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I had the same reaction you did, so I looked up the state university budget breakdown [1] for my home state of Florida. In 2021-2022, the most recent year for which they have final numbers, 35.6% of expenditures went to "E&G". That's "Education & General", which according to them is defined as: "The Education and General budget funds the general instruction, research, and public service operations of the universities. A large portion of the system’s 2022-2023 beginning fund balance reserves ($420.8 million) is dedicated to meeting the 7% reserve requirement set forth in Section 1011.45(1) of the Florida Statutes. Additionally, millions of dollars have been reserved by the SUS to cover the costs associated with the hiring of faculty, maintenance of facilities and equipment, the maintenance of each university’s financial software system, various research enhancement programs and initiatives, and the potential for budget reduction shortfalls." So this includes both the "actual teaching" and research and other related spending. We can get more information on page 45, which provides a breakdown of that 35%: 61% of it (~22% of total) is "instruction and research", i.e., at most 22% of the total budget (and probably much less, since FL's public university sector is fairly research-heavy) is spent directly on instruction. That's probably a little unfair, since instruction needs things like facilities and other admin expenses even in a system that isn't bloated, but the previous poster's 25% number passes a sanity check at least to my eye. In case you're wondering, the other two big categories of expenses are C&G ("contracts and grants" - so more research expenditures mostly) and "local funds" (a weird mix that includes things like student activities, athletics, and financial aid). [1] https://www.flbog.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/2022-23-OB-... |