Queen’s ran a $160 million surplus in 2025-26, including an $87.5 million operating surplus, according to the Draft Audited 2025-26 Consolidated Financial Statements released by the Board of Trustees Audit and Risk Committee this week.

Don’t get excited about potential relief from austerity, though: None of this extra income is being allocated to where it’s desperately needed: faculty renewal, TA and staff support, or even the basic repairs to our dilapidated campus. It’s all being transferred to capital reserves (a category that does not include maintenance of existing buildings).

Other budget highlights:

  • Revenues increased by 9.8% thanks to positive returns on investments, a substantial increase in Provincial funding, and a more successful year in Tri-Council applications and associated overhead.
  • At the same time, the administration is spending less on salaries, which dropped from 56% to 55% of total costs. This comes as no surprise given how adjunct and TA budgets have been slashed and early retirement bonus incentivizing faculty to leave. In FAS, these changes have led to a 15% decrease in the faculty complement, a 25% decrease in adjunct instructors, and a 15% reduction in staff positions. In the meantime, registration in several faculties was a shambles as students struggled to enrol in oversubscribed courses they need to complete their programs.
  • Since the hiring freeze was instituted in 2023, Queen’s has grown its capital reserves from $164 million to $306 million. This highlights how investment income has been used to centralize control over funds (ostensibly for unnamed capital projects) rather than used to fulfill the academic mission of the university.
  • The centralization of control over the use of resources is also evident in the Transition Fund which grew from $39 to $49 million and is spent at the discretion of the Provost and VP-Finance rather than through faculties or collegial governance procedures. In 2025-26, the fund was used to pay for the Voluntary Retirement Plan, which was only open to Faculty members in FAS, and the Queen’s Renew Project, headed up by the controversial consultancy Nous. We can’t help but wonder how this place would feel to learn and work if the fund was invested in education, building repairs, and a renewed faculty complement?

OTHER UPDATES

Senate

LLMs: A 668-page agenda made for a long and packed September Senate meeting. A draft statement of principles on the implications of large language models in teaching and learning generated the longest discussion. Vice-Provost (Teaching and Learning) Gavan Watson, who chairs the Senate Committee on Academic Development and Procedures, fielded a number of questions from the floor.

Questions focused on:

  1. The desire for principles and best practices pertaining to faculty use of AI in teaching, which VP Watson said would be incorporated into the next draft;
  2. The need for additional TA and staff support for conducting best practice, protected assessments that are resilient to LLMs;
  3. The separation of equity and ethics from all the other issues addressed in the draft, and the fact that faculties are unequally placed to offer the support referenced in question #2, or to offer smaller class sizes that are part of building LLM resilience;
  4. The following passage from the draft, which led some Senators to express concern about instructor academic freedom and academic programs that require LLM use: “Queen’s defines AI literacy as the knowledge, skills, and values that inform the critical judgment needed to engage with AI competently and responsibly, including informed decisions about when, how, and whether to use it at all. A literate community member is not necessarily an enthusiastic user of these tools, and choosing not to use them, where that better serves learning, teaching, or research, is itself an informed decision and not a deficit.”

We await the next draft with interest.

Renewal of the provost: One Senator asked about process for reviewing and renewing the Provost. Queen’s doesn’t yet have guidelines pertaining to this position, even though its first Provost was appointed in 2011. Principal Deane responded by saying that the Senate Governance and Nominating Committee would look into it, but emphasized that the authority to make an appointment and devise a process ultimately lies with the Board of Trustees (and the Principal). 

Program closures: An undergraduate student senator asked a number of questions about program closures. The FAS Associate Dean answered those questions without mentioning the ongoing hiring freeze, in place since 2023.

College of Computing: The future of the proposed College of Computing remains unclear. The Principal told Senate on September 24 that the Provost’s motion to create a college structure had been withdrawn (the Provost was not in attendance). Yet the Principal’s report to the Board of Trustees (submitted on September 22, two days before Senate) reads as follows:

Consultations have continued on a proposed College within the Faculty of Arts and Science, initially focused on Computer Science. It is intended to support interdisciplinary, cross-faculty programming, particularly in response to the growing influence of AI. Over the summer, consultation sessions with staff, faculty, and senior leaders generated feedback on the College model and opportunities to strengthen interdisciplinary programming. A student session will also be held. The feedback is now being reviewed, with various options under consideration. (p. 33)

In the meantime, the first FAS Faculty Board of the academic year, on September 11, featured an extended presentation by the Director of the School of Computing, Hossam Hassanein, on prospective AI+ curricular initiatives that would presumably unfold with or without a college structure. The presentation generated a number of questions, including from students concerned about the environmental impact of AI and curious about the pursuit of a AI+ Creative Arts program. An audible groan moved through the room when members were told that there would be “no creative arts without AI” in the near future.

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