A Plan With Numbers^[a]

UW 2027-2031

This plan was written by Take Back the Academy with help from other UW academics. To learn more, please email takebacktheacademy @ gmail

The University of Washington is one of the great public research^[b] universities. Its faculty are leaders in fields ranging from computer science and medicine to the humanities and social sciences. Its students are among the most talented in the nation. Its research enterprise generates billions in federal funding and has produced discoveries that have measurably improved lives across Washington state and beyond.

However, our institution faces real challenges - both financial and cultural - that cannot be papered over with a vapid bibble-babble of aspirational language.

We do not propose to “radically reinvent” or “reimagine” the UW. Instead, we propose to fix UW - by returning to the core values that make it an institution of immense value.

The strategic plan proposed here is entirely feasible. The savings identified are grounded in comparisons with peer institutions facing the same pressures and managing them more effectively. The institutional reforms we suggest are concrete, implementable, and overdue.

Our goal is not to address every challenge the university will face over the coming decade, but rather to create an institution capable of meeting those challenges. In the years ahead, the UW will have to navigate genuinely difficult questions — among them artificial intelligence, equity and academic freedom. These issues deserve thoughtful joint decision making rather than foggy well-meaning platitudes. We believe that once UW is restored to a robust, fiscally healthy, confident organization, led by accountable shared governance, we will be more than capable of meeting those challenges and seizing those opportunities together.

We have 10 Strategic Aims that fall into three main categories: Reducing Bloat, Reinvestment, and Reform. We begin by briefly outlining each Strategic Aim, with further details for each Strategic Aim and Methods in the Appendices.

Reducing Bloat

Relative Spending on different categories across peer institutions. COMPS are all public universities with a medical school and an undergraduate population between 4351- 9791 (UW has a population of 6527). Note that this pie chart visually underestimates the amount of administrative bloat because the very high proportion of fiscal spending reduces the proportion of every other category.

Fiscal, upper administrative and maintenance costs have grown significantly faster than inflation. As a direct consequence, this has led to disinvestment in UW’s academic mission. UW simply cannot afford to continue to waste over $2M a week on fiscal and upper administrative bloat.  

Strategic Aim 1: Reduce Upper Administrative Bloat. If UW reduced upper administration costs to match peer institutions, this would save $10.4M annually — our spending on upper administration would be reduced from $148.8M to $138.4M. Certainly TBA believes UW should commit to achieving this by 2031, requiring annual reductions of approximately 1.4%.

However, TBA believes we can do better than that  and that 2019 spending levels represent a more appropriate benchmark. (TBA doesn’t recall a paralysing absence of upper leadership in 2019, though maybe they were all just working very, very hard.) Returning to 2019 levels would save $14.6M annually, requiring cuts of 1.9% per year. Appendix A.

        Strategic Aim 2. Reduce Fiscal Bloat. After spending $340M on Workday, UW’s fiscal costs are almost double those of our peer institutions. UW should establish an advisory board consisting of CFOs from peer institutions that use Workday and have demonstrated fiscal efficiency. Their mandate should be to reduce UW's administrative costs to the median of peer universities by 2031. This would yield savings of $111-142M per year. Appendix B.

Strategic Aim 3: Reduce In-House Infrastructure Maintenance Costs. When it comes to maintenance UW has been “advancing the future” in a less than responsible way. UW currently has a backlog of well over $1B for repairs and maintenance. One contributor to this backlog is high in-house maintenance costs. Units should be permitted to solicit outside bids for maintenance work, and where an outside bid comes in at least 10% below the in-house estimate, the unit may engage the external contractor.^[c][d][e] These cost savings should be devoted to reducing the maintenance backlog as quickly as possible. Appendix C.

Reinvestment

If these plans described above were implemented UW would have $140M/year to invest in its academic mission. We propose to invest those funds as follows:

Strategic Aim 4: Restore Investment in Instructional Faculty. Instructional salaries should be restored to 2019-2020 levels through an increased university investment of $39M per year. With state matching funds, this represents a total reinvestment of $55M annually. This would allow for an 8% salary increase to offset erosion since 2020 and sustained investment in new faculty hiring. Appendix D.

