Performance Analyst

by Michael K. Townsley | Aug 16, 2025 | Presidential Leadership

By Michael Townsley and Jack Corby

In higher education today, boards of trustees and presidents must know if their college is doing what it claims to be doing in its mission statement and its curriculum. Financial operations use an auditor to determine if the college is following standard accounting procedures and accurately reporting its financial position. However, the academic and operational programs do not have anyone comparable to a financial auditor to assess their administrative operations, and their academic programs. When colleges do not have a third party assigned to assess their administrative operations and academic programs, the college may falsely assume that the absence of complaints means that all is well with its administration and instructional program.

Colleges and universities can no longer afford the luxury that no news is good news because inefficiencies add unsustainable costs to the college, while ineffective delivery of academic services leads to graduates who are unhappy with their degrees. For instance, recent articles, for example, by Forbes magazine report that many graduates are finding that they do not have the practical skills for the job and the market.^[1] If a college wants to survive the crushing demands of the demographic cliff, the loss of federal funds, and the changing preference of potential students for a degree, it cannot assume that all is well. They must test operations and academic programs to ensure that they are efficiently and effectively delivering their services.

This brief paper has suggested that the boards of trustees and presidents should fund a performance analyst to ensure that academic and administrative operations are efficient and effective in delivering on its mission and curriculum. The following outlines the role of the Performance Analyst:

Performance Analyst: reports directly to the president and has full authority to access data, review policies and procedures, examine the efficiency of operations, and make recommendations to improve performance

Duties (this is only a partial list, and it could differ by institution):

• Analyze policies, processes, and outputs for operational and academic departments;
• Analyze the policies, processes, and relationships between IT and academic departments;
• Analyze the interface between: administrative departments, academic, plant, IT, finance, athletic, and other substantive departments;
• Analyze the relationship between governance structures, for instance: board and administration, board and faculty, administration and academic governance, and other governance structures in the institution;
• Analyze the interface between the college and external parties with which the college has a quasi-legal or contractual relationship;
• Analyze the college’s student flow from marketing to admissions, to registration, to class assignments, to bookstore, to courses, to graduation, to alumni affairs;
• Analyze college performance in terms of the effectiveness and efficiency of skill development by major;
• Annual Reports on enrollment, graduates, retention, finding jobs post-graduation, moving on to graduate degrees or professional degrees, cost per student credit hour, net revenue for revenue-generating departments, and efficiency of the allocation of assets to instruction and operations.
• Provide the president with detailed recommendations on changes to improve efficiency and effectiveness for each area studied.

In summary, the main goal of the performance analyst is to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the institution and to suggest changes that improve effective and efficient operations.

1. Mark Perna (January 28,2025); “New Data Shows Just How Deep the College Crisis Does”, Forbes; New Data Exposes the Depth of America’s College Crisis ↑