UPDATE: Daily Bruin now reports CFO Agostini has been fired:
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As blog readers will know, UCLA CFO Agostini recently said past financial accounts of UCLA are inaccurate and are byproducts of prior financial mismanagement.* He further said that he didn't want to be putting out inaccurate information on his watch. That comment made yours truly nervous about the past accounts disappearing. So he has taken steps to preserve them, along with more recent budgetary documentation.** So, fear not! Nothing will be disappearing.
Now, what can we say about the new budget book that was recently released?
The first thing to note is that you do find some macro information for the year 2023-24. For example, in terms of revenue, almost 6 out of 10 dollars coming into the campus are derived from the hospitals and other medical practices. That fact may be a surprise for those on north campus. Over 6 out of 10 dollars of expenditure go for labor costs (wages and benefits). That fact shouldn't be a surprise, given that higher ed is essentially a service industry.
Of course, it would be nice to have the data for 2024-25, the year that finished last June 30. It would be nice to have estimates for the current year, even though it is not complete. And it would be nice to have projections for the coming year; July 1, 2026, is not that far away and presumably somebody is making such projections. ????? However, the macro view of revenue and expenditure should not be greatly different from year to year.
What is missing from the macro view is a balance sheet which would show reserves. Typical corporate financial accounts include both an income statement (revenues, expenditures) and a balance sheet - assets (including cash reserves) and liabilities. Both the income statement and the balance sheet are needed for a complete review. You need to see both flows during the fiscal year and stocks (snapshot at the end of the year).
When the budget book moves beyond the macro view and gets down to the "unit" level, it includes 2023-24, 2024-25, and an estimate for the current 2025-26 fiscal year. (No projections are to be found for the coming year in a workload sense, i.e., what would happen if current policy continued into next year.)
The units shown are in some cases administrative units and in other cases educational units and research unit. For example, there is the "Administrative Vice Chancellor" unit and a "Campus and Community Safety" unit. And there is a "Broad Stem Cell Research" unit and an "L&S Humanities" unit. Apart from administration, education, and research, there is an "Intercollegiate Athletics" unit.
Accompanying the various units is a diagram showing revenues vs. expenditures. And there is where things get complicated. There are some units which are supposed to be self supporting, i.e., collecting funding for providing services and spending money to provide them. So, it is clear what a surplus or deficit means in those cases. If they are spending more than they are taking in, they are running a deficit, presumably something to be avoided as a chronic condition. If they are spending less than they are taking in, they are running a surplus.
But note that much of the campus is not run that way. The "Administrative Vice Chancellor" is not selling a service, but it is shown to have revenue. The revenue, however, is an allocation, not a fee for service. Much of the campus is like that, at least in part. "L&S Humanities" is not mainly in the business of selling services. But it is shown as running a deficit. That deficit, however, could be eliminated by giving it a bigger allocation. Or it could be made greater by shrinking its allocation. Put another way, for many of the units, particularly those whose function is educational, attributing deficits or surpluses to them is a matter of discretion.
In the Daily Bruin article noted above, CFO "Agostini... said he is currently looking at how long UCLA can continue to function and meet payroll without developing a cash reserves problem, as the school is currently spending money it does not have." The quote refers to reserves. The only way to spend money you don't have (in an income sense) is to run down existing reserves (and maybe even borrow). There are references to $450 million deficits and other deficit figures. It isn't clear where these came from. And without a balance sheet, we lack information on reserves. Some units are said to have their own reserves. It's not clear what those reserves are or where they came from. There is no overall balance sheet in the budget book.
So, what's the bottom line here? We are making progress in obtaining budget information, perhaps in part as a result of the fuss the Academic Senate has been making. But there is still missing information. Moreover, the Senate and its appropriate committees need to go line by line, getting definitions. What formula is determining the "revenue" of the Humanities? Where and what are the reserves we apparently have been drawing down?
If there has been financial mismanagement, as the CFO says, is anyone being held accountable? Again from the Daily Bruin article:
“We spent $150 million on the Ascend [IT] project, and we have nothing to show for it,” Agostini said. “That was a terrific waste of resources. So I stopped it and said, ‘We’re not spending any more money.’”
Apart from stopping the project, did any heads roll? That's the kind of question that needs answering.
We await.
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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2026/02/really.html.
**Accounts from 2002-03 to 2022-03 (the complete pre-Agostini series) are now preserved at:
https://archive.org/details/ucla-budget-book-v-final-feb-2026. You'll also find preserved there documents from the Legislative Assembly, the Daily Bruin article with the CFO's observations, and the recently-released budget book. The email from the chancellor firing the CFO is also included.
