Last week, Gallup and Inside Higher Ed released a fascinating and troubling survey examining the opinions of CFO’s on the state of American higher education. CFO’s from 438 colleges and universities responded to the survey. Researchers found that two-thirds of CFO’s questioned believe that higher education is facing a financial crisis. While 23 percent of…
One of the biggest concerns at colleges and universities is how best to improve retention. Retention means something quite different depending upon the institution. At elite colleges, for example, retention rates below 85 percent in four years are a cause of concern. At two-year and four-year colleges that are overwhelmingly first generation, highly diverse, adult-learning…
It is almost impossible for those who live outside the academy to understand and appreciate how American colleges and universities govern themselves. Basically, college governance has three partners – the faculty, the administration, and the trustees. It’s commonly thought to be a kind of “three-leg” stool with each leg required to be strong enough to…
By the end of the 20th Century, a number of American colleges and universities – often in close geographical proximity – began to look for ways to cooperate. Regional college-based consortia emerged in a number of places and took a variety of forms. New relationships emerged with institutional leaders looking to move beyond the lobbying…
The National Association of College and University Business Officers NACUBO) issued its survey of private, non-profit four-year colleges last week. The results – a snapshot of the health of the higher education community – speak to the condition of the patient. It’s clear that the patient is suffering. The problem is that the origins, symptoms,…
It’s been interesting to watch the great debate unfold as the federal government intervenes to provide students and their families with a more rational sense of the “fit” between college applicants and colleges and universities. Enter the “College Scorecard” whose principal data points include average net price, loan default rate, six-year graduation rate, median borrowing…
On Monday, Starbucks announced that it had agreed to partner with Arizona State University to help its employees earn an online college degree. Working with ASU, Starbucks will make the new college degree program available to 135,000 employees who work at least 20 hours a week. Remarkably, employees will have a wide choice in…
American colleges and universities face a growing crisis in how to fund and even prioritize their capital construction needs. While most recognize that higher education institutions on some level can be reduced to the outcome produced by the intersection of people, programs and facilities, they typically mismanage how they approach facilities design and development. It’s…
There has been a good deal of discussion lately on America’s college campuses about how to strengthen the reputation of an institution. Much of the conversation focuses on the decision by the Obama administration to publish a consumer scorecard to help applicants and their families better understand their choices, relying in part on an intensified…
America’s colleges and universities define themselves partly by the company that they keep. As they seek to improve the quality of their institutions, most higher education officials look at some combination of inputs – including the number of applications, acceptances, and admissions – and outputs – persistence and graduation rates – to determine how much…