Southwestern Illinois College, Community College District #522 has lost the chair of its board of trustees—because he's been appointed president of the institution. Nick Mance, who spent two decades as chair, resigned recently to participate as a candidate in the college president selection process. The remaining board members appointed him to the new role, citing […]
In its report "Navigating The New Normal: Financial Imperatives For MSI Effectiveness and Avoiding Financial Exigency," the Southern Education Foundation suggests that trustees could better understand their institutions' financial health with answers to these questions. 1. What is the discount rate for entering freshmen versus for continuing students? 2. What is the blended discount rate? Link […]
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 […]
NASHVILLE, Tennessee—When Glenda Baskin Glover applied to college, her decision wasn't whether to enroll in a historically black university, she says, but which one she chose to attend. "There were schools I couldn't get into because of the racial climate of the day," says Glover, who graduated from Tennessee State University in 1974 and became […]
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 […]
Learning to pay bills amidst a first-time job search can be a foggy and drawn out process for undergraduates. Unfortunately, credit reporting processes don’t allow much time for students to find their financial bearings. About 7 out of 10 graduates pay their credit cards over 30 days late during the time immediately after graduation, according […]
Sheila Gestring, chief financial officer and vice president of the University of South Dakota, took the helm as its 18th president in late June. Gestring faces numerous challenges, such as finding ways to increase access for high-performing students who cannot afford tuition and easing budget constraints at the university's law school. Gestring started at the […]
The January 2018 issue of UB featured its annual list of challenges for higher education, and No. 4 was both clear and encompassing: data analytics is everyone's job. In the survey of administrators, all groups selected "greater emphasis on leveraging data to identify and solve problems" as the top way their roles are evolving in […]
What are the biggest roadblocks institutions face when it comes to adding/enhancing mobile donation options? “Nothing is more frustrating than getting to the end of a payment process only to have it fail. This experience could cause a donor to give up and schools to lose valuable dollars. Advancement offices need a secure and reliable […]
In a higher education landscape marked by a shrinking student population and increasing uncertainty, institutional longevity—if not short-term survival—is top of mind for most. What many at-risk institutions fail to see, however, is that a primary focus on competition is a precarious survival strategy that more often than not, backfires. Cooperation, not competition is the […]
