Indiana University is among the strongest public universities in the country financially, according to an independent analysis commissioned by faculty leaders — a finding they say undercuts administrators’ claims that the university’s financial situation demanded recent job cuts, program eliminations and other cost‑saving measures.
“There’s no fiscal basis for it. There’s nothing in this report that indicates those changes have any financial exigency behind them,” said Benjamin Robinson, associate professor of Germanic Studies at IU Bloomington and a member of the IU Bloomington chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which commissioned the analysis.
The analysis, conducted by Howard Bunsis, an accounting professor at Eastern Michigan University, relied on federally reported financial data and university budget documents. Bunsis found that IU holds a rare AAA bond rating from two major credit agencies and has amassed more than $2.2 billion in unrestricted reserves — its most flexible pool of funds.
IU spokesman Mark Bode said via email that some of the report’s conclusions reflect “apples to oranges” comparisons but declined to offer details on which conclusions the university disputes.
Analysis finds tuition growth offset funding cuts
Bunsis concludes that recent reductions in state funding were offset by rising tuition revenue and enrollment growth, leaving the university in solid financial health.
Robinson and other AAUP leaders say the findings raise questions about why IU administrators cut academic programs, staffing and graduate student support while administrative spending has grown faster than pay for workers and professors, whose small salary increases have been more than eaten up by inflation.
An IU spokesman said via email that some of the report’s conclusions reflect “apples to oranges” comparisons, but declined to offer details on which conclusions the university disputes.
Last summer, IU said it would cut 116 degree programs at the Bloomington campus. While the review process that resulted in the cuts was required by state law, Robinson and other faculty leaders argue IU’s financial strength gave it more room to absorb or resist the scale of cuts ultimately proposed.
Graduate students for years have asked for higher stipends, saying the university’s current support remains thousands of dollars below what it takes to live in Bloomington.
The university also said last summer that it would cut its operating expenses by about $100 million for fiscal 2026 in response to state and federal funding cuts. It also said it would make cuts to retirement contributions and staffing.
Just this week, the university reduced some staff in its marketing and communications department, though details weren’t immediately clear.
Robinson acknowledged that the university has seen some funding cuts, but he said those have been more than offset by higher tuition revenue driven by continued enrollment growth.
Robinson said the university increasingly is spending money on administrative overhead and less so on the professors who directly interact with students.
Between 2017 and 2024, salaries for instruction increased a “paltry” 8.1%, according to Bunsis, while deans and associate deans during the same period saw their pay jump by nearly 84%. The university’s board this year also boosted Whitten’s annual salary to $1 million.
Bunsis wrote that in 2024 and 2025, the university’s core academic mission even covered athletic expenses — to the tune of nearly $50 million — and salaries for coaches increased much faster than for faculty. That’s money the university instead could allocate to support academic programs, Robinson argued.
Bode, the IU spokesman, said the university is making “strategic decisions” to support instruction, research and hiring. He said IU’s instructional spending has risen 13.7% since 2017 and that research expenditures exceeded $1 billion last year. He also said the university has hired more than 500 tenure-track and tenured faculty and librarians at IU Bloomington since 2021 and has given faculty and staff raises for five straight years.
Faculty question why IU cut programs and jobs amid rising revenue
Bunsis’ report shows that while the university’s debt since 2015 has remained relatively flat, near $1.2 billion, the institution’s cash and investments have ballooned from just over $2 billion to $3.5 billion. During the same period, the university’s unrestricted cash, which it can use for essentially any purpose, rose from $1.4 billion to nearly $2.3 billion.
“IU has a very high level of unrestricted reserves,” Bunsis wrote.
The reserves, he wrote, help explain why IU received the highest bond rating from both Moody’s and S&P, and is one of only seven public universities in the country to achieve such a rating.
Robinson said that the university’s spending has not reflected administrators’ stated commitments to students. When IU President Pamela Whitten took over in 2021, she said students would be at the center of IU’s universe, he said. However, the university since then has cut jobs and real salaries for professors while sharply boosting pay for deans and other administrators.
The university has plenty of money, Robinson said, but it chooses to spend it not for the core mission of education but to give more money to administrators and the athletic department while cutting staff, eliminating degree programs and giving professors “paltry” salary increases.
“You wonder,” he said, “why is it when (the university is) so healthy that there’s this incredible demoralization of the very people who are the agents of student success?”
Bunsis, Robinson and others will answer questions about the report at a virtual town hall at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 29, 2026. You can join the event at tinyurl.com/IUFinances.
Boris Ladwig can be reached at bladwig@heraldt.com.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Report says IU job, program cuts weren’t required by finances
Reporting by Boris Ladwig, The Herald-Times / The Herald-Times
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