Howard Bunsis & Gwendolyn Bradley:

At the beginning of the economic downturn, higher education saw a wave of furloughs as administrators scrambled to compensate for budget cuts on short notice. Sometimes they were a sensible response to serious budget problems — as in the California State University System, where budget problems are indeed dire and faculty, academic professionals, and staff unions agreed to furloughs. In many other cases, furloughs were the result of misplaced priorities as administrators pleaded poverty while directing millions of dollars to facilities and other endeavors that are not directly related to education. As we argued then, furloughs hurt students and the education that is delivered, and they hurt working people — they should be a last resort, not a first resort.
However, now that the 2009-10 academic year financial reports of public universities have started to come in, we are learning that many universities that implemented required furloughs in the 2009-10 academic year had their revenues so exceed expenses that they could be boasting, if officially businesses, about record profits, For example, at the University of Northern Iowa, total revenues increased from $269,722,087 in 2009 to $292,646,325 in 2010, despite a decline in the state appropriation, while total expenses declined due to furloughs. As a result, university revenues exceeded expenses by $25.9 million — much more than the $14 million excess in the year previous. At the University of New Mexico, where state appropriations dropped by 10 percent or $30 million in 2010, the decline was more than overcome by increase in tuition and other revenue; the year’s revenue exceeded expenses by $100 million.