Resolution on the Fiscal Year 2027 (FY27) Budget Framework and Its Implications for Rutgers-New Brunswick

Adopted at the March 13, 2026, NBFC meeting

WHEREAS Rutgers-New Brunswick units have been instructed to prepare FY27 budgets under “stand-still” conditions that hold base expenditures at FY26 levels despite inflationary pressures and anticipated increases in salary and fringe obligations; and

WHEREAS President Tate has further directed that an additional 1 percent of Rutgers-New Brunswick unit revenues be transferred to the central administration; and

WHEREAS taken together these directives impose severe effective budget reductions on Rutgers-New Brunswick units that threaten the quality of students’ educational experience and the continued growth of faculty excellence in research, teaching, and service; and

WHEREAS these threats jeopardize fulfillment not only of the University’s academic mission but also Rutgers’ stated goal of improving its national standing; and

WHEREAS because the School of Arts and Sciences (SAS) has only recently fixed a structural deficit and also faced cuts in recent past budget cycles, the proposed FY27 budget constraints have immediately resulted in reduced SAS course offerings and in the layoff of 38 Lecturers; and

WHEREAS the central administration is responsible for managing the University’s substantial deferred maintenance backlog, the urgency of which has been cited as a basis for some of the imposed FY27 budget constraints without clear transparency about its scope or origins; and

WHEREAS shared governance is a foundational principle of Rutgers University and requires meaningful faculty participation in decisions that directly affect academic programs, instructional capacity, and the University’s research and educational missions, yet reports to the NBFC indicate that faculty in many units have not been meaningfully involved in the development of FY27 budget proposals;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT the New Brunswick Faculty Council:

• Declares that the University’s financial challenges must not be addressed by imposing sudden and severe reductions on units whose primary responsibility is the teaching, research, and service missions of Rutgers^[1], as a means of relieving central fiscal pressures; and
• Calls upon the Rutgers-New Brunswick Chancellor to forcefully advocate with the central administration to:
• reconsider the current FY27 budget framework and develop alternative approaches that that protect the educational and research cores across all schools within the University, rather than imposing across-the-board reductions at the unit level, and
• provide transparent reporting to the Rutgers-New Brunswick community regarding the origins, scale, and timeline of deferred maintenance needs; and
• Affirms that meaningful faculty participation through shared governance, practiced consistently across campus units, must be a core component of academic budget planning and decision-making, including the development of budget parameters that directly affect academic and research programs; and
• Urges the Rutgers-New Brunswick Chancellor, prior to approving the FY27 budget, to commission an impact report detailing the financial savings achieved alongside the negative impacts on our academic mission, such as diminished student retention, reduced choice of course offerings, extended time to program completion, stalled program innovation, reduced scholarly contributions, and reduced revenue; this report should include qualitative assessments by chairs and program directors on impacts to our core mission, especially within SAS where deep cuts have been incurred.