Fiscal 2025 audit shows decrease in Rider’s deficit

By Caroline Haviland

As Rider rebuilds from its ongoing budgetary troubles, the university’s most recent audited financial statements show a nearly $9 million improvement in its operating loss for fiscal 2025, an indication of a positive budget drawing nearer. 

The financial deficit for the fiscal year 2025, spanning from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025, showed as $12.6 million in the audit, further slashing its $21.4 million total in fiscal 2024.

The improvement came from Rider’s operating expenses dwindling down from $141 million in fiscal 2024 to $137 million in fiscal 2025, according to the audit. This stemmed mainly from nearly $2 million cuts in each of two expense categories: instruction and academic support and auxiliary and student services. The universitywide trimmings were a part of former Rider President Gregory Dell’Omo’s last efforts to rectify the institution in the final year of his tenure.

Vice President for Finance, Chief Administrative Officer and Treasurer Thomas Papa, who joined Rider in September, said in an interview with The Rider News on Feb. 2 that while enrollment was going down in fiscal 2025, Dell’Omo’s administration was “taking cuts around the edges,” but they did not target the main driver of expense: labor. 

Papa went on to explain the importance of targeting such areas, saying, “We have a historical pattern. In financial terms, it’s called a structural deficit, meaning expenses are outpacing revenue in a constant systemic way, year after year after year. My first order of business when I arrived was to address this structural hole.” 

In order to do so, Rider President John Loyack implemented the March to Sustainability Plan in December, laying off 30 full-time faculty members, as well as removing certain benefits and lowering salaries by 14% for those remaining. Papa said the Plan is projected to save $15 million in a full fiscal year. 

“In fiscal 2025, the administration focused on cuts involving staff rather than faculty. … Simply put, for the amount of students we had and the amount of sessions of class that we had to cover, we had too many faculty,” Papa said. 

Chief Grievance Officer of Rider’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors Jeffrey Halpern said that while the faculty union is willing to work with the university to make necessary changes, they must come with a time limit as he views them as “not sustainable.”

“We’re going to make sacrifices if the membership agrees. When we come to vote, the members will either agree to it or not, but [these losses] can’t be indefinite,” Halpern said.

Plans for Rider’s future

Amid all of the financial worry, Papa said the university has seen a consistent revenue stream, which from a financial point of view, is a “big box to check” as a budget must be built off of that income. 

Previous financial audits show that Rider’s revenue has been within $68 million to $73 million over the past five years.

The fiscal 2025 audit showed Rider’s operating revenue totaled to $124 million in fiscal 2025, increasing from $119 million in fiscal 2024. With this uptick also came a rise in tuition revenue, which came out to $72.4 million for fiscal 2025, a slight growth from the $68.9 million made in fiscal 2024.

Despite this information, Papa said the university projects a decrease in enrollment for fiscal 2027 due to circulating information of Rider’s weakening financial situation. He said this forecast emphasized the importance of urgently executing the Plan. 

Rider is also set to pay two short-term loans taken out in spring 2024, and without a payment or an extension, Papa said the university would run out of funds. 

Each fiscal year presents cash dips and peaks due to the amount of tuition flowing in, Papa said, and Rider, as a tuition-dependent institution, must plan accordingly. With a large chunk of expenses cut due to the execution of the Plan, Rider can now save funds for these loans and additional payments. 

Despite these savings, Papa said the university has presented the Plan to the loan providers in hopes of extending it another year. 

“We have to start getting the expenses rolling in a reduced direction,” Papa said. 

The administration plans to bring Rider’s operating loss to around $3 million to $5 million in fiscal 2026, according to Papa, since the Plan was put into place at the halfway point of the fiscal year.

With time, Papa said university constituents will hear less about the financial situation and more regarding positive plans to rebuild Rider.

“I’m sure the students and the people watching the campus and what’s going on here, they’re concerned about the finances of it, of course, but I’m sure they want to stop hearing about the financial problems of the place and start hearing about some of the good things,” Papa said. 

Even with a path forward, the fiscal 2025 financial statement featured a “Going Concern” opinion that expressed the auditor’s doubt regarding Rider’s ability to continue through the current fiscal year. This judgment followed suit with Rider’s accrediting body the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and the New Jersey Office of Higher Education, which placed Rider on probation and heightened monitoring, according to a Jan. 9 facultywide email from Papa.

The email added that despite the auditor’s opinion based on the fiscal 2025 audit, they have endorsed the Plan due to its future financial impacts.

Going forward, the university will continue to monitor purchases over $1,000 and review Rider-issued credit cards through the Resource Preservation Committee, Papa said, to discuss the nature of charges and needs for any expenditures.

Papa said he also began to reevaluate Rider’s choice of food, cleaning and information technology services to further enhance the Plan’s financial impacts. 

However, while these results will be noticeable in the coming months, Papa said Rider’s break-even point will take a bit of time. 

“The financial hole I walked into is a significant structural hole. … When you lose $20 million a year or more, that’s pretty significant,” Papa said. “You don’t fix that in 12 months.”