News from the Corporation Meeting

 

Dear members of the Brown Community,

 

The Corporation of Brown University recently completed its winter meetings. The Corporation (the name given in the Charter of the University, written in 1764) is the University’s governing body. The Corporation comprises a Board of Fellows and a Board of Trustees and is responsible for matters of policy and long-term planning. More information about the trustees and fellows as a whole, biographies of members, and their roles and responsibilities can be found on the Corporation website.

 

Across committees and as a whole the Corporation was briefed on and discussed the continued assessment of ongoing federal actions that Provost Doyle and I wrote to the Brown community about at the end of last month. As we noted in that letter, offices across Brown are actively evaluating all federal activity related to higher education and will continue to do so in the coming days and weeks. The Corporation affirmed our steadfast resolve to fulfill Brown's purpose of teaching and conducting research, and that we continue to do all we can to understand and communicate the implications of the orders for members of our community and operations at Brown. We continue to communicate directly with affected communities as information becomes available and guidance evolves.

 

 

The meetings offered the opportunity to discuss the strategic planning process underway as Brown prepares for the July 1, 2025, launch of a new school that will expand and strengthen the University’s research and teaching on the world’s most pressing economic, political, social and policy challenges. The Corporation approved with enthusiasm the formal name for the new school: the Thomas J. Watson Jr. School of International and Public Affairs. The name for the school — which will be referred to commonly as the Watson School of International and Public Affairs — honors the legacy of Brown Class of 1937 graduate Thomas J. Watson Jr., who served as U.S. ambassador to the former Soviet Union. Watson was a driving force behind Brown’s earliest programs in international studies and foreign policy, which ultimately became the Institute for International Studies, renamed as the Watson Institute in 1991.

 

The establishment of the school, which was approved by the Corporation in May 2024, follows years of planning during which Brown has expanded research expertise, education and academic initiatives in international affairs and public policy. Faculty, staff and scholarly activity from the Watson Institute will form the bedrock of the school upon its July 1 launch. Corporation members received an update on the search for the school’s inaugural dean, who will also hold a Brown faculty appointment. A search committee led by Provost Doyle cultivated an exceptional pool of accomplished leaders and scholars with the skills to direct the effort to establish the Watson School of International and Public Affairs as distinctive in areas that will drive its educational and research missions nationally and globally. The committee completed interviews in January with a robust group of applicants and will invite a smaller number of candidates to campus for conversations with key stakeholders in the coming weeks. The committee’s goal is to complete the search and share news of the inaugural dean this spring.

 

 

At the February meeting, the Corporation considers the mid-cycle report and recommendations of the University Resources Committee (URC), which is composed of faculty, students and administrators. The URC operates on a full-year schedule and will present to me its recommended budget for Fiscal Year 2026 later this semester for action at the May meeting of the Corporation. At the February meeting the Corporation approved undergraduate, graduate and medical school tuition and the employee salary pool. 

 

A key area of focus during the URC’s fall deliberations was the University’s structural deficit. The committee’s discussions were framed in the context of Brown’s current Fiscal Year 2025 operating budget, which reflects a $46 million deficit. As we have previously communicated, without changes to the way Brown operates, the structural deficit is expected to continue to deepen if left unchecked. Although the current deficit of $46 million is only 3% of Brown’s total operating budget, increases in the deficit over time are not sustainable. Brown can no longer maintain its historic, undergraduate tuition-dependent funding model, which is more reminiscent of colleges. To achieve our community's goals as a leading research university, we must significantly slow expense growth, explore innovative growth opportunities in education and research, and develop new revenue streams.

 

The Corporation approved the URC’s recommendation of a 4.85% increase in total undergraduate tuition and fees, which includes a 4.5% undergraduate tuition rate increase and other mandatory fee increases, effective July 1, 2025. This recommendation was made based on several discussions after the review of significant data and analysis.

 

The committee reviewed and acknowledged the shifting macroeconomic environment, particularly inflation that is more comparable with pre-pandemic levels and is expected by economists to remain in that range for the foreseeable future. Following two years (FY22 and FY23) of tuition and fee increases that were considerably lower versus a peer group of 20 institutions, increases of 4.75% the past two years (FY24 and FY25) were more in line with those peers. The most recent Higher Education Price Index (HEPI) data indicated a 3.4% inflation rate in FY24, a decrease from 4.0% in FY23 and 5.2% in FY22, though still higher than the 2.7% rate in FY21.

 

The approved tuition and fee increases will be coupled with continued investments in financial aid. Brown meets 100% of each student's demonstrated financial need. The Brown Promise, along with other financial aid initiatives, continue to make Brown increasingly affordable to students and families from all backgrounds. The University’s generous initiatives include the elimination of loans from University financial aid packages, eliminating the consideration of home equity for a family’s primary residence in financial aid packages, reducing the summer earnings expectation for our highest-need students, and, most recently, becoming need-blind for all undergraduate international students starting with the Class of 2029, which arrives on campus in fall 2025. These efforts strengthen the University’s ability to attract the most promising students from all geographic and socioeconomic groups, while reducing financial obstacles for moderate-income families. With a 4.5% undergraduate tuition increase, the undergraduate financial aid budget is projected to increase by approximately $17 million (8%), reflective of the University’s expanded initiatives and to help fund the tuition and fee increase for aided students.

