In September of 2025, our colleague Liam Mchugh-Russell spent significant time and energy to understand Dalhousie’s budgets. The result is published in two posts on his blog, the first on September 12 here and the second on September 15 here. The most eye-opening aspect of Liam’s analysis is his observation that it appears “the board wanted to hide [roughly $35 million over the last three years] during budget consultations, and mislead the university community about the actual amount and allocation of revenues available for operations rather than being open about the value of that spending.”

For the detailed analysis, please read Liam’s posts. For a high-level summary, read on.

The main takeaways for me from the September 12 post were that:

1. Dal accounts for its funds in obscure ways; the obfuscation in the annual budgets Dal publishes seems deliberate.
2. At the same time as a significant financial burden is shifted to faculties (they are now responsible for pay raises that were previously covered by a central fund which introduced significant financial pressure on faculties) and a need for saving $27M is announced, the university is increasing its spending on “Strategic initiatives and essential priorities” by an order of magnitude from about $2M/yr prior to 2025 to about $16M/y for the next three years. Spending $16M/y for three years amounts to $48M–more than the amount they claim needs to be saved.
3. While there are real pressures on the annual operating budget resulting from the long-term decrease in inflation-adjusted provincial support and the recent drop in international student enrolment, the narrative that this shortfall has to be balanced by painful savings (including terminations and program closures) is in contradiction with item 2 above and item 4 below.
4. The audited financial statements, another set of financial statements that Dal produces, paint a different picture than the annual operating budget. While the operating budget for 2024-25 reported a $6M deficit, the audited financial statements for the same fiscal year show $55M in excess revenue over expenses for the same year. Where did that money go? The short answer is capital assets, but the details are more complicated. Please read on.

More upsetting were Liam’s findings published in his second post on September 15 where he dove deeper into explaining where Dal’s overall consolidated surplus comes from. It appears that Dal is reallocating unrestricted investment income to the capital fund rather than its operating fund. The result is less investment income can be spent on operations resulting in lower operational surpluses or even deficits while the consolidated surplus increases.

Apparently this also happened at Queens University. Queens and Dal both engaged the Nous Group consulting firm (who own UniForum) which appears to be advising university administrations to move away from transparency and collegial governance toward corporate practices and austerity. A future post will analyze this in more detail.

Quoting Liam’s concluding questions for his second post verbatim here:

1. “How does the university decide how to allocate its non-endowment investment income? Is there an accounting rule or other policy dictating how that income is to be allocated?

2. “If the amount of investment income being allocated to the capital fund is more or less up to the discretion of the board, how much investment income is the university planning to allocate to the capital fund next year? Or over the next three years? Notably, $14.5 million per year looks pretty similar to the annual $17 million hole in revenue that is the starting point for the board’s operational budget plan for the next three years.

3. “If the board made a strategic decision that it was necessary, rational or otherwise in the best interests of the university to spend half of the $70 million in financial windfalls earned over the last three years on capital improvements, on what basis was it decided that this capital spending would be accounted for as investment income earned and spent within the capital budget, rather than as investment income earned in operations and then transferred to the capital budget? Unless there is a good reason, the only conclusion I can draw is that the board wanted to hide this income during budget consultations, and mislead the university community about the actual amount and allocation of revenues available for operations rather than being open about the value of that spending.”

Grateful to Liam for bringing his considerable expertise to bear on these important questions. It’s up to the broader university community, i.e. us, to insist on answers.