BY ANNIE ADAMS The COVID-19 pandemic belies the assertion that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is devoted to students. While instructors of practice-based courses in science and engineering and performance-oriented classes in the arts are scrambling to reach students remotely and offer them some semblance of a classroom experience, the NCAA has largely shuttered…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Inside Higher Education (IHE) released its 2018 Survey of College and University Business Officers last week. While the findings vary across the different sectors of American higher education, many are sobering, especially for four-year private colleges. Many Small, Private Colleges’ Financial State is Perilous According to the IHE survey, conducted in…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL At the annual meeting of the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) in Minneapolis last week, there was a good deal of attention paid to how higher education should address the steady decline in support for America’s colleges and universities among consumers (that is, students and families) and…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL In many respects, what a college or university business officer (CBO) thinks about the health of higher education says more about the vitality and sustainability of America’s colleges and universities than the opinions of any other group surveyed. The reasoning is simple. The business officers know where the money comes from…
POSTED BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL The results of the most recent Tuition Discounting Study from the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) are telling and worrisome. The study, released last week, examined how much colleges and universities awarded students in scholarship and grants and how deep tuition discounting has become. The NACUBO study…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Last week, National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) and Commonfund released their report on the endowment performance of the 805 colleges and universities who responded to their survey. The outlook was fairly dismal and sheds light on the precarious foundation on which American higher education’s financial model is…
BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL American higher education’s operational model is based on outmoded — and some (myself included) would argue, unsustainable — revenue and expense assumptions. The premise is that student-generated revenues will expand to offset increasing operational expenses of the institutions. However, the decline in per-student net tuition revenues and the backlash against higher…
The National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) published its report on tuition and revenue trends last month. NACUBO surveyed 401 colleges and universities, including 305 smaller colleges, 57 comprehensive and doctoral universities, and 39 research institutions. It also compared this year’s results with previous data collection. The data show that American higher…