Author: Lea Patterson

Higher Ed Cost Management via Mapped Resources

Everything you do has some type of cost associated with it. If you want to drive to the shops, you need a vehicle which you either purchased with cash, or you are paying off a loan, or you leased the vehicle. Then the vehicle requires fuel, oil, water and associated maintenance. All the things you […]

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What is your University doing to combat Climate Change?

This is a rewrite of an old blog post with a specific focus on Higher Ed. At the end of the article is a link to a whitepaper discussing the prototype Carbon Accounting model implemented at Weber State University. Managing Environmental Issues and Mission The Problem – Every institution’s operations have an environmental impact.  There […]

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Academic Burnout – Can you measure or predict it?

I just read this article by Kevin R. McClure, associate professor of higher education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington on Academic Burnout. To quote the article “The pandemic has introduced unique challenges for faculty and staff in higher education that may make burnout even likelier to occur…Summer is normally a time of […]

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Finance + Faculty: Management Accounting in Higher Ed

Management accounting, as a discipline, is going through a resurgence.  Primarily driven by the huge increase in the amount of data available for analysis, financial professionals are needing to look beyond traditional business metrics and recognize the potential of embracing a wider set of data. Management accounting has been around for 100 years, so it’s […]

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From Whoa to Go in 7 weeks – an Analytic Model Implementation Case Study

Last year NACUBO released the results of their survey to understand the current status of analytics, where Business Officers would like to use analytics and barriers that institutional leaders face within the Education sector. As the results show below, Operational Analysis and Cost of Instruction top the list of areas that are in need of […]

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Higher Education Financial Stress Test

The Coronavirus is creating headlines around the world and here in Australia it’s having an impact on some universities who are delaying the start of the school year or starting the school year online initially.  There might also be a financial impact but hopefully not a permanent one, but what if there was a permanent […]

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Why is Math Cheaper than English?

This was a question posed by Steven Hemelt (UNC – Chapel Hill), Kevin Stange, Fernando Furquim, Andrew Simon (University of Michigan) and John Sawyer (University of Delaware) in their paper “Why is Math Cheaper than English? Understanding Cost Differences in Higher Education” https://www.nber.org/papers/w25314 Their “analysis reveals appreciable variation in the cost of delivering a unit […]

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Cost of Instruction at the University of Maryland

The following is an extract from this article in NACUBO Business Officer Magazine September 2019 by Margo Vanover Porter and discusses the Pilbara model at the University of Maryland. The model was implemented in 2017 with our US consulting partner, Grant Thornton and is updated on an annual basis.   After attending a NACUBO conference […]

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Pilbara Higher Ed Conference 2019

The Pilbara Higher Ed conference was held September 3-4 in Brisbane at the Rydges Hotel in Southbank. It was a great crowd and generated a lot of interesting discussions over the two day event. The focus of the conference was Data Driven Decision Making and in particular how cost and predictive models can be used […]

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New Academic Programs – Five Year Financial Forecasts in Minutes

A significant amount of time and effort goes into the development of a new program for a college. Unfortunately, the financial aspects of the new program tend not to get as much attention. In today’s environment it is becoming more and more important to ensure any new programs not only break-even but contribute positively to […]

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