Fiscal resiliency in higher education: board’s role as a catalyst for change

This blog summarizes key takeaways from our fiscal resiliency podcast series, episode four.

As fiscal challenges (including the COVID-19 pandemic) continue to disrupt the higher education landscape, colleges and universities need all the insights on available options they can get these days. Meeting the academic, health and safety needs of students, faculty and staff, while also ensuring fiscal resiliency and available liquidity, requires institutions to take a strategic approach to aligning resources through proactive enrollment and fiscal management lenses.

As a college or university’s governing body, the board of directors or trustees bears a large responsibility for overseeing institution sustainability and fiscal resiliency. The perspective, involvement and leadership of a board is as critical as ever as institutions navigate the current environment.

In many ways, boards are facing a perfect storm. Issues that have been brewing for years have now combined with the ongoing pandemic to impact operations, enrollment and financial performance in a way that may be overwhelming for some institutions. As a result, institution leadership is left trying to proactively improve short and long-term liquidity, which often results in their seeking guidance from board members when options are not obvious, and/or needing advocacy when options require difficult decisions. Frequently in these trying times, both board members and senior leaders find themselves pondering the question, “What do we do now?”

What should concern board members the most?

A top priority for any institution of higher education is ensuring the success of its students. More and more, students’ perspectives include looking at college in terms of value – what value does the institution bring, what value are they receiving for the money they spend, and are they receiving the basic necessities (health, safety, etc.) that empower them to focus on the value-added aspects of education?

Board members must consider the student perspective when exploring options for enhancing liquidity and fiscal resiliency, and consider questions such as:

• Are our students receiving consistent value, both in and out of the classroom?