The WKU
Board of Regents
approved a $353.2 million budget for 2020-21 on Friday (June 26).
“A budget is a difficult process for the University in most years but the uncertainty created by the pandemic presented tremendous challenges for us. That uncertainty continues to exist,” President Timothy C. Caboni said. “I’m proud of the work of our budget office, our finance office but most importantly our of entire governance community to come together to assemble a budget that represents who we are as a University, that we are sacrificing together to get through this pandemic, that we are protecting things that are important to us as an institution, and that we are setting the stage to emerge on the other side of this much stronger than we entered.”
The 2020-21 budget is about $34.5 million (or 9 percent) lower than the 2019-20 budget of $387.7 million.
“This is a pretty significant decline and not one we would typically see, but we were working with unique circumstances this year,” said Susan Howarth, Executive Vice President for Strategy, Operations and Finance.
The 2020-21 budget does not include a tuition increase for WKU students.
“By keeping tuition unchanged, we felt it was important to support our students and their families and not to place the financial burden caused by the pandemic on them,” Howarth said.
