Realigning strategy and footprint to achieve fiscal resilience

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

While COVID-19 has altered the higher education landscape significantly, fiscal pressures are nothing new to colleges and universities. For several years, institutional leaders have been concerned with a variety of issues, including:

• Affordability of student attendance
• Decreasing enrollment trends
• Increasing operating costs
• Expanding service expectations and needs

Now is the time for leaders to examine their institutional missions and required strategies for the future. In our last podcast, we talked about the need to potentially revisit and deeply assess an institution’s differentiators, market permission and strategic priorities. It is equally imperative to evaluate your current institutional footprint honestly to confirm optimal alignment of all resource allocations and commitments to help you achieve your strategic priorities – and ultimately, your mission.

Leaders must chart a path forward with specific details on how to navigate the current climate strategically to ensure institutional sustainability. This plan should comprehensively evaluate the full range of resource allocations, asset commitments and debts and liabilities within the context of environmentally-driven modifications to revenue sources and realities. 

With this forward-looking mindset, institutions need to evaluate what they should be doing – but also, what they should stop doing. For example, perhaps some activities, programs or locations are no longer a good fit. Institutions need to keep their footprints manageable and maintainable. For many years, the idea of eliminating key activities, programs or locations was unthinkable. Now, everything needs to be on the table.