Thompson Rivers University has approved its 2019 budget which is the school’s largest ever.

The 2019-20 budget will see almost $233.5 million in spending, according to TRU vice president of administration and finance Matt Milovick.

“Certainly in the last three years or so, we’ve seen a fairly significant increase in our tuition revenue as a result great growth in international enrollments. We feel very fortunate to have them.”

Milovick says the school has a $14-million-dollar surplus from its past fiscal year. He says that will be part of $34 million dollars that is spent on capital projects, such as the new nursing building and student housing.

“We’re basically dipping into the university’s surpluses by almost $21 million dollars. So certainly having a $14 million dollar end-of-year surplus helps, and having surpluses on the books helps. It allows us to do a lot of the things that we’d like to do. But we have a lot more that we want to do, so we have to make sure that we manage our capital spending and our surpluses accordingly over time.”

This year’s budget will see $141 million spent on compensation and benefits for employees, which Milovick says is good news on an economic-impact perspective.

“But when we look back to our 2018-19 budget, we’re budgeting about $16 million dollars more in 2019-2020 than we had in 18-19. So we’re keeping our eye on that particular ball, that’s a big jump in employment costs in one year. We do feel that we’re probably making up for likely not having enough in the way of employee costs the year prior, as we took on a whole series of international students,” Milovick says.

“But we want to make sure that over time we sort of establish that financial sweet-spot, between enrollments and ongoing costs. And we have a financial sustainability working group, combined with our strategic enrollment management plan that will help us look at those things to help us make sure we keep that balance in mind as we go forward.”

Milovick says TRU expects another surplus for the 2019-20 fiscal year of about $14.5 million dollars.