Indiana University is in great financial health, according to a recent independent analysis. The report says administrative costs have grown significantly while instruction and faculty pay lagged.

Howard Bunsis, professor of accounting at Eastern Michigan University, works with chapters of the American Association of University Professors to do similar audits around the country. He shared his report with the Bloomington chapter this week.

Bunsis said those spending trends are common at other universities, but that IU’s circumstances are unique in two ways.

First, despite having a clear flagship campus, the university does not produce public financial statements for Bloomington.

“That makes it difficult to analyze what's going on at IUB,” Bunsis said. “There's very few flagships that we do not see audited financial statements from, and that is troubling.”

Without publicly available audits, independent analysts use data reported to the U.S. Department of Education. That data is only current through 2024, though. Otherwise, analysts must rely on budget reports, which don’t include actual results and aren’t audited by an outside entity.

“We still are able to tell the main trends in terms of the priorities, but it's harder to get at bottom line, revenues and expenses,” Bunsis said.

Read more: IU funneled $25M directly to athletics last year 

Second, IU is doing remarkably well financially, compared to other schools.

The university’s cash reserves have grown by more than a billion dollars since 2020, to nearly twice the recommended threshold.

And its credit rating is superb. Only six other public universities have a AAA bond rating from Moody’s and S&P.

“Those are all great things,” Bunsis said. “They're (the administration) also crying poverty and laying people off at the same time. That what the data suggests should not be happening.”

IU has made hiring cuts, reduced benefits and provided lower cost of living adjustments. It said it did so in order to address lost funds from state appropriations.

“That's not unique, either,” Bunsis said. “Other universities do the same thing.”

But the report questioned the overall impact of those cuts.

Compared to other public universities, IU already received less than 20 percent of its budget from the statehouse, and growing tuition revenue more than covered the loss in state appropriations and growing operating expenses.

IU declined to provide an interview on its finances, but spokesperson Mark Bode pointed out in an emailed statement that university investment in key areas like instruction and research is growing.

“IU is making strategic decisions that allow us to prioritize the research and academic enterprise at a time when some other universities are freezing similar investments,” he said.

Bode also mentioned IU’s expanding fields of research and instruction.

“Fundamentally, we’re supporting long-standing strengths in business, music and the humanities, while expanding the breadth of IU's excellence in biosciences, microelectronics, engineering and more,” he wrote.

Those investments are a small piece of the whole picture.

“What he said was completely true,” Bunsis said. “But the comparison is, you increase research and instruction, but not to the degree you increased administrative costs, and I think that's an issue.”

According to the report, spending on academic support salaries (including deans), and institutional support (including other administrators), has grown by 83.6 percent and 42.5 percent since 2017, respectively. In contrast, the amount spent on instructor salaries has grown by 8.1 percent.

“I want to be clear there's no claim that anyone is doing anything underhanded, nefarious. I don't believe any of that. I believe there's just a difference in priorities,” Bunsis said.