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The Daily OrangeThe cost of losing | Sidebar: Their fair share
The university just changed its entire budget model. Is Athletics subsidized too much? Too little? Just right?
By Matt Gelb and Ethan Ramsey
Posted: 4/23/08, 10:27 PM EST Section: The Cost of Losing
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Chancellor Nancy Cantor's biggest external initiative since arriving at Syracuse University in 2004 remains the ubiquitous "Scholarship in Action," a concept aimed at students applying class work in their chosen field during college.
Cantor's largest internal project is implementing a brand-new budget model for the university: Responsibility Center Management (RCM), which debuted in 2006-07.
RCM puts each of the campus' units, now called centers, in charge of its own budget while at the same time ties each center's budget to one another through revenue-sharing.
That means the financial success, or disappointment, of any center on campus - including the athletic department - is now more directly linked to the university's overall finances.
Prior to RCM, the centers did not know specifically how much money they were each responsible for generating to the university. The central budget office collected the total amount the campus generated and gave centers an expense budget they could not exceed.
In RCM, each of the 28 centers is responsible for calculating its own revenues and expenses. That puts more of an incentive on each center to find new sources of revenue because that revenue shows up in their individual budget.
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