The increase brought administrator payroll to $22.1 million, according to the new UA report for the first quarter of fiscal 2025, which looks at headcount and salary expenses. There is 285 administrators.

“What we’ve seen is that the vice presidents that we talked about are gone, but we’ve hired other positions that have replaced a lot of them,” said John Arnold, chief financial officer and director of UA operation, in an interview Tuesday with the Arizona Daily Star. “More specifically, we opened a new college this year, which is the College of Health Sciences.”

“There were seven administrators associated specifically with this college,” he said. The Arizona Board of Regents approved the creation of a new college as part of a push at all three state universities to help address the shortage of health care professionals.

All seven positions were filled internally while former President Robert C. Robbins was still in charge, AU spokesman Mitch Zak said. He confirmed they were hired after the university’s “hiring freeze” was lifted on June 30.

“The new college has been in the works for years and it truly grew out of the Board of Regents’ desire to expand health care to Arizonians,” Arnold said. “The university has responded to that by developing these additional offerings that are in very, very high demand and there is a very high need for these offerings in the state.”

Despite a higher administrative payroll, eliminating the 13 vice president positions saved costs for the university, Zak said. Vice presidents’ contracts did not involve buyouts when positions were eliminated, and contracts concluded after their jobs were completed, he said.

Payroll administrative expenses for fiscal year 2025 are $17.2 million for colleges; approximately $1 million for the Dean’s Office – which includes academic affairs, student life, diversity and inclusion, enrollment management, Arizona Online, outreach, distance and continuing education, l international and undergraduate education in Arizona, as well as all academic and student support priorities; and $3.8 million for central administration.

In the new report, AU also revealed that 42 full-time faculty positions had been eliminated, bringing the number of full-time faculty to 2,594 from 2,636, as the university worked to reduce its deficit from $177 million to $63 million in fiscal year 2024.

However, Arnold told the Star that the number of full-time teachers has already been increased from 2,594 to 2,607 and the number of part-time teachers has increased from 517 to 554.

“The (hiring) freeze is lifted, we are processing new hires every day, the number of employees continues to increase,” Arnold said. “…Hiring continues, but it’s part of the natural cycle that the university finds itself in.” our lowest point in employment will probably be mid-July, then it will start to climb, and it will continue to climb until February-March probably, then it will start to decline as we wind down towards the end of the year.

He said “fiscal 2025 employee numbers returned to levels comparable to those seen two years ago during the first quarter of fiscal 2023.” Arnold called this “pretty powerful.”

The number of full-time service professionals increased from 35 to 36, and the number of postdoctoral researchers remained stagnant at 129.

One in two sections experienced a reduction between the first quarters of the 2024 and 2025 financial years. The number of classified personnel increased from 433 to 348 (-85), professionals from 342 to 291 (-51) and university professionals decreased from 210 to 194 (-85). -16).

The expense report excludes UA Global Campus employees.

In full-time positions, faculty payroll saw the largest decline, from $75.5 million to $71.6 million. Payroll for classified personnel was the second hardest hit, falling from $5.47 million to $4.47 million. Payroll for academic professionals decreased from $5.4 million to $4.8 million, and payroll for professional employees decreased from $2.2 million to $1.7 million.

In deciding where to cut budgets university-wide, “we relied heavily on the deans,” Arnold said. “I was relatively new to the university, so the dean (Ron Marx) and I met with each dean last spring, starting in February, March and April, looked at their department budgets, asked them to propose ideas on how they could reduce their budgets, and we gave them some advice. We accepted their ideas and then asked them to implement the budget they were given. And so yes, those decisions on how to implement were really at the collegiate level.

In part-time employee payroll, assistant/associate employee payroll was reduced from $7.1 million to $5.7 million; part-time student costs were reduced from $3.6 million to $3.3 million; and part-time faculty costs increased from $2.7 million to $2.6 million.

Arnold said it was unclear whether the number of associate/graduate assistants would increase to where it was before the deficit.

“Graduate assistants depend on workload and then money,” he said. “We certainly want to employ and support graduate assistants, just like student workers. And, you know, I would love to see our student employment working again as we stabilize and move forward.