Lesson 3 Summary

 

As financial challenges mount for colleges and universities, financial considerations will play a more important role in the many decisions that regularly occur within higher education institutions. We hope this lesson provides you with a basic understanding of the finances present within higher education and motivates you to consider the financial aspects of the decisions you encounter during your career within higher education. Many who choose to work within higher education choose to do so because they are motivated by mission of instruction, research, and service to society that are central to many institutions and find the more financially focused goals of for-profit organizations to be less compelling. So, the idea of considering financial aspects regularly will not be naturally attractive to many students.

 

Many important aspects of higher education have a financial component, which makes sense because it typically requires resources to achieve mission. Finance challenges surface in all parts of higher education: concerns around hiring faculty based on expense, barriers to access because of tuition or student debt. As you progress through your career, can you find ways to improve the economic situation of your institution that also advances student learning, improves working conditions, reduces student debt, or meets other goals? That challenge is a great one. We often wish we had a blank check to create policies that will help students or hire the best personnel. We also must be wary of plans that seek to improve institutional finances at the expense of students and employees. The hardest work is to find policies that simultaneously advance mission and financial sustainability. We hope that you leave this lesson more interested in and energized by this challenge than when you entered it.