Stephen Agostini fired as UCLA CFO

UCLA Chief Financial Officer Stephen Agostini, one of the principal drivers of the school’s proposed move from the Rose Bowl to SoFi Stadium, is out in what amounts to a huge blow for the Bruins athletic department.

Agostini’s immediate departure was announced Tuesday in a memo from UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk to faculty and staff.

Frenk named Reem Hanna-Harwell, senior associate dean for finance and administration in the UCLA College, as interim vice chancellor and chief financial officer while a search for Agostini’s permanent replacement begins.

As he searched for new revenue sources, Agostini had pushed for UCLA to play home football games at SoFi Stadium, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation.

The planned arrangement included a mixed-use development project that would financially benefit the school, potentially offsetting departure costs associated with a breach-of-contract lawsuit filed by the Rose Bowl and the City of Pasadena intended to keep UCLA at its current football home.

Agostini also backed UCLA’s athletic department in other significant ways, understanding its importance as one of the largest marketing and branding arms of the university.

Along with Frenk, Agostini supported the university’s decision to provide $30 million in direct institutional support to the athletic department in each of the last two fiscal years while also wiping accumulated debt off the books. That brought the balance to zero even though the athletic department had run $241.1 million in the red over the last seven fiscal years.

The athletic department’s financial situation has drawn a strong rebuke from the UCLA Academic Senate, which has called for an independent audit and a “phased plan toward break-even or substantially reduced subsidy” from the university.

Agostini had been on the job for less than two years after arriving in May 2024 from a similar post at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

His departure may have been precipitated by remarks he made to the Daily Bruin regarding widespread mismanagement of university finances that led to a forecasted $425-million deficit for the 2025-26 fiscal year.

Mary Osako, UCLA vice chancellor for strategic communications, said in a statement that the actual projected shortfall was “substantially lower,” citing expenditures that had been discussed but not approved as part of an evolving process.

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“Chancellor Frenk is confident in the integrity of UCLA’s leadership, past and present, and their financial oversight and decision-making processes,” Osako said. “Statements suggesting otherwise are unfounded and do not reflect his or UCLA’s position.”

Agostini had painted a less flattering financial picture in his interview with the Daily Bruin.

Among other things, Agostini told the campus newspaper that the unaudited annual financial reports that the university had posted on its website since 2002 were rife with factual mistakes. Agostini also called the Ascend Finance Transformation Project, which was undertaken to modernize the school’s finances, “a terrific waste of resources” that he and the project’s executive committee halted indefinitely after it cost $150 million.

“I spent a long time in the federal government. … I have rarely seen the kind of financial management flaws and failures that I see here when I got here,” Agostini told the Daily Bruin. “There are days I’m still amazed how things got this way. I have to fix that.”

Now that financial mess will be left to others.