Managing change may be part of the job description for any higher ed administrator, but it's seldom easy. And nowhere is this more evident than with the core of any college or university: its academic programs. In fact, the process can be something of a minefield, with faculty feeling threatened and the media poised to […]
It’s a harsh reality for many colleges leading up to fall. No matter how much innovation and energy went into recruitment, you may be forced to wait until September to find out if marketing and admissions will look like a band of superheroes saving the day or like a horde of zombies struggling to survive. […]
For Gonzaga University, like many organizations, the move to the cloud was born out of need. One of this small institution's claims to fame is its stellar men's basketball team. As the 2017 NCAA Tournament approached, Information Technology Services staff at the Washington university knew on-premise web servers couldn't handle the upcoming traffic load, says Darren […]
Over the summer, we visited Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, a bucolic campus surrounded by the splendid isolation of the Adirondack Mountains and blue necklace of lakes and rivers. From its beginning, Clarkson had a highly focused vision for building the kind of school that blended a technology rich curriculum with a diverse liberal […]
Editor's Note: University Business welcomes the insights and opinions of educators and administrators on all topics. If you would like to contribute or respond to a guest column, please contact Tim Goral at [email protected]. As an executive compensation attorney, I represent college and university presidents in their contract negotiations. As I have written in the […]
When Susan Stuebner became president of Colby-Sawyer College in New Hampshire in 2016, she faced a $4 million operating loss and a projected $2.6 million deficit for the following year. Stuebner made significant changes: She cut five majors, laid off employees and, in one of her first moves, initiated financial training for the board of […]
A two-year institution in Ohio has flipped the concept of a college scholarship. Marion Technical College President Ryan McCall says it makes as much sense to help students graduate after they have proved themselves in higher ed. That idea drives the college’s Buy-One, Get-One tuition model, which will fund all sophomore-year tuition costs (not covered […]
Annual performance reviews are shunned for good reason. Your boss tells you everything you did right—but mostly wrong—over the past year, subjectively rates your performance, and then identifies areas you need to improve. Many higher education institutions question the wisdom of this antiquated approach and are exploring alternatives. Some are abandoning ratings while others are […]
While direct mail and phone remain strong methods of courting donors, advancement offices face the reality that younger alumni may not even have a landline or use a checkbook. More than 1 in 5 online donations were made on a mobile device in 2017, according to research from the Blackbaud Institute for Philanthropic Impact. In […]
Providers were asked: How well are colleges using data to measure faculty performance, and what related areas need the most improvements? “Colleges will typically show the faculty how their scores compare to others at the school, usually those in the same department. But they rarely ask the instructors how they plan to improve any low […]
