Reply to Which top colleges have a significant budget deficit? Which ones are red flags?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How did a tiny school like Middlebury run up such a large deficit?[/quote]

A $4.49 million budget deficit against an overall budget of $344 million isn't that significant (1.3% of overall budget). Reasons mentioned are rising healthcare costs, staff and faculty pay increases, and debt servicing. [/quote]

Middlebury under Laurie Patton definitely was not running the ship the way that it should have been run.  It is pretty apparent that she ignored a couple of items that needed addressing for pretty much her entire tenure. MIIS was losing an average of $6M-$8M per year when she arrived at Middlebury and she never forcefully addressed the issue during her tenure. [b]The MIIS debacle has cost Middlebury at least $150M in direct and indirect costs over that period of time. [/b]She also agreed to the two tiered pension system in 2017 capping new hires at an 11% match while existing hires stayed at a 15% match. The original reasoning for the rich match was that it allowed Middlebury to pay a slightly below market salary in return for rich benefit packages. However over time salaries were brought to market but the 15% match stayed in place for many employees. This was estimated to cost about $2.5M per year. Overall they should have done much better and people have every right to question Patton's judgement, especially in light of how quickly Ian Baucomb addressed both issues.

Deficits aren't unique to Middlebury but Middlebury stands out in consistency. A quick check of the 'middle wealth' NESCACs (Colby, Hamilton, Middlebury, Wesleyan) shows that all of them except Wesleyan have ran at least one deficit during the 2020-25FY period. Hamilton had one deficit year coming out of Covid, Middlebury had a deficit every year and Colby has run deficits for the last three years though not as big as Middlebury. None of the deficits endangered their finances in any significant way and all have solid investment grade Bond ratings.[/quote]

oof that sounds rough. huge loss over the long-term for midd. I wonder why they sunk so much money into a losing business half a country away?[/quote]

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