Aligning Our Budget

The budget shortfall is the result of enrollment decreases — especially among international graduate students — and decreases in state formula funding for instruction and operations.

UNT’s budget is heavily dependent on student enrollments, which drive our tuition, fee, and state formula funding. 

This situation may create feelings of uncertainty and anxiety, and many individuals and units have already felt the impact of our budget shortfall. Our next steps may be very difficult, but we will get through these immediate challenges together. 

Throughout this process, we will be transparent and communicate often about decisions and timelines. 

While we have to make tough choices to navigate our current challenges, we will come through this together and emerge as an even stronger university. We are better together.

Academic affairs accounts for about 80 percent of our available central budget, so central spending reductions and reallocations will significantly impact academic affairs.

Reallocations and cost savings may include:

• Increase teaching workloads/minimum class size
• Freeze some faculty and staff vacant lines
• Consolidate or possibly eliminate courses and programs with low enrollment
• Strategically reorganize administrative and academic units and departments
• Convert large enrollment courses to hybrid

Growing revenue will be one of the chief strategies to stabilize our structural budget deficit. Increasing enrollment will both strengthen an important revenue stream and play a central role in reducing our budget deficit. Student retention is also of primary importance for revenue growth, especially as we begin the base year for state formula funding this summer. 

Yes. While we will have to make reductions this year and for FY 2027, we will also work together to align our resources with our values, mission, and priorities. These priorities include goals outlined in UNT’s new strategic plan, Look North: UNT 2030, for improving student retention and success and increasing student enrollments through 2030.

We will continue to invest in student recruiting and strategies to improve student success. We will also bolster university fundraising and continue to invest in our capabilities to bring in sponsored research funding and other activities that help stabilize and advance the university.

The university remains steadfast in its commitment to the long-term success of all its students. 

Across campus, UNT will also support faculty innovators in transforming how we teach large enrollment courses. This initiative will expand work already underway to redesign courses using technology, personalize the learning experience to improve outcomes for students, and in turn, strengthen our financial position. This initiative will leverage and build upon models and technologies developed at leading colleges and universities across the nation.

UNT remains committed to maintaining its R1 ranking with the Carnegie Classification and will continue to expand its research enterprise. 

In the 89th Legislative Session, the legislature appropriated additional funding to the Texas University Fund (TUF), which was sufficient to support UNT in achieving Level 1 TUF funding. UNT did meet the required performance targets last year thanks to the hard work of our faculty researchers and staff.

TUF funding can only be used for research efforts.