Strategic Aim 5: Support Research Excellence. UW researchers secure over 1 billion annually in federal research funding, making our university one of the nation’s leading public research institutions. Too often this excellence is taken for granted. UW should commit to providing 1% of annual federal research revenue (~$10/M year) as bridge funding (~35% increase from the $7M Bridge Funding program that ended last year).

Strategic Aim 6. Invest in Washington State Residents. The idea of a ‘debt-free education for all’ is difficult to reconcile with economic reality or genuine equity. We propose that UW invest $44M per year to provide free tuition for Washington residents with family incomes under 125% of the median income (currently $131K per year for a family of 4). In addition, we propose a $24M/year investment in a graduate scholarship program for WA residents that would provide full support (and tuition waivers) to ~440-1000 graduate students annually, with the goal of retaining Washington's most talented students in state. Appendix E.

Strategic Aim 7: Invest in Right-Sized Administrative Support. UW spends significantly less on administrative staff than peer institutions. Non-strategic and uncollaborative cost-cutting by UW administration has led to a situation where faculty, clinicians and researchers routinely perform tasks — such as medical note keeping — that fall well outside their professional roles and represent a poor use of their expertise and the university's money. A surgeon updating patient records is an expensive false-economy.  UW should establish a faculty-led committee with a mandate to direct $20M per year to address administrative offloading. Appendix F.

Reform

Universities were not always run by administrators. For most of their history, they were run by scholars who took on administrative roles as a service to their community before returning to their labs and classrooms. That model was a deliberate expression of what a university is.

Over the past three decades, UW has begun to shift towards leadership by a professionalized administrative class. It has become clear that this model has not served UW well - the organic, community-oriented culture that has always been one of UW's greatest competitive advantages is eroding. Our tradition of shared governance is under an unprecedented level of strain and distrust. UW needs to restore meaningful shared governance by increasing transparency, accountability, and genuine power-sharing.

Strategic Aim 8. Take Back the Academy. UW should position itself as an international example of reinvigorated faculty governance. This is not nostalgia. It is a recognition that many of the best-governed universities in the world never abandoned faculty governance, and this model is the most consistent with UW’s history and values. Specialized professional administrative staff will remain essential, and our leadership structure delegates authority to the President. However, the President has the power to return leadership to academics. This will require ensuring that administrative service is adequately compensated, and replacing the current shared governance cosplay of ‘advisory committees’ with bodies that have genuine decision-making power.

Strategic Aim 9: Establish Accountability for Senior Administration. Reappointment and promotion decisions for senior administrators should follow a structured review process analogous to those required for tenure and promotion. Review will be performed by a committee consisting of at least two external members and include quantitative and qualitative feedback from units served by that administrator. Reappointments will be accompanied by a public report documenting the administrator's achievements, quantitative and qualitative performance feedback, and the rationale for the reappointment decision.

Strategic Aim 10: Establish Fiscal Transparency. Shared governance requires shared information. The College of Arts and Sciences has established a standing Elected Faculty Council budget committee whose role is to ensure that faculty are versed in the university's financial position. These committees should be established for all the Colleges, as recommended by a recent shared governance report published by the College Council.

APPENDIX A: Strategic Aim 1: Reduce Upper Administrative Bloat.

UW describes itself as being ‘very, very lean’ administratively. That was true in 2019, where UW was in the 33rd percentile compared to its peers. But over the last 5 years UW’s relative efficiency has declined, and as of academic year 2024 it is in the 58th percentile compared to its peers.

COMP Benchmark

The COMP analysis compares UW to 39 public universities with medical schools of similar size to UW (See Methods below).

Upper administrative spend is measured as the ratio of spending on upper administration vs. instructional faculty (both tenure-track and non-tenure track). UW's admin ratio of 0.471 sits above the COMP median of 0.438, placing it at the 58.5th percentile — modestly above average.

