Faculty warn that the University’s growing Transition Fund centralizes too much power into the hands of the senior administration.
In their October newsletter, the Queen’s University Faculty Association (QUFA) published concerns regarding the University’s creation of the “Transition Fund.” Once known as the “Strategic Initiatives Reserves,” the fund has grown from being allocated $10.9 million in 2022-23 to $39.9 million at the end of the 2024-25 fiscal year. Over the next three years, Queen’s plans to allocate $71.1 million more to the fund.
In a written statement to The Journal, the University described the Transition Fund as helping to implement academic and administrative priorities, supporting the Queen’s Renew program, supporting technology investments, and ensuring the sustainability of the operating budget framework.
QUFA expressed concerns that the growth of this fund represents a process of growing administrative power and further centralization of resources. In an interview with The Journal, the Chair of QUFA’s Finance and Budget Review Committee and Associate Professor, Dan Cohen, explained why he sees the centralization as problematic.
“Typically funds work through a faculty structure,” Cohen said. “The Faculty of Arts and Science has funds, the Faculty of Engineering has funds, and those are used more directly to deliver education and research. This fund seems to be sitting above the faculty structure and is entirely administratively run through the senior leadership team.”
Cohen explained that this hierarchical system could lead to issues of oversight, as only the Office of the Provost and the Vice-President (Finance and Administration) can decide how the fund is used. He worries that without other avenues at the University, being able to provide proper input, the voices of students and faculty will go unheard.
While the University claims it remains “committed to providing financial support to Faculties to help advance long-term financial sustainability,” it didn’t directly address concerns of administrative or resource centralization, despite specific questioning from The Journal.
The QUFA newsletter also raised concerns about how the University budgets income from its Pooled Investment Fund (PIF). The University budgets for only $10 million of PIF income to be allocated to support operations, with overall PIF income last year totaling $47.1 million. Any PIF income above the budgeted amount is automatically allocated to support “capital investment and other strategic priorities at the University.”
“[The surplus from investments is] seen as a surprise windfall thattransferred to the capital reserves, but it’s a surprise windfall that happens virtually every year,” Cohen said. “[…] The University has over $100 million in unallocated capital reserve.”
The University defended the $10 million it budgets from the PIF as reflecting the volatility of the financial market. In their newsletter, QUFA anticipated this defence, counterarguing that “excluding the vast majority of expected PIF income from the budget needlessly distorts budget projections and masks the allocation of funds towards capital expansion by keeping them out of budget planning documents.”
Queen’s further defended its allocation of PIF earnings to the capital reserves by claiming it’s the only source of operating funding available to support capital expansion of the University’s academic and research infrastructure. Despite QUFA accusing the University of having removed language regarding research and grants when rebranding the Strategic Initiatives Reserves as the Transition Fund, the University told The Journal it intends to invest some of its capital reserve in research priorities.
In a statement to The Journal, the President of QUFA, Karen Rudie, said that QUFA “always welcomes consultation” and “hopes Queen’s will take advantage of [QUFA] Members’ expertise and commitment to Queen’s in thinking about the future of the University, including with respect to how the Transition Fund could best be deployed.”
Tags
Budget, pooled investment fund, QUFA, Transition Fund
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