Editor’s Note: In a previous version of this article, Tony Wagner stated that the price of in-state tuition has been frozen for six years. In-state tuition has been frozen for five years, not six.

Clemson University is limiting its expenditures to those deemed “mission critical” in response to the construction of new facilities required by its increasing enrollment rate.

This expenditure management mode will continue until the end of the fiscal year on June 30 and will be considered when the budget is built for fiscal year 2026.

All entities of the University, including colleges, departments, designated student organizations and Clemson Athletics, are impacted by the decision.

The University is restricting spending in order to afford the construction of new facilities, which will accommodate the growing enrollment and faculty numbers at Clemson, according to Anthony Wagner, the executive vice president for finance and operations and chief operating officer at the University.

As the University continues to spend money this fiscal year, it will focus on “trying to keep expenditures to mission-critical,” Wagner said.

However, “the University is definitely not in a spending/expenditure freeze mode,” Wagner told The Tiger.

When Tiger Media, which includes The Tiger, was informed on Jan. 17 of the halt on expenditures following a Tiger Media Advisory Board meeting, it was described as “a freeze on expenditure.”

All five Tiger Media organizations are designated student organizations, one of the three types of registered student organizations on campus. DSOs are clubs that are supervised by Clemson University employees and hold their organization’s funds in an on-campus account. As DSOs, all organizations within Tiger Media are part of the department of communication.

As “The Dept. of Communication is complying in all respects” with the halt on expenditures, according to Deanna Sellnow, chair of the department of communication, The Tiger and other members of Tiger Media must also pause all noncritical expenditures.

“We were surprised that this would affect our organization and those of Tiger Media seemingly disproportionately to other clubs on campus because of our DSO status,” Sophia LiVigni, editor-in-chief of The Chronicle, told The Tiger.

Wagner does not believe that the student activities fee will be affected by the current expenditure management mode, as it is not something that the University “specifically discussed.” The student activities fee is generated by the $40 per semester that both in-state and out-of-state students pay in their tuition, and it partially funds many registered student organizations, including The Tiger. These funds, when dispersed to DSOs, are held in their on-campus bank accounts, which are included in the current state of limited expenditures.

The halt on expenditures “affects Tigervision because we aren’t able to put up our new lights that were gifted to us as well as purchase items that will help us improve our engagement on campus,” Landry Mcdaniel, the general manager of Tigervision, told The Tiger.

“It is also frustrating that we aren’t getting more information backing this,” Mcdaniel continued.

While deans and department chairs were informed of the expenditure management mode, some student organizations, faculty and staff feel as though they have not been properly informed or were informed at all.

“I was discouraged that a club in the College of Science had not even heard of the freeze on spending,” LiVigni, who is familiar with the organization, told The Tiger.

For her, it raises the question that “they won’t feel the effect of the freeze as other organizations might or that Clemson has not done a proper job disclosing the freeze to students.”

WSBF-FM, Clemson’s college radio station and a member of Tiger Media, also feels negatively impacted by the pause on spending.

“We are still struggling to fix our radio transmitter after Hurricane Helene, which is a costly endeavor that has taken several months,” Dillon Finley, general manager of WSBF, told The Tiger. “Unfortunately, that is now coming to a halt.”

The University is always in an “expenditure management mode,” which has helped prevent in-state tuition from increasing for five years in a row, according to Wagner.

“Right now, we’re focused on it,” Wagner told The Tiger.

As of right now, the University will spend around $60 million more than it did last fiscal year, Wagner said. Last year’s final budget numbers were around $1.6 to 1.7 billion.

Wagner told The Tiger that the current budget, which totals $2.1 billion, reflects the fact that the University will continue to spend more throughout the rest of the fiscal year and beyond “with respect to expense management” and while “trying to keep expenditures to mission-critical focus.”

The total operating revenues of the University totaled $1,166,169,055 at the end of fiscal year 2024, according to the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for FY 2024. The nonoperating revenue for the same period was $419,075,295.

The Clemson University Board of Trustees is currently considering various “important academic priorities” and projects that “will get announced over the coming months because of our need for new facilities.”

There are currently six new facilities under construction on Clemson’s campus, alongside various renovations, according to University Facilities. Three of the buildings — the Advanced Materials Innovation Complex, the College of Veterinary Medicine and the Forestry and Environmental Conservation building — are intended to support further research and learning spaces. Other projects include the Williamson Road Parking Garage, a University Facilities Center and the new Alumni and Visitor Center.

“We’re working with all of the deans and all of the vice presidents,” Wagner said. “We want people to do all the mission-critical things they need to do for teaching, research, service, but we’re just asking them to really look at their budgets in a very dynamic way and make sure that if something can wait, that it waits, and the major reason for that is the expansion of facilities.”

College deans and other leaders were informed of the “expenditure management mode” through existing meetings, but there was not a specific “rollout” date, Joe Galbraith, a spokesperson for the University, said.

For the College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences, which The Tiger is a part of through the department of communication, the pause on noncritical expenditures went into effect around the middle of the month.

Over the last couple of years, the University has been moving toward a “revenue-based budget model,” which includes a more “dynamic expense management mode.”

Every year, the budget goes into place on July 1, Clemson University’s first day of the fiscal year. Wagner said that as the year unfolds, less focus is devoted to the “granularity of the expenditures in a revenue-based budget model.”

One aspect of this is a greater focus on a dynamic, quarter-by-quarter review of the state of the budget and expenditures, including whether there are economies or efficiencies in the budget, Wagner explained.

This “ongoing business transformation” led to a review of the first quarter’s finances around mid-fall of 2024. The Division of Finance and Operations began an assessment around this time that resulted in the current expenditure management mode, according to Galbraith.

Dating back to before the COVID-19 pandemic, the University has maintained a “centralized hiring process.” According to Wagner, this means that individual departments cannot just decide to hire someone.

“There is no hiring freeze,” Wagner said.

“Clemson is actively hiring people every day, but we are also actively monitoring that and making sure it fits into the budget every day.”

Hiring must be included in a department, a college and a University-wide hiring plan. Hiring employees is a component of the University’s dynamic, quarterly expense management.

The University’s caution regarding the rate at which expenditures are growing is a “key element” of moving forward with the Clemson Elevate plan, according to Wagner.

Clemson Elevate is a strategic initiative characterized by three pillars: delivering the No. 1 student experience, doubling research by 2035 and transforming lives statewide and beyond.

“If we are running a tight ship financially, that means that we have the flexibility to invest in those strategic opportunities,” Wagner said.