spokesperson said this week that there is no common way to define “administrative costs” among universities.

“There are often different public perceptions, regardless of how the university officially defines them,” a spokesperson said.

A May 2025 annual review of senior leader compensation from the U’s human resources office says 31 U employees were paid more than $300,000 in base salary.

Michael McNabb, a Lakeville attorney and U alumnus who has had four children attend the university, noted that administrative costs in the proposed budget are cut less than 1% compared to 7% for academics.

“We’ve got all kinds of monies that are going out for things other than teaching and research,” he said. “Those are the things that I’m concerned about.”

From 2012 through 2021, he said, the U produced a “benchmarking report” for administrative costs that itemized how much was spent. But in 2022, the U stopped putting out that report, making it harder to break down specific costs.

The U’s definition of “administration” changed, too, in recent years. The U still provides public reports to the state using the new definitions.

McNabb calculates that the U’s administrative costs top $1 billion per year, depending on how things are classified. He noted that, in the 2025 budget, $16.5 million was spent on marketing and communications, $111 million was dedicated to consultants and $87 million was allotted for settling legal claims, not counting attorney costs.

A U spokesperson said that administrative costs have been between 10.8% to 11.7% of the budget for the past five years.

Heather Holcombe, a senior lecturer in the English department, said she can’t see how the U can justify a new vice president making half a million dollars while also telling academic departments to make cuts, which will likely be in areas like instruction. That single executive’s salary could fund the hiring of 11 full-time instructors to run 66 classes, she said.

“Students do not need another vice president; they need courses and faculty to teach them,” she said. “What I see from my vantage point is a profound disinvestment in our educational mission.”

Some staff and faculty have raised concerns that the budget cuts and increasing tuition could result in larger class sizes, fewer courses being offered and fewer students able to afford the U.

Cunningham said last week that the budget offers “practical, forward-thinking solutions.” She said the bump in what students will pay “is not runaway tuition.”

Tuition is 3% lower than it was a decade ago, she said, when adjusted for inflation. And tuition is 39% lower for families making less than $110,000 than it was 10 years ago when financial aid is included.

At the College of Liberal Arts (CLA), Holcombe is at risk of losing her job due to the cuts. Any instructor who is not tenure-track faculty is vulnerable, she said. There are 1,100 such “contingent faculty” at the Twin Cities campus and 400 more across the other U campuses, with their numbers trending upward for a long time, she said. They work for $38,000 to $45,000 per year and have no job security.

“They’ve created an entire subclass of academic instructors ... and they lean on us in these precise kind of moments,” she said.

In the CLA, the new budget would mean offering fewer courses and packing in more students in each section, she said.

Caraway said that in 2001, 30% of the U’s budget was for instruction. If this budget passes, that will decrease to 19%. She said the 7% in cuts was planned before the national assault on higher education funding began.

The budget for non-tenure-track instructors is “the only flexible pot of money” to cut, Caraway said.

“If they’re planning responsibly, they would actually look and see, are we going to be able to meet our students’ needs?” Caraway said.

The U has had record enrollment recently, she said, and those students need certain classes to graduate.

In response, a U spokesperson said: “Changes to program and class offerings ... are the result of analysis on student demand now and as projected for the future, as well as faculty expertise and strategic scheduling. The actions will not impact students’ ability to graduate.”

Galin Jones, director of the School of Statistics, said he’s heard that 11 or 12 tenure-track positions will have to be cut in the CLA, plus $7 million more. Students may now come to the U and not get to take classes with faculty because “we’ll be having to go after cheaper options.”

“I think one of the things that people come here for is to have faculty teaching their courses,” he said.

He said allotting millions to strategic investments “could be good for the university at some level, but I worry about doing it on the back of students,” he said.

Dr. Beth Thielen, a professor in the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, said $11 million must be cut from the medical school’s budget.

The Department of Pediatrics has already been running a deficit for several years, she said. Pediatrics has been trying to fix the deficit for the last few years but doesn’t seem to be making headway, she said.

The $11 million in cuts across the medical school will be on top of that, she said, adding that some faculty, like her, have already weathered slashes to research funding.

“We’re being asked to just work harder clinically,” she said. “That does not land well with all the physicians who have been dealing with all the things we’ve been dealing with.”