CHAMPAIGN -- The University of Illinois Board of Trustees approved a $3.6 billion operating budget for the Urbana-Champaign campus on Thursday that represents a 7.7 percent increase over last year's budget.

The approved fiscal year 2025 budget for the entire system is $8.3 billion, a 6.2 percent increase from last year.

But, UI System Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Paul Ellinger said, that figure sounds more significant than it really is.

"That's across all four schools, and it's not all recurring," Ellinger said. "I tried to drill into the individual components like the state appropriation and tuition, which were less than that, but our grants program has been expanding, our gift has been increasing, our interest earnings because those aren't flexible funds that we can apply."

Inflation always has a hand in increasing budget costs, and Ellinger said ongoing efforts to prioritize affordability and financial aid, as well as building upkeep, play a large role too.

He said balancing affordability with increasing costs is an ongoing challenge.

"Sometimes what we call the 'delta,' or the one-year changes in our flexible funds, are less than what our needs are," he said. "We have to find ways to do things either more efficiently or cut in one area to be able to invest in another. We've got challenges, and we're doing everything we can to address those. It can't just be waiting for a budget and then seeing these cost increases; we have to continue to look at opportunities to become more efficient."

One significant addition to the budget in recent years might be a little less predictable: cybersecurity.

"Ten years ago, we didn't have those kinds of risks associated with that," Ellinger said. But "with 71 million attacks on our system a day, we've invested proportionately a little bit higher in the cybersecurity space."

The UI System has a huge amount of confidential data, from student information to employee payroll records, not to mention hospital records.

Budget priorities this year also included increased faculty numbers and mental-health support for students.

The good news for UI faculty and staff is that the largest portion of the $3.6 billion for the Urbana-Champaign campus is designated for them: salaries and wages will add up to $1.4 billion, with benefits coming in at $120 million.

Students get the next-largest chunk of the budget with $249 million set aside for financial aid and scholarships.

Reframing the budget by function, rather than type, places research as the highest expenditure at $683 million, followed by instruction at $618 million.

In terms of units on campus, the Grainger College of Engineering will get the biggest chunk by a significant margin, with $422 million in its budget. It's followed by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences' $277 million and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation's $271 million.