Dear Colleagues,
Many of you have asked about the financial planning parameters that should be used to assess the economic feasibility for hiring. Given the short- and longer-term impacts facing the University of Illinois and the State of Illinois, we request you base your financial projections on a general 10% reduction in state/tuition allocation for all campus units (including centrally budgeted units).
We will continue to use IVCB. If a tuition unit has mitigating factors or more detailed analysis that results in a different reduction, send me your assumptions. We were using some basic guidelines based on some of our campus-wide financial planning.
For tuition-generating units, please hold 5% of your FY2020 UVBI (gray box) allocation in reserve for possible cash rescission. For centrally-budgeted units, please hold 2.5% of your cash, state and institutional carry forward balances in reserve for possible cash rescission.
We are not implementing these budget directives at this time. If we were to activate this type of approach, we would not apply uniform reductions across all units. Across-the-board reductions are not strategic.
We want to steward our resources effectively and plan appropriately. We are trying to avoid longer term consequences of significant staff reductions by taking a proactive approach to hiring. Therefore, as you work with Illinois Human Resources and our office on prioritizing your open searches as well as your plans for future hiring, considering the budgetary impacts of the pandemic on your ability to sustain positions as critical. Sound fiscal management across all campus units helped the University of Illinois navigate previous budget challenges. We need a collective effort to navigate this unprecedented crisis.
A more general massmail about COVID-19 impacts on our financial condition was sent this morning.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Paul
Paul N. Ellinger, PhD
Associate Chancellor & Vice Provost for Budget & Resource Planning
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Office: 217-333-5503
pellinge@illinois.edu
