In May 2024, Queen’s projected a $35.7 million operating budget deficit for 2024-2025. Since then, the university has remained focused on managing these financial challenges through its Balanced Budget Plan to return to structural balance and ensure we can continue to deliver on our academic mission of excellence in research and teaching.
To address the operating budget deficit, base budget reductions across faculties and shared services have been implemented and will continue for the next several years. Other measures have included a hiring freeze, voluntary retirement and early exit incentives in some faculties, and decreased spending on travel, technology, and procurement, as well as operational improvements such as sharing of services and expenses, and new campus partnerships.
The Queen’s Renew Program remains ongoing and aims to improve Queen’s long-term financial health and boost investment in academic activities by improving the effectiveness of the delivery of professional services. The program has made progress through work with campus staff participating in NousCubane’s UniForum benchmarking, which will show how our professional services delivery compares to those of peer universities in Canada and globally.
This benchmarking is informed by staff Service Effectiveness Surveys and through Activity Data Collection, which were completed earlier this year. Queen’s will share initial findings from benchmarking and outline the next phase of Renew program activities in October.
The university also brought together senior leaders during the summer to engage in early strategy development and consultation for a long-term vision of innovation and renewal — one aimed at revitalizing Queen’s as a top research-intensive university that makes significant impacts nationally and around the world.
For more information, visit Queen’s Balanced Budget Plan.
This story originally appeared in the ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ Gazette.