 

After careful consideration of salary pools, the URC recommended and the Corporation approved 3.5% pools for both faculty and staff in FY26, including 1% base, 1.75% merit, and 0.75% for promotions, retention and equity. Annual increases for faculty and staff may not reflect the total 3.5% designated for the salary pool due to the different components of the pools. With this in mind, efforts were made during this URC cycle to improve transparency and build better shared understanding of how the pool is applied. This year’s committee review and analysis was shaped by my Response to the Faculty Compensation Task Force. Last spring, Brown’s Task Force on Faculty Compensation submitted its recommendations following an examination of the level and competitiveness of compensation for Brown faculty. The task force was charged with assessing faculty compensation in the context of broader university finances, including gathering faculty input, benchmarking with peer institutions, and evaluation of data across fields and disciplines. This extensive, faculty-informed and data-driven analysis was the basis for the task force's report. 

 

In my response to the task force’s report, I instructed the URC to divide the total salary pool into three components: (1) a “base” component that is responsive to changes in the cost of living, which all faculty and staff receive; (2) a “merit” component that reflects performance; and (3) a component for promotion, retentions and equity adjustments. As the task force suggested, the base component should be less than the merit component.

 

Separately, the URC’s analysis included a review of information shared in a presentation by the Dean of the Faculty, the Provost’s Office, and leadership from the Division of Biology and Medicine, the School of Public Health, and the School of Engineering on faculty hiring and retention across all faculty ranks and disciplines. Comparative data on faculty salaries reviewed by the committee indicated that Brown is competitive with peers at most faculty ranks and across most disciplinary areas. The committee did note and discuss limitations to the analysis due to the fact that a number of private universities in the Association of American Universities, one of our educational associations, are increasingly reluctant to share information due to concerns about antitrust provisions. As previously announced in my response to the faculty compensation task force report, the Provost has also established a faculty market adjustment fund in the amount of approximately $2.5 million for the coming fiscal year. That fund will be used to make one-time market adjustments to the compensation of longer-serving, highly productive faculty whose compensation has fallen behind.

 

For staff, University Human Resources (UHR) provided an overview of the University's staff compensation philosophy, along with significant market data and hiring and retention trends at Brown in all staff employment categories. The URC also discussed the recruitment and retention landscape during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, voluntary turnover increased significantly as increased flexibility via remote work resulted in increased competition for talent and created pressures on compensation. The University felt an urgent need to focus on attracting and retaining talent, to be externally competitive with compensation and benefits and to address dwindling applicant pools. During this time, Brown experienced a significant increase in academic and administrative units making retention offers, requesting equity increases and offering promotions as a result of the competitive and tight labor market.

 

As a result, the University pursued a number of important compensation initiatives, including targeted and proactive salary reviews to ensure external competitiveness and internal equity. Brown has been strategically investing in staff salaries to ensure competitiveness, while also steadily increasing the equity component of the total salary pool. UHR also increased its emphasis on career progression to address retention and employee expectations. The URC was pleased to see data from UHR that showed a meaningful decrease in voluntary staff turnover, which is now approaching pre-pandemic levels. The committee also reviewed and discussed data showing that while staff salaries for certain job families lag behind market medians, this positioning changes from year-to-year driven by market pressures and informs UHR’s annual pay equity reviews.

 

The URC’s FY26 recommendation also considered recent investments in faculty and staff salaries outside of the annually budgeted salary pools. Largely driven by the tight labor market and post-pandemic job mobility, the committee reviewed actual equity, promotion and retention data that reflected significant, targeted investments in staff and faculty salaries. Importantly, industry market data provided by UHR indicated that projected salary budgets across all industries for 2025 are projected to increase between 3.5% and 4.0%.

 

The approved faculty and staff salary pool recommendation of 3.5% is expected to affect the University’s operating budget by approximately $17 million in additional unrestricted support (with another $6 million of the increase anticipated to be supported by restricted funding sources that include endowments and sponsored funding).

 

 

The Corporation formally accepted individual gifts and pledges in the amount of $1 million or more made since October. Totaling more than $130 million, these generous commitments provide critical support to a wide range of Brown’s academic priorities. The success of the University depends on gifts of many dollar amounts, and all are essential to fulfilling our academic mission and deeply appreciated.

The Trustees and Fellows also approved the establishment of a number of endowed positions in recognition of generous gifts having been received. Professorships established at this meeting include the following:

The Corporation approved the appointment of the following faculty to named chairs:

The Committee on Campus Life heard a presentation from the president of the Undergraduate Council of Students and convened discussions with undergraduate and graduate students over breakfast Friday morning. The Fellows met with officers of the Medical Faculty Executive Committee to learn about issues of concern to Brown’s faculty members in our affiliated teaching hospitals.

Finally, after a review and consultation process involving all members of the Trustees and Fellows, the Corporation voted to reappoint Vice Chancellor Pamela Ress Reeves '87 to a second three-year term and Earl E. Hunt II '03 to a first term as Treasurer, effective July 1. Earl will succeed Theresia Gouw '90, who has served the Corporation with distinction over the past nine years. I join in congratulating Pamela and Earl and thanking Theresia for all that she has done, and will continue to do, for Brown.

 

Sincerely,

 

Christina H. Paxson

President