An annual 1.4% reduction in upper administration costs would put UW at the median of our peers. At that point UW would spend $138.4M on administration — realizing annual savings of $10.4M.

5 Peers Benchmark

We also carried out an analysis comparing UW to 5 close peers (see Methods for how these peers were determined). UW's admin ratio of 0.471 sits in the middle of the pack. U Minn (0.513) and U Mich (0.493) are higher; UCI (0.348), U Wisc (0.393), and UCLA (0.423) are lower. The peer median is 0.423 (UCLA).

2019 Benchmark

In 2019, UW spent $3500 on upper administration in inflation-adjusted dollars per student. Five years later that had increased by 10%. When TBA asked about this, we were told that the increase in upper administration spending was largely due to Covid. Returning to 2019 spending levels will save  $39.1M a year.

Appendix B: Strategic Aim 2. Reduce Fiscal Bloat.

When discussing fiscal staff it is important to note that a significant share of departmental staff who handle budgets are classified as administrative staff rather than fiscal employees. Fiscal bloat at UW is a central administration problem, not a departmental one.

Reaching peer median levels of fiscal staff spending within five years will require annual reductions of 11–17%. This is daunting — but in 2019, UW spent $101.8M on fiscal staffing in inflation-adjusted dollars as compared to over $250M today. Our challenge is simply to shrink at the pace we expanded.

Workday has, to date, increased rather than decreased UW's fiscal administrative burden. This is not entirely inevitable: many peer institutions with far leaner fiscal cost structures than ours also use Workday.

Although reducing fiscal costs to peer median ratios within 5 years will be extremely challenging, UW's recent strategic plan did, after all, promise to “lead higher education with focus and bold action”.  TBA wouldn’t dream of suggesting that UW upper administration might be more comfortable with grandiose language than decisive action but we are nonetheless recommending the formation of an external advisory group with an explicit mandate to ensure that this much needed reform does not quietly collapse under administrative inertia.

We cannot allow the deficiencies of Workday to become a permanent alibi for a bloated fiscal administration that crowds out investment in our academic mission.

COMP Benchmark

UW's fiscal ratio of 0.789 is substantially above the COMP median of 0.339, placing it at the 84th percentile — a significant outlier.

At the COMP ratio, UW would spend $106.9M on fiscal operations — implying savings of $142.2M.

5 Peers Benchmark

UW's fiscal ratio of 0.789 is by far the highest among the six institutions. The next highest is UCLA at 0.577.

Among these five specific peers, UW is a clear outlier, with a ratio of fiscal to instructional spending that is nearly double the peer median. If UW reduced fiscal spending to the peer median, UW would spend $138.6M on fiscal operations —savings of $110.5M.

Appendix C: Strategic Aim 3. Reduce In-House Infrastructure Maintenance Costs.

UW Maintenance labor costs are extremely high compared to prevailing wage rates in the Seattle area.

*Estimated from prevailing wage data; electrician figures are from the actual IBEW Local 46 schedule.

Permitting units to solicit outside bids and accept them when they come in at least 10% below the in-house estimate will provide the minimum competitive discipline consistent with responsible stewardship of public funds.

Strategic Aim 4: Restore Investment in Instructional Faculty.

In 2019 UW spent $10,311 on instructional staff (of which $9,019 was spent on tenure track staff) for each undergraduate student. By 2024 this had dropped by 25% and 13% respectively - to $8,214 in instructional staff, and $7,989 in tenure track faculty.

These declines represent a real drop in the quality of a UW education, especially in a period where face-to-face time is more critical than ever.

Restoring investment in instructional staff to 2019 levels will require an investment between $34-70M. We propose an investment of $39M. With State matching this will result in an investment of $55M.

Appendix E: Strategic Aim 6. Invest in Washington State Residents.

