Like chief financial officers at universities and colleges everywhere, David Jewell is having a stressful winter.
The senior vice president for business affairs and finance at Cleveland State University, Jewell is trying to constrain any tuition increase for next year at the same time that inflation is pushing up costs and staff shortages are forcing wages and benefits higher.
It’s a squeeze that comes at the worst possible time for higher education, as enrollment has declined by nearly a million students since the start of the pandemic. The last thing it needs is to increase its own prices.
