The UT seems to be far from achieving its own budget cuts this year, as was already evident from the figures that vice-president Machteld Roos shared with the University Council last week. While a deficit of 7.5 million euros has been budgeted, the UT is heading for a deficit of 13.4 million euros this year.
At that time, the full management report was not yet publicly available. Now it is. This shows that incidental windfalls will ensure that the UT will come fairly close to the budgeted deficit of 7.5 million euros. The report contains figures that vary from minus 7.7 million euros to minus 9.1 million euros. A more rose-coloured picture of roughly 6 million euros, between the so-called operational result and the bottom line.
Windfalls
The fact that the UT seems to be recording a less worrying deficit at the end of this year is due to windfalls of millions of euros. One of the incidental benefits is the unused Matching Horizon Europe funds 2023. These funds are based on past project results and are intended to stimulate new research projects. 'We would prefer to use those resources for that,' explains Finance Director Dennis van Zijl when asked. 'But that would also mean that you would have to incur additional expenses for that. For the resources from 2023 (about 3 million euros, ed.), we do not think this is opportune, given our current financial situation.'
Other windfalls are the interest that the UT receives on its savings – more than 3 million euros. And the UT received almost 11 million euros back from the Tax and Customs Administration last year. This concerned a reclamation of VAT between the years 2016 and 2021. More than 2 million euros in interest was added to this, in favour of the UT.
Van Zijl says that the UT tries to map such incidental results as well as possible. 'In an organisation as large as ours, you regularly see that there are quite a few unexpected plusses and, unfortunately, also minuses. We take them with us as soon as we are sure that they have been realised. We want to avoid keeping them in reserve, making difficult choices, and suddenly recording a much better result at the end of the year.'
However, the UT has had its share of windfalls in recent years. In both 2023 and 2022, incidental results resulted in a much rosier financial picture for the UT. The operational result – excluding incidental income or expenses – looked more negative. Nevertheless, the UT is showing some improvement with that operating result: last year it was almost 30 million euros in the red, now the UT is heading for a deficit of about 13 million euros.
Little effect of austerity measures
Although the final financial picture does not seem to be too bad, it is becoming clear that the faculties in particular are recording significantly redder figures than budgeted. Together, they expect a deficit of 15 million euros, while a deficit of 5 million euros was budgeted. Only the BMS faculty is expecting a positive result. The service departments, on the other hand, are doing better than budgeted, recording a combined plus of 1.9 million euros.
Above all, the UT is not succeeding in making the austerity measures effective, as is also evident from the management report. The UT wanted to cut 12 million euros this year, yet only a cut of 4 million euros has been realised. For example, it is written that it is not possible to reduce personnel costs. Securing funding from second and third money flows is also lagging behind.
It is also striking that services and faculties report that they have difficulty with the cutbacks on temporary contracts and the deployment of student assistants. This should result in savings of 7 million euros, but seems to be 2 million euros at most. The set of acute measures announced last July has also had little effect, the report states: 'Significant financial impact is not expected before 2025.'
Redesigning systems
The feedback in the report on this is remarkable. It states that the Executive Board has given all units the task of incorporating the total savings of 12 million euros into their budgets. But, it says: 'However, not all units have specifically translated the cuts into individual budget items in accordance with the instructions'.
Moreover, the document states, the structure of the financial administration and the budget formats makes it difficult to manage the cuts. In other words, savings are needed, but it is not clear exactly what effect they will have. The UT wants to organise this differently by 2025, according to the report.
