Dive Summary:
- Conversation at the annual meeting of the National Association of College and University Business Officers has been split between working with the academic side to identify programs that generate revenue and investing in new programs that do the same, and using institutional data to find and eliminate inefficiencies.
- Changes in the economic and political world are forcing public universities to act more like market-oriented private agencies.
- Presenter Elson Floyd, president of Washington State University, said the sector needed to develop a better tuition model, adding that increasing tuition to make up for state budget cuts is damaging to credibility and unsustainable.
From the article:
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. -- Public university employees can expect two things from their universities over the next few years: new programs with an emphasis on increasing tuition revenues, and a whole host of "operational efficiency" initiatives designed to get more bang for each buck. Much of the focus here at the annual meeting of the National Association of College and University Business Officers has been on how public universities, particularly large research institutions, can change their underlying financial models to accommodate a "new normal" of decreased state appropriations and increased emphasis on tuition revenue, while dealing with increase political pressure to constrain tuition prices. ...