Answering Your Questions on NOVA’s Budget

Budget transparency comes up frequently in meetings on campus and in the College Senate. NOVA’s budget and its financial statements, as with any public institution, are publicly available. However, a factor complicating the discussions is that NOVA has many budgets, each with its own rules, regulations, policies and laws. While the budget provides information on how we want to spend our money, the financial statements represent how we actually spent the money.

The budget is allocated each year in a process involving the Budget Advisory Committee (with members appointed by the College Senate), Administrative Council, the Local College Board, the VCCS System Office and the State Board of Community Colleges.

The financial statements are produced by the VCCS System Office and audited each year by the Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts.  

Given that we continue to receive questions, I wanted to provide a more detailed FAQ today. It will be archived through the Daily Flyer.

Where Can I Find NOVA’s Budgets and Financials?
NOVA’s budgets are published as part of the public record when they are presented to our College Board for approval. They are posted in BoardDocs. Similarly, our financial statements are posted by the Commonwealth and integrated within the VCCS financial statements. Here, you can review the latest audit (FY22).  

Are There Different Budgets?
Yes.  NOVA has nine different sources of funding, each of which comes with its own restrictions on how the money can be used. Our main budget, which most of us think of as “the budget,” is our State Education & General, a combination of student-paid tuition and funding appropriated by the Commonwealth each year.

NOVA also receives funding through sponsored programs, such as grants. These dollars are very specific, and their use is restricted. Each holder of these funds has its own particular budget to meet the program’s needs.

Additionally, NOVA receives Local Funds (funds generated from student activity fees, our auxiliary enterprises and our localities). These locality funds are allocated by our Local College Board. Each of these three budgets is approved by our Local College Board.

Finally, we have a capital budget, which includes state funding, donations and jurisdictional funds. This can be used only for designated major capital projects, such as the new building at the Medical Education Campus.

Does NOVA Provide Budget Updates?
Yes. We provide monthly budget updates to the Administrative Council and publicly post them on NOVA’s SharePoint site. For example, on July 15, 2024, NOVA posted information on spending for the Equipment Trust Fund, enrollment cancellation and budget execution data for the previous year. Similarly, on Feb. 13, 2024, the Budget Office posted updates to the budget justifications for parking, student activities and, most importantly, the student full-time equivalent (FTE) assumptions that drive college budget allocations.

The VP for Finance and Administration has, at the request of the College Senate, provided budget process and data updates to the Senate. These are included in Senate meetings, which are recorded and available to any employee. 

NOVA also produces an annual fact book. It is a trove of data that you can correlate to the budget and financial statements.

How is Budget Input Provided?
As part of shared governance, the college has a Budget Advisory Committee with some members appointed by the Senate, including faculty and staff. The Budget Advisory Committee independently decides what areas it would like to further examine. The committee produces and publishes on SharePoint a report and minutes of each meeting.   

Why Does Funding Change from Year to Year?
NOVA’s budget philosophy is that the revenue for the college, collected from student tuition and funds from the state, should be used to support students. Therefore, the budget should follow the students, which it does.

Over the past decade, our student FTE count has dropped by about 20%. We have had to make reductions across every area of the college.

Because the majority of our budget is dedicated to personnel costs—over 70% in 2022-2023, including benefits and contractual services (data from the NOVA Factbook)—NOVA has cut the budget by reducing vacant positions, with a focus on areas other than teaching faculty and direct student supports. Unlike some of our peers, we have been fortunate that we have not had to institute a workforce reduction, or lay-off. We have been able to avoid lay-offs by proactively evaluating which roles are critical to maintaining core functions and which can be streamlined, combined or eliminated through vacancies.  

Below, you can see the changes to our workforce by category. You will immediately see the reductions to full-time teaching faculty positions have been below the overall enrollment drop and much less than other parts of our workforce (data from the NOVA Factbook).

During this time, where and how our students take classes have also changed. Below, you can see the FTE created by campus-based courses has declined significantly over the past dozen years. In comparison, the FTE created by dual enrollment and NOVA online courses has grown. This shift of FTE away from our campuses is also reflected in our parking data, with permits down almost 60% during the same period. Over time, this is pushing us to rethink some of our historic budgeting patterns and decisions.

If We Are Down 20% in FTE, Why Are Some Categories Down More?
The number of students paying tuition is reduced by the 18% of our students who are contract dual enrolled through their high schools and do not pay tuition. This lost revenue cannot be allocated to operations or to meet payroll. As a reminder of changes in Virginia law, by fall 2025, VCCS institutions cannot charge for high school dual enrollment delivered in high schools by high-school faculty.

How are Funds for Faculty Positions Allocated?
During the college’s decennial accreditation process in 2021, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) found that, over the prior decade, NOVA had not employed an adequate number of full-time faculty. In its response, NOVA identified the decentralization of faculty position requests had exacerbated inequities in the distribution of faculty lines across the academic disciplines and six campuses.

NOVA’s remediation strategy, accepted by SACSCOC, centralized the allocation of full-time teaching faculty positions under the Chief Academic Officer (CAO) to facilitate the collegewide need for teaching faculty.

The CAO’s initial analysis showed a gap of 34 teaching faculty in the first year. NOVA funded and filled all positions requested. Now, the CAO conducts an annual analysis of teaching faculty by discipline across all campuses as part of the budget process, so needed positions can be funded and filled.

If you have any questions about this information, please reach out to VP John Ferrari, JFerrari@nvcc.edu.

Submitted by:
John Ferrari, VP of Finance & Admin Services, JFerrari@nvcc.edu