After weathering 2012’s budget battles, the state finds itself in a far better fiscal position after the end of this legislative session. There’s no talk of a “doomsday” budget or $50 million worth of cuts to this university’s budget. There are no double-digit tuition hikes.

Rather, this university stands to benefit heartily from the past year’s legislative decisions. For the upcoming academic year, the state General Assembly increased state funding for this university by more than $70 million, a 4.1 percent increase while the University System of Maryland was granted a 7.5 percent boost. In light of financial changes, we encourage readers to compare this salary guide to the previous one and, in a year, the next.

Indeed, the past school year has been one of massive paradigm shifts for this university. First, the university announced it will join the Big Ten athletic conference in July of 2014, a move expected to bring in tens — or hundreds — of millions in additional revenue. Then, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the university agreed to explore a “mutually beneficial” partnership, the economic impacts of which are yet to be determined.

With so many impending changes, everyone in the university community — and anyone else interested — has the right to understand how university funding is being used. It is in this spirit that The Diamondback publishes its annual salary guide.

Transparency is key to understanding and improving the way the state and university handle existing and future funds. You can look up any university employee’s salary in these pages, from research assistants to university President Wallace Loh, the highest-paid academic faculty member, at $459,000.

We present these pages of data raw for your perusal, whether for an undergraduate assignment, an investigation or sheer curiosity. And we won’t analyze it for you because we want our readers to draw their own conclusions.

While it can certainly be fun to browse the guide, understand the numbers have real weight behind them. Somewhere along the line, an administrator decided the specific amount to pay each of these thousands of people. Happy with these allotments? Express your gratitude to legislators and decision-makers. See something amiss? You have the right to challenge the state and the university.

We’ve heard your concerns about finding this guide, and we want it to be as available as possible. On our website, you can download this guide in searchable PDF form under “Special Sections.” Alternatively, you can scan the QR code on the front of this guide to find the salary guide online, or you can directly visit issuu.com/thediamondback/docs/salaryguide2013 to see the print version or find the entirety of the data at issuu.com/thediamondback/docs/full2013salaryguide to browse or download.

You can find the raw Excel file at http://bit.ly/2013SalaryGuideExcel.

Though we won’t tell you what to think, this guide is part of The Diamondback’s continuing commitments to transparency, accountability and informing our readers. Those are high-minded ideals, but they start with you, the reader, flipping through these pages.