All Featured Insights

To fully capture the benefits of changes in institutional advancement, leadership should focus on two questions. Do we have the datasets and analytics needed to measure donor potential and engagement in an effective way? And have we structured our advancement office to best support its productivity and effectiveness?

In an increasingly competitive environment, colleges and universities must define and assert where they have a competitive advantage and ensure that they are reaching their full market of potential enrollees. The ultimate goal of these efforts is to enhance market essentiality.

Strategic planning and financial planning are highly interrelated and interdependent disciplines. Institutional financial literacy creates the perfect environment and means of communication in which an integrated strategic financial planning process can thrive.

Promoting financial literacy serves two important purposes. First, it makes everyone aware of the institution’s current financial health. Second, it makes everyone aware of what will be required to ensure the institution’s financial health over the long term.

Financial literacy is the ability to understand where an institution stands at any given time with respect to key elements of its balance sheet and income statement. It is a skill that every institution should foster across its faculty and staff.

Given the uncertainties facing higher education today, it is critical to understand what is driving an institution’s financial success, and what is holding it back.

The higher education sector leaders from the three rating agencies share their insights on 2024 outlooks, growth strategies, consolidation within higher education, and current rating committee concerns.

Some colleges are pursuing athletic program expansion to boost enrollment and tuition revenue. The key question is whether this strategy will boost the institution’s financial performance as well.

This past year in higher education has been fraught with challenges, both new and chronic. A focus on objective assessment, planning, and preparation will be vitally necessary to survive the ever-changing weather of higher education.

Some institutions have addressed the tuition pricing problem by instituting across-the-board tuition resets. A better approach is one that combines evaluation of the competitive landscape with a careful analysis of the institution’s current academic product mix.

Higher education is facing a crisis of confidence in the value of a college degree, with risk implications for enrollments, tuition pricing, and capital spending. Avoiding these risks begins with finding and quantifying the appropriate “corridor of control” for your institution.

Financial reserves are essential to the sustainability of any college or university. Integrating reserve goals to strategic planning through development of a strategic financial plan helps ensure that sufficient reserves will be available to meet the institution’s needs.