A total of 6,050 ETH graduates, top rankings in international university league tables and 43 new spin-offs: ETH Zurich looks back on a very successful year in its annual report 2023 published today. During the reporting period, 58% of the 31 new professors appointed were women, marking the first time women outnumbered men. In addition to its basic mandate in teaching, research and knowledge transfer, ETH Zurich also launched two new national research initiatives. The Coalition for Green Energy & Storage, an initiative led by ETH Zurich and EPFL, brings together partners in politics, science and industry to develop solutions for the storage and transport of renewable energies. The second, the Swiss AI Initiative, aims to position Switzerland as a leading global hub for the development and use of transparent and trustworthy artificial intelligence.
Free reserves exhausted by the end of 2025
ETH Zurich faced significant financial challenges in 2023 due to rising student numbers and funding for the ETH Domain that failed to compensate for inflation, exacerbated by budget cuts from the federal government. ETH Zurich still managed to generate a consolidated surplus of 50 million Swiss francs in 2023 (previous year: 73 million Swiss franc loss) through a combination of internal cost discipline, increased donations and net finance income. Despite this encouraging result, ETH Zurich’s liquidity has been steadily declining since 2020 due to consistently negative free cash flow. This leaves the university unable to fully cover the liquidity needed for investment and operations from the federal financial contribution and third-party funding. “We are currently living on our freely available reserves, but they will be completely exhausted by the end of 2025,” explains Stefan Spiegel, Vice President for Finance and Controlling. “ETH Zurich urgently needs reserves in order to fund major future investments and smooth out any fluctuation in expenditure.”
Federal financial contribution fails to keep up with rising student numbers
Over 25,000 people were studying at ETH Zurich at the end of 2023. The number of students has therefore more than doubled over the past 20 years, while the federal financial contribution has only increased by around 50 percent (see chart below). After a series of austerity measures in recent years totalling 230 million (2017-2020) and 300 million Swiss francs (2021-2024), ETH Zurichs expect this gap will continue to widen. “In the past we have been able to offset this trend through greater efficiency, deferment of major construction projects and slower growth in professorships,” says ETH President Joël Mesot. “But now we’ve reached the point where we can no longer accommodate continuous growth in student numbers with a stagnant federal budget in real terms without comprising the quality of our teaching and research.”
