SMU’s undergraduate student/faculty ratio is 12:1. Sixty percent of all undergraduate lecture sections have fewer than 25 students.

Payroll: Employee Benefit Rates

The Employee Benefits Rates are established for each fiscal year and distributed by the Controller’s Office to the financial officers when they are finalized. The rates are uniformly applied for accounting purposes by employee classification and payment type, not based on the actual benefits utilized by individual employees. There is an equalization done at the end of the fiscal year for certain unrestricted funds. Check with the Budget Office if you have any questions about the equalization process and what orgs are affected.  The benefit charges are booked to the same org as the employee’s wages but under a different account code.

The University negotiates benefit rates with the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). These rates apply to Grants and Contracts, but rates charged internally can be no lower than the approved rates. Due to carryover provisions from prior years, as well as DHHS basing the rates on prior years’ experience in an environment where benefits as a percent of salaries are increasing, the approved rates will result in benefit charges that may vary from the actual costs.

The Employee Benefit Rates are:

Compensation Type	Rate
Faculty and Staff	28.0%
Faculty and Staff Extra Comp not on Retirement	3.0%
Postdoctoral Fellows	17.0%
Graduate Students
Graduate Teaching Assistant	0.0%
Graduate Research Assistant Tuition Remission	32.0%
Other Graduate Students	0.0%
Other Students	0.0%

Any questions should be directed to Millicent Grant at millicentg@smu.edu or extension 8-2800.