In our previous analysis of former UCLA CFO Agostini's budget book legacy, we noted that without having Agostini around to answer questions, there are problems of interpretation.* Exactly what was included in revenues and expenditures of the itemized administrative units is not clear. The most we can do (and we will!) is to look at the various micro units he specified to get a sense of what Agostini was worried about before he uttered the Very Bad Words that led to his rapid termination.
(It is also unclear whether Agostini's Very Bad Words were the ones indicating that past financial statements of UCLA were misleading or the words attributing the misleading financial statements to bad management by folks who are still in place in Murphy Hall. But that is another matter.)
Moving on, we now have a new puzzle. The Academic Senate released a report last Friday by the Council on Budget and Planning (CPB) containing a new fiscal picture of UCLA's situation for 2024-05 (last year) and 2025-05 (the current year).**
In this blog post, we compare the data in the two reports - Agostini's budget book and the CPB analysis - with the major finding being that the two are incompatible. Without Agostini, we can't be sure exactly what revenues and expenditures he included in the totals for the various units he itemized (and which we totaled in our prior post). But CPB analyzed only what are termed "discretionary" revenues and expenditures ("sources" and "uses" in its terminology), apparently a much narrower category than Agostini's. CPB's definition is below:
"Sources reflect discretionary funds including general funds supplemented with indirect cost recovery (ICR) related funds and investment income. Other core funds related to Professional Degree Supplemental Tuition (PDST), Self-Supporting Degree Program Tuition (SSDPT) are not included. Athletics portion here is only fraction of expenses covered by the central budget including a subsidy, debt service, and Big Ten related fees. Source: Based on updated information provided by interim CFO on March 16, 2026."***
Below is a table comparing the Agostini and CPB figures:
Note: GF = General Fund====================================
The main takeaway is that the CPB's numbers are much smaller - because of the limited "discretionary" definition, than Agostini's. We can't directly compare Agostini's definition with those presented in the prior UCLA financial statements that he said were misleading. But in 2022-23, UCLA reported revenues of $11.2 billion and expenditures of $11.7 billion, i.e., numbers much bigger than Agostini's for the following year. So UCLA was using a still more broad definition (including hospital revenues) through 2022-23 in its financial statements.
In a subsequent post, as we previously promised, we will examine what can be learned from Agostini's unit-level data. But it might be useful for the Academic Senate and CPB to examine various categories of revenues and expenditures ranging from the totals that seemed to be the basis of the "misleading" prior financial statements down to what CPB terms as "discretionary." As a practical matter, UCLA would likely feel obligated to deal with situations in which technically independent organizations couldn't cover their liabilities. Athletics is roughly in that category. It isn't supposed to be draining other campus funds, but it nevertheless is.
Now, you can argue that Athletics is not really an independent organization. But if that example doesn't work for you, consider this one:
From Wikipedia: During the 1980s, the association [ASUCLA] was financially successful. However, by the mid-1990s, ASUCLA had entered a financial crisis in part due to the costs of maintaining its infrastructure including the student union buildings. The Board responded by firing the executive director for financial mismanagement and hiring a turnaround firm. In 1996, due to financial issues and a failed student fee referendum, ASUCLA secured a $20 million loan from the University on the condition it prepare a five-year forecast with its annual budgets and prohibit presidents of the undergraduate students association and the graduate students association from serving on the board; the loan specified that a failure to do so would entitle the UCLA Chancellor to appoint additional representatives of the campus administration to the Board and eliminate the student-majority. The Board also responded to the mid-90's financial crisis by delegating additional responsibilities to the association's professional staff.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Students_of_the_University_of_California,_Los_Angeles.
The fact is that if, say, the parking folks, or the hospitality folks, or the hospitals, or whatever organization got into financial trouble, some kind of bailout would likely be arranged by UCLA. And if UCLA couldn't do it, systemwide UC and the Regents would intervene.
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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2026/03/he-aint-here-for-budget-explanations.html.
**We have added the CPB report to our UCLA budget document collection on the Internet Archive at:
https://dn720904.ca.archive.org/0/items/ucla-budget-book-v-final-feb-2026/UCLA%20Council%20on%20Planning%20and%20Budget%20%20Updated%20Report_%20Analysis%20of%20UCLA%20Campus%20Structural%20Deficit%203-20-2026.pdf.
The full set of documents in the Archive is at:
https://archive.org/details/ucla-budget-book-v-final-feb-2026.
***It's not clear why supplementary tuition is excluded. The professional programs that have such tuition are presumably able to spend it as they like.