Undergraduate tuition waivers

TBA isn’t sure what the UW Strategic Plan even means when it refers to "debt-free college". Here we assume it means free tuition for all Washington State residents. If this interpretation of the UW strategic plan is correct, then it is a breathtaking foolish idea. Our preliminary estimates of the cost of free tuition for WA resident undergraduates, by family income are as follows:

• Already covered (0–65% MFI): ~10,200 students receive full tuition coverage through the Husky Promise. No additional cost.
• Partially covered (66–100% MFI): ~4,200 students receive partial Washington College Grant awards. Closing the remaining tuition gap would cost ~$40M/year.
• Not currently covered (100–125% MFI): An estimated ~6,600 students receive no state tuition support. Covering their full tuition would cost ~$88M/year.
• Higher income (above 125% MFI): ~13,300 students paying full tuition. Covering them would cost an additional ~$178M/year.

MFI = median family income

WCG = Washington College Grant

If UW could achieve a 50% match (through Olympia and philanthropy) then covering students with family incomes under the 100% MFI ($131K for a family of four) could be done for as little as $20M. TBA believes it is practicable to extend free tuition to families with median incomes up to $125% of the median income (164K for a family of four). Assuming a 50% match, that would cost UW about $44M.

Our estimates suggest that extending free tuition to all Washington State residents would cost $306M in total. TBA is skeptical that either Olympia or private donors would (or even should) volunteer to underwrite college education for families earning well into the six figures.

Graduate Fellowships

UW's graduate programs produce world-class research despite two chronic issues:

The first is a chronic lack of centralized fellowship infrastructure. Highly qualified applicants almost always receive substantially better fellowship offers from competing institutions.

The second is that the underlying economics of graduate training present a serious structural challenge/ The combination of high stipend costs, tuition, and the need for a five-year funding commitment makes supporting PhD students on federal grants increasingly unattractive as compared to hiring postdoctoral researchers.^{[f][g][h][i][j][k]} 

We propose investing $24M/year in PhD Graduate and Postdoctoral fellowships. Some of these funds should be used to “top-up” grants with shortfalls. The remainder should be awarded on the basis of merit, with a substantial proportion reserved for Washington State residents. If Fellows TA-ed one quarter per year, these funds would support approximately 460 students annually. With a 50% match from state funding and philanthropy, the program could support nearly 1,000 students per year (for comparison, UW accepts ~800 PhD students a year).

Critically, these Fellowships (which could span between 1-5 years) would be awarded at the point of admission — functioning as a recruitment tool. If they could be used during any year of a student's program then they would provide an important buffer against interruptions in federal research funding.

Appendix F: Strategic Aim 7: Invest in Right-Sized Administrative Staff Support

COMP Benchmark

UW's ratio of 0.244 sits well below the COMP median of 0.327, placing it at the 30th percentile.

If UW raised its admin staff spend to the COMP median, it would cost an additional $26.2M.

5 Peers Benchmark

UW's ratio of 0.244 is the second lowest in the peer group.

These low numbers do not reflect an efficient administration. They represent unstrategic staffing cuts that have led to overworked, unhappy staff and an increasingly inappropriate administrative burden being placed on faculty. Restoring our administrative support levels to the mean of our peer institutions would cost about $29M. We propose to strategically reinvest $20M. This reinvestment should have the specific mandate of addressing inappropriate offloading of administrative tasks onto non-administrative personnel.

Methods

We’ve hurried this document because we wanted UW faculty to have a sense of what a real strategic plan could achieve before the April 17 deadline. We’ll be filling in these methods and sharing code as rapidly as possible. Meanwhile, contact takebacktheacademy @ gmail if you have any questions.

Selection of Peer institutions

We selected five Peer Institutions: University of California-Irvine, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and University of Wisconsin-Madison and UCLA. Peer institutions were originally selected from a larger list of public universities with a medical

school and annual student enrollments of 6103-7384. We selected these four (prior to estimating

comparison numbers) because they were in urban areas and were comparable in terms of being

R1 institutions in left-leaning states that might have higher regulatory burdens. UCLA was added (prior to estimating comparison numbers for UCLA) at the request of UW faculty members external to TBA who felt it was a close comparator that should be added.

Selection of the wider Comp benchmark

The COMP benchmark reflects a wider NCES comparator pool — public universities with a medical school, matched by enrollment size (±50%).