Insights
Lessons from Basketball
I had a great high school basketball coach. Mind you, he benched me my senior year and it took me a few years to understand why (now it is painfully obvious how wise he was) but he took a ragtag group of hicks from the sticks and fashioned them into a powerhouse...
Guarding the Tuition Discount
Our discount rate is only off by three percent. That’s not too bad, is it? Well, I hate to spoil a good theory with some facts but the math tells a different story. Let’s presume that Solvay College had budgeted to recruit 240 first time students and...
Face to Face, Facebook and Forecasting
A recent survey of business officers, performed by the magazine Inside Higher Ed, revealed some troubling data. A little more than one in four CFOs are confident in the viability of their institution’s financial model over the next five years. It...
What Can Higher Ed Learn from Detroit?
Detroit’s historic bankruptcy filing this week gives us all pause for thought. The blogosphere has no shortage of opinions on why the city had to resort to such a drastic action. People blame unions, auto manufacturers, the one or two percent of highest...
Attracting and retaining an effective leadership team
While I have been writing about higher ed, this is a general interest piece that I worked on over a period of time. So, you have finally been rewarded with the corner office. Getting there may have involved a series of challenges but that is irrelevant history...
Stories of Student Debt
It seems like I see a story of a student contending with a boatload of educational debt about every other day. The latest from CNN Money is entitled “Student Loan Horror Stories” and chronicles five people with eye-popping debt and one guy who chose a state...
What I’ve learned since starting CFO Colleague
Hi Everybody For the past two months, I have been visiting various institutions, learning about their current issues and identifying where I may be able to offer some assistance. There seem to be a number of parallels and common themes as I go from place to...
Insights Blog
Our take on the current reality of higher ed.
Curated articles, opinion pieces, analysis and advice from one CFO to another.