Declining enrollments, severe reductions in state funding, rapidly increasing student tuition and fees, and a call for greater accountability by the public – institutions of higher education face catastrophic consequences without a budgeting solution that maximizes resource allocation while addressing equity and transparency.

Have you ever dreamed of a solution to your Institutional Effectiveness (IE) challenges, but then realized that there are institutional barriers to your success?  We have all been to conferences where we sit in the audience listening to an institution present an amazing “Best Practice” in IE, only to realize that it would never work at our institution due to organizational inertia. Organizational inertia is the tendency of an institution to continue on its current trajectory due to resource or routine rigidity.

Congratulations, you’ve received your CARES Act funding through the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF). We’ve put together some critical information about the venues for allocation of the Institutional Portion (“IP”) of those funds and internal controls to ensure and demonstrate that funds were properly used (Please click here to see how SPOL facilitates internal controls via Planning and Budget).

Now that the US Dept of Education has released additional funding for higher education under the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2021, supplementary to the original Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) of 2020, public and non-profit colleges and universities have access to federal funds which can be used for supporting certain institutional operations. Institutions can now apply for HEERF II funding if they did not receive HEERF I funding. Under HEERF II Public and Private Nonprofit Institution (a)(1) Programs, at least 50% of funds must be committed to student aid. Institutions can use the remaining funds not committed to student aid for:

Pivoting resources to respond to change, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, is essential for today’s higher education institutions. Not only must your institution shift funding quickly, but it must also continue to plan and allocate resources for the future.

Below, we share a few considerations as your institution reevaluates resources to meet the needs to students and faculty during this challenging time.

The COVID-19 pandemic has palpably reshaped lives and businesses. Higher education, in particular, has found itself pivoting rapidly to ensure safety, adjust myriad processes, maintain academic rigor, drive administrative productivity, and keep institutions on mission.

Developing or updating a strategic plan for an institution of higher education is a substantial endeavor. Engaging colleagues in committee and subcommittee meetings, discussing the future direction of the institution, and coming to a consensus on goals to guide the institution for the life of the plan: these considerations are at the heart of the collaborative process that is strategic planning in higher education.

In our last post, we talked about what the seven accreditation regions in the U.S. have in common in terms of their standards regarding institutional effectiveness. Now let’s talk about the differences in how the regions address institutional effectiveness.

I had the opportunity to present a webinar to the members of OCAIR (Overseas Chinese Association for Institutional Research, https://ocair.org/). The topic was “Institutional Effectiveness in Higher Education: A Nationwide Perspective”. In the webinar, I compared and contrasted how institutional effectiveness is discussed in the standards and principles of the seven regional accrediting agencies in the United States.