The Financial Strategy & Operations Door holds briefing papers dealing with forecast models, business policies and processes, auditing, budgets, communications, financial equilibrium, and other topics.
Introduction For the past decade, our colleagues and columnists have remorsefully muttered about friends in terminally ill colleges. Now, we know “for whom the bell tolls.” As more old colleges are thrown on the death cart, other small colleges only wait and wonder if...
Michael Townsley, Ph.D. Senior Associate Stevens Strategy Private colleges and universities are encountering unprecedented levels of financial stress that may even exceed the financial problems caused by the Great Depression in the 1930s. According to the Hechinger...
Pricing Power and Private Colleges and Universities As of the first week of May 2024, Chart 1 shows that twenty private colleges have closed with a simple factorial estimating that sixty will close. The sharp exponential growth for 2024 does not bode well for many...
Michael Townsley, Ph.D. March 31, 2024 Introduction For the past decade, our colleagues and columnists have remorsefully muttered about friends in terminally ill colleges. Now, we know “for whom the bell tolls.” As more old colleges are thrown on the death cart, other...
U.S. Department of Education (DOE), credit rating agencies, banks, regional accrediting commissions, and boards of trustees want assurance of financial viability from colleges and universities. Different organizations have devised and adopted metrics[1] that they...
Chief financial officers (CFO) are gatekeepers for the financial resources that fund the mission of the institution. CFOs are more than a necessary evil to keep the money straight. They have a keystone role in the institution because their education, experience, and...
Every college president faces the same challenge of figuring out what to do with the limited resources that they have available. Usually, scarce resources are defined in terms of money…
Private commuter colleges are a rare breed in higher education. They operate like a community college but offer undergraduate and graduate degrees. These colleges typically operate with multiple sites, tuition prices, and academic periods. They are fast-paced and...
A CFO’s contribution to the mission of an institution – building and sustaining its financial viability - depends upon the relationships that she/he has with salient positions within the institution. Positions are salient when they are directly involved in budgetary...
It is not uncommon in higher education that an institution should establish a balanced annual budget as its main strategic financial goal. There are several significant reasons why the “single year net income goal” is both…
In 1986, more than 900 independent colleges derived at least 75 percent of their revenue from students, according to a 1989 study by Minter and Associates. This figure has probably changed little in the past eight years. Too often, enrollment-dependent independent...