Where does the $ Go?

Posted on 18. Nov, 2009 by Christine Phan in Campus

Hey PUC students, ever wonder where all of our tuition money goes? Well, I wish to know, too! I decided to go and interview Bill Cochran, Director of Budgets and Fiscal Services, to see how our $30,000 is spent.

Let’s split up our tuition into different spending categories: Faculty and student salaries, campus and building maintenance, school activities budget, department budgets, and everybody’s favorite, food.
Last year, an estimated total of $15.6 million was spent for faculty and staff’s salary; this is not including work-study students, regular student workers, and hourly-waged workers. For regular student workers, an estimated $73,000 was spent for students’ salaries. Regular student workers are different from work-study students because the work-study program is a government funded program: “After filing a FAFSA, the student receives a Student Aid Report (SAR), or the institution receives an Institutional Student Information Report (ISIR), which provides the student’s EFC”, meaning the government gives the institution funds to pay the work-study students.

Next on the list of to-pay-for: Campus and building maintenance, which includes the water and electricity bill. Ever wonder how much your 2-times-a-day-30-minutes-each showers cost? Last year, $95,000 was spent on water. Not much, right? That is because PUC pumps water from its own wells. On the other hand, we have the electricity bill. An estimated total of $1.5 million was spent on electricity, which includes labor for maintenance and repairs, and the production of steam from natural gas in order to obtain electricity. Another $400,000 was spent for campus maintenance, which includes landscaping, street cleaning, overall repairs, and land-to-land management (taking care of PUC’s undeveloped acreage). Fun fact: $190,000 was spent to collect and dispose of garbage last year.

Here at PUC, we have a wide variety of academic departments that require their own budgets as well. Departments such as aviation and nursing requires largest amount of funds. Last year, the Flight Center spent approximately $522,000 on running the department. The cost is paid off by student and public rental fees, extra tuition from aviation majors, PUC’s own fuel sales, and donations from alumni and other aviation enthusiasts. In addition to special departments such as aviation, the academic department with the most majors and one of the largest budgets is nursing. This quarter, PUC has 367 declared nursing students, nearly a quarter of all PUC students. As for all departments here at PUC, they have their own departmental budget which is used for their own specific needs. The athletic department also has a budget of its own, which is annually spent on uniforms, transportation, and insurance at a cost of around $80,000 per year.

And how do you think SA paid for the 300 free t-shirts at Midnight Madness? SA has their own set budget on the side just for us students, which this year is $299,000. This pool of money goes towards events such as Saturday night activities, banquets, printing yearbooks, Spring and Fall Fest, and other ongoing campus activities. Part of the SA budget also belongs to the Senate, which has a smaller budget of $15,000 this year. The Senate budget goes towards student services as well.

Other sources of PUC’s income come from the PUC Bookstore and Bon Appétit. $800 comes out of our tuition quarterly for food expenses. PUC does not run its own cafeteria for it is run by Bon Appétit, a private company that signs a contract with PUC for its services. As for the PUC Bookstore, it is also an independent business run by Barnes & Noble. PUC profits from a percentage of sales made by the bookstore.

Finally, a grand total of $35.7 million was spent last year to run PUC, paid for by our tuition and an additional $3.75 million given by the SDA conference.

Lastly, another fun fact: 27.5 cents of every dollar of tuition collected by PUC is given back in the form of scholarships and discounts to students like you and I. So, with 1377 students this year, and nearly all paying $30,000: you do the math.

Tags: 86.4, finances