Category: Analytics

The Critical Role of Program Review and Optimisation in Higher Education

How Leading Universities Balance Mission and Financial Sustainability In today’s higher education environment, where institutions face funding volatility, increased regulatory scrutiny, and shifting learner expectations, program review and optimisation has evolved into core strategic functions. These processes are no longer solely about quality assurance or academic benchmarking; they now serve as vital tools for aligning […]

READ MORE

Academic Resource Management: A Strategic Imperative for Modern Universities

Why Academic Resource Management Matters More Than Ever Universities across the globe are facing an inflection point. The financial pressures of declining government funding, rising operational costs, and increasingly complex learner demands are forcing institutions to rethink how they manage their academic resources. At the heart of this challenge lies academic resource management, a discipline […]

READ MORE

How hard is it to run a university?

Very…but let’s elaborate. Professor Bill Massy, professor emeritus of education and business administration and former vice president and vice provost at Stanford University, states in his book “Resource Management for Colleges & Universities” that all colleges and universities are governed by an “internal economy”, which he defines as: “A university’s internal economy is the network […]

READ MORE

Tough Financial Times in Higher Ed? – These two must-have reports will help!

TLDR: The last 10-15 years of low interest and low inflation were great but are now gone. You need the financial performance of every academic program and course available for review at any time. Comprehensive financial reviews of academic programs can no longer be done every 3-5 years, they need to be done at least […]

READ MORE

The Evolution of Activity-Based Costing

From the Australian Navy to Universities.  Reducing implementations from multiple years to multiple weeks.  The perception that Activity-Based Costing (ABC) is overly complex, prone to failure, and largely abandoned was once widely held and, unfortunately, not without basis. However, the landscape of ABC has significantly transformed over the past two decades, marking substantial advancements in […]

READ MORE

Top Ten Lessons Learnt from Over Two Decades of Building Activity-Based Cost Models

Activity-Based Costing (ABC) can provide tremendous insight into the financial performance of your organization. However, it has had a checkered past due to factors including the complexity of models and the large amount of manual effort required to maintain these models. Activity-Based Costing also fell out of favor due to very low interest rates and […]

READ MORE

AI and Higher Ed Academic Program Management

There has been a remarkable surge in Artificial Intelligence (AI) usage, generating a significant amount of news and interest. The utilization of ChatGPT has skyrocketed, and new tools emerge regularly, aiding in the creation of images, videos, music, and short films. Microsoft has introduced their co-pilots to assist with code generation, writing Word documents, creating […]

READ MORE

A CIOs Guide to Higher Ed Strategic Cost Management

While reading EDUCAUSE’s latest article on the Top 10 IT issues for 2023, I came across the top-ranked issue – A Seat at the Table, which emphasizes the importance of ensuring that IT leadership is a full partner in institutional strategic planning. Given the current economic climate, with increasing interest rates and inflation, Strategic Cost […]

READ MORE

Supporting the Green Transition with Activity-Based Costing!

According to a recent IFAC report, only 24% of companies with plans to reduce or offset Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions factor in past or future expenses for implementing those plans. This suggests that 76% of companies are pretty much flying blind when it comes to the costs of executing plans to reduce emissions, we want […]

READ MORE

Reducing Academic Workload

Last week, I read a blog post by Alex Usher titled “Reducing Work” where he suggests some ways universities can make teaching more efficient. These include: Driving down the real cost of wages by keeping wage rises below inflation, Dropping the average rate of pay per instructor, by increasing the sessional teaching load, Changing the […]

READ MORE