Our university offers a lesson in smart spending and financial transparency

On the third floor of Turlington Hall, there aren’t any windows. At least none that professors and teaching assistants, huddled in their dingy, cramped offices can see. The walls are gray, or might as well be, and its narrow corridors taste of stale air. It’s cold.

Contrast that with the $35 million Heavener Hall, whose open, spacious halls brim with sunlight and are plastered with inspiring messages in soft whites and blues.

Variations on these two themes can be seen across UF’s historic campus, where some old, red brick buildings wither away from years of infrastructural neglect, while others embody luxury. This disparity is to be expected, to a degree (renovations can’t happen all at once), and while some buildings like Newell Hall and the O’Connell Center undergo repairs, others will necessarily wait untouched.

But it’s worth asking whether new installations like Heavener, Cypress, and Infinity Halls are worth the expense, despite a steadying undergraduate enrollment and a handful of buildings like Turlington in need of updates.

Here’s where a typical story might slip into scandal, exposing reckless spending figures and gross lack of oversight with regard to planning projects. But this is not a typical story. Instead, I’ve found UF runs a surprisingly transparent Planning, Design, and Construction Division complete with building reports for each year, clear and accessible project lists that quote budget figures and initiatives dedicated to the preservation and upkeep of our campus’ historic buildings. Campus and community representatives were included in the development of a 10-year Campus Master Plan, which was then presented for screening by “the four joint Faculty Senate committees of Lakes, Vegetation and Landscaping (LVL), Preservation of Historic Buildings and Sites (PHBS), Parking and Transportation Advisory Committee (PTAC), and Land Use and Facilities Planning (LUFPC).”

Not only that, but UF financial reports are easily accessible online. They break down revenues and expenditures in simple language that non-accountants can understand. A quick read finds little to manufacture outrage about — compared with the other major public Florida schools (University of Central Florida, University of South Florida or Florida State University) and comparatively sized out-of-state public schools (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Ohio State University), UF’s operating expenses break down similarly. We could arguably spend more on scholarships and fellowships for students, but more on that in a later column.

At present, what can seem like a boring trail of numbers and account information actually amounts to a rarity in the world of university spending: a university encouraging itself to be held accountable by the community it serves. On each of the above sites you’ll find feedback forms, and the accessibility of the accounts keeps the information easy to check against national statistics. That means the dollar figures relevant to you (rising tuition costs, financial aid disbursements, etc.) can be checked and double checked against other universities and against alternative budgetary allocations to ensure UF is doing the most it can to aid its students.

UF placed 50th on U.S. & World News’ ranking for best colleges. Such institutional clout inevitably leads to more donations and greater surpluses with which to spend, an advantage smaller, struggling universities don’t have. But, as Harvard University and Yale University show, multibillion-dollar endowments do not always lead to careful spending practices. We should acknowledge that our university operates with the student (and the taxpayer) in mind and other universities, as well as the legislatures and donors that fund them, should take note.

Champe Barton is a UF economics and psychology junior. His column appears on Fridays.