Liquidity optimization offers colleges and universities a significant financial opportunity. It also is an imperative to meet the mounting financial challenges and risks that higher education faces today.

With no end to inflation in sight, higher ed leaders must take a strategic approach to address a new economic reality. Here are nine options to consider for immediate, near-term, and longer-term action.

Gordon Gee, president of West Virginia University, sat down with the Kaufman Hall Higher Education team to reflect on his 42-year career as a university president and discuss the challenges facing higher education leadership today.

Any way you look at it, America’s four-year private colleges and universities are in a very tough financial and strategic position. For the 2020-2021 academic year, the average...

With plans for an administrative restructuring finalized, a university completes its roadmap to financial sustainability. Some early successes help boost momentum.

A university explores partnerships as a middle ground between its current state and a cost reduction effort that would eliminate programs and services.

As universities face difficult financial challenges, integrated strategic financial planning helps identify options to keep institutions on a sustainable path forward.

Strategy requires choices, which includes choosing what not to do. An assessment of resources and any constraints they may place on strategic options is a first step toward refining these choices.

The unique characteristics of academic institutions can compound the difficulties, but colleges and universities that are serious about putting their strategy into action need to face this challenge head on.

The process of defining desired customer outcomes requires work, and that task is made more complicated for higher ed institutions because their services are often delivered over a course of years and extend across multiple areas, including academics, student housing, campus life, and job placement.