Report issued on 2010 State of the University
The president’s 2010 report on the state of the university is now available online.
While serious financial concerns exist, William & Mary’s extraordinary current excellence and its great prospects for the future occasion both pride and confidence. “William & Mary is marvelously special,” President Taylor Reveley says in this year’s State of the University message. “We link the intimacy of an exceptional undergraduate education in the liberal arts with the scope and energy of a university expanding human knowledge. Or, as one professor puts it, we combine the heart of a college with the brains of a research university.”
The financial section of the report, prepared by Vice President for Finance Sam Jones, notes that William & Mary’s operating revenue for fiscal year 2010 (ending June 30, 2010 and not including VIMS) was $270.8 million. State funds accounted for only 15.4 percent of that total. By 2012, Jones said, that percentage will decline to 12 percent. Since 2008, he adds, state support for College operations has been reduced by $16.7 million. One-time federal stimulus funds helped defer the full impact until the 2012 fiscal year.
Looking ahead, building a sustainable financial foundation for William & Mary remains a compelling priority. Reveley explains that this foundation must rest on four main pillars: (1) some continued taxpayer support, especially for capital projects; (2) growing streams of earned income (tuition and fees, research grants and contracts, and entrepreneurial activities); (3) greatly enhanced philanthropy (annual giving, endowment, funds for bricks and mortar); and (4) internal productivity gains.
“These four pillars, once fully in place, can support a public/private partnership of great staying power and potential,” said Reveley.
Despite the financial challenges, the president remains confident in the university’s future.
“Why confidence? First, William & Mary’s people are superb. Superb people figure out how to make things happen and find opportunity in adversity,” Reveley said. “Second, the university’s juggernaut is already rolling with powerful momentum. Tens of thousand of William & Mary people are helping push – people on campus and around the world. Third, no college or university in the United States (at least none still breathing) has encountered more adversity over the centuries than William & Mary; like the phoenix, the College always rises. Thus, there is real cause to believe we can and will build the financial foundation essential to William & Mary in the 21st century.”
