Prior to the start of each fiscal year, the university sends an operating budget to the Board of Regents of the University of Texas System for approval, and following approval the operating budget is made publicly available on the UT Dallas Office of Budget and Finance website as a PDF. We manually converted the published budget to the necessary formats to conduct the calculations and transformations necessary to produce the following visualizations.
The Texas Education Code establishes several named student fees are for the University of Texas at Dallas including the:
These fees have multiple restrictions. There are limitations on how the fees may change over time. There are strict guidelines on how the university spends the funds generated by these fees. There are limitations on how other sources of funding may be spent on expenses related to these fees.
Outside of student fees, there is a notable restriction on the usage of state-appropriated funds. Under Article 7, Sec. 18 of the Texas Constitution, bonds issued by the Board of Regents of the University of Texas System, funded by the Available University Fund, may not be used for buildings or other permanent improvements to be used for student housing, intercollegiate athletics, or auxiliary enterprises.
For each visualization, hover over the parts to see the raw dollar amounts corresponding to a particular category of spending.
The university charges students various fees in addition to their tuition. These fees fund various services provided to students, both related to instruction and auxiliary services. The specific fees and statutes that dictates them are listed in the Overview. In addition to these mandatory fees, there are other fees specific to certain programs.
Combining tuition estimates from the UTD Bursar Office and designated tuition budget data (sections G.30 through G.42), we have compiled rough approximations as to the destinations of individual student tuition payments. Because we do not know the true dollar amounts spent by the university from each student's tuition, we form these estimates by simply allocating by the proportions of total designated tuition transfers. For undergraduates, we show use the tuition for 15 credit hours, and for graduates we use 12 credit hours. For both classifications, we average the tuition across all schools.
The majority of the university's spending on instruction goes to the wages and salaries of faculty and staff. The university aims to fund as many of the salaries as possible using state appropriations. This is because if state funds are used to pay a salary, the state will also pay for the benefits.
The salary category in this chart also includes various salary reserves. To avoid layoffs when enrollment is low for a short period of time, the university keeps reserve funds to allow them to continue to pay employees.
If you want to see the salaries of individual employees, you can go to texascollegesalaries.com. Information regarding student worker wages can be found at the Office of Student Employment.
Note: Each school varies greatly in terms of size and the amount of resources needed to conduct research and provide instruction.
University Housing is considered an auxiliary service. This means that it is considered to be outside of the core purpose of the university, educating degree-seeking students. In such, the university expects it to be self-funded. It should, however, not run a significant profit, given the university is a not a for-profit business.
University Housing at UTD provides three primary sources of housing: University Commons (first-year dormitories), Canyon Creek Heights (furnished apartments), and University Village (unfurnished apartments). Although Northside is located on land owned by UTD, those apartments are operated by an outside company (Balfour Beatty Communities) that leases the land from the university.
University Recreation and Intercollegiate Athletics are both considered an auxiliary services. This means that they is considered to be outside of the core purpose of the university, educating degree-seeking students. In such, the university expects auxiliary services to be self-funded, and in this case these services are funded by specific student fees.
With the exception of the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University, every public university in Texas spends more on intercollegiate athletics than they earn from ticket sales, sponsorships, and other forms of income. For more information on athletics at other Texas public universities, see Ballpark Figures from the Texas Tribune. It is unclear whether the situation is different for private schools since they are not required to release this information.
The two fees that fund these services are a Recreation Fee (~$65 per student per semester) and Intramural and Intercollegiate Athletics Fee (~$45 per student each semester). UTD has by far the lowest Intercollegiate Athletic Fee of any public university in Texas. For example, the University of Texas at Tyler charges students $7 per credit hour per student each semester, capped at the cost for 15 hours ($105).
For more information on student fees, see the Overview tab.
Parking and transportation is considered an auxiliary service. This means that it is considered to be outside of the core purpose of the university, educating degree-seeking students. In such, the university expects it to be self-funded. It should, however, not run a significant profit, given the university is a not a for-profit business.
As an auxiliary service parking and transportation is funded through a Transportation Fee (~$18 per student each semester) and revenue from parking passes and fines.
Dining is considered an auxiliary service. This means that it is considered to be outside of the core purpose of the university, educating degree-seeking students. In such, the university expects it to be self-funded.
The services provided by UTD Dining are primarily handled through an outside company, Chartwells Higher Education, a subsidiary of the multinational foodservice company Compass Group. The operations of Chartwells at UTD are determined by a contract renewed in 2019. Although significant portions of the released contract are redacted, we do know that Chartwells pays a royalty to the university according to the following table:
| Adjusted Gross Revenue | Royalty Percentage |
|---|---|
| $0 - $9,500,000 | 10% |
| $9,500,001 or greater | 15% |