Financial Plan - Cornell University Division of Budget & Planning

Tuition, Financial Aid & Endowmentreduced Cornell’s funding. This methodology also providedno inflation for Cornell’s land-grant mission andits provision of instruction for contract college studentsin endowed Ithaca colleges (so-called “accessoryinstruction”). Beginning in 2006-07, Cornell’s overallstate operating support—while still flowing throughSUNY—has been largely separated from SUNY’s regularcampus resource allocation process. Within that total,the portion of state operating support attributableto land-grant activities is provided through discrete,line-item funding in the governor’s executive budget.This partition appropriately recognizes that Cornell’sland-grant responsibilities as well as the organizationaland financial structures associated with instructionalactivities are unique and should not be commingledwith other SUNY campus resource allocations.Since 1970-71, there has been nominal growth ingovernment appropriations for the contract colleges,as federal and state funding has expanded at an averageannual rate of 4.1 percent. Unfortunately, thisgrowth has not maintained its purchasing power, andgovernment appropriations have declined from $206Inflation-Adjusted Dollars in MillionsFederally Sponsored ResearchExpenditures – Cornell University(in inflation-adjusted, 2006-07 dollars)$300$250$200$150$100$50Ithaca CampusMedical College$041 46 51 56 61 66 71 76 81 86 91 96 01 06Fiscal Yearmillion to $171 million, in inflation-adjusted terms,over the same period. Appropriations that funded 67percent of the contract colleges’ operating budget in1970-71 now support 30 percent of that total. Otherrevenues—tuition and fees, grants and contracts, gifts,investment income, and sales and services of academicdepartments—have together supplanted governmentappropriations as the major sources of operatingsupport. The gradual decline in state funding for thecontract colleges—transforming them from state-supportedto state-assisted—has been an important factorin the offsetting increase in contract college tuitiondiscussed and illustrated on page 15.Grants and ContractsWhile Cornell’s faculty have engaged in scholarshipand have carried out investigatory projects fromthe university’s founding, the concept of externallyfunded research did not develop until the first part ofthe twentieth century, when commercial firms beganto underwrite graduate study by providing “industrialfellowships.” 17 It was not until World War II, however,that substantial external funding was provided toCornell and other universities in the form of researchgrants and contracts. As the graph at left shows, thevolume of this support expanded rapidly at Cornell,and the university’s federal funding for research totaled$382.9 million in 2006-07, while overall researchexpenditures—federal, state, and local government;corporate; foundation; private donor; and institutionalfunding—reached $659.4 million in the same fiscalyear. Inflation-adjusted expenditures of federally sponsoredresearch on the Ithaca campus expanded rapidlyfrom the early 1960’s through the mid-1980’s, thenstalled for over a decade before increasing again inthe twenty-first century. Federally sponsored researchexpenditures at the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical17 “Thanks to [Herbert H.] Whetzel’s initiative, industrialfellowships were established at Cornell, among the first inAmerica. He proposed to the Niagara Sprayer Companyof Middleport, New York, that it support investigations inthe value of lime-sulfur solution as a spray for apple scab.The company responded in 1909 and apparently made itsfortune from the results. Thus the system began by which amanufacturer pays for a graduate student to study a problemwhich may result in profit for the manufacturer and a doctoratefor the student.” Bishop, Morris, A History of Cornell.Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962.20