A few years back, a mid-size private institution in the northeast faced a substantial annual operating deficit caused by consecutive years of tuition losses and unforeseen expenses. Despite a comprehensive administrative efficiency assessment, the resultant cost savings fell short of bridging the deficit. Consequently, the institution’s leaders opted for an academic program cost analysis that would delve deeper into the correlation between tuition revenue and expenses associated with coursework delivery. It quickly became apparent that the institution lacked the necessary infrastructure to construct a meaningful cost framework for this analysis. The impediments included disparate university information systems, numerous shadow databases scattered across individual desktops, conflicting definitions in academic units, and a shortage of staffing resources essential for fostering productive interactions between faculty and administrative staff. Faced with these challenges, leaders made the strategic decision to enlist an outside consultant to evaluate the current state and formulate a plan for establishing a cost management tool utilizing the current infrastructure, such as the information systems already in place, in the institution. The assessment validated leaders’ suspicions, and together they collaborated with the consulting team on outlining a viable path forward. It included the development of an annual academic cost framework that would be provided to academic affairs staff and faculty so they could better understand and align current and future curricula with available resources.

Operational Focus of Higher Education

This tale reveals how a labyrinth of academic program costs may confuse leaders trying to navigate change. Institutional leaders, seeking in-depth insights into cost intricacies, find themselves in a state of puzzlement and frustration. Our experience has proven that leaders seeking detailed information about academic program costs are both perplexed and frustrated when they learn of the limitations created by the operational-centric-focused infrastructure in place at their institutions across the country. For example, it is common to find information systems put in place that have been developed to meet the needs of office administrators and front-line workers who need quick access to information. This one-sided operational focus has come at the expense of a strategic alignment, as less attention has been paid to extracting, organizing, and sharing the information necessary for a deeper understanding of situations and the long-term planning needed to improve upon them.

This clear trend has been described in hundreds of interviews at dozens of institutions. It suggests that institutionally developed metrics are available mainly for operational and compliance obligations rather than for planning and decision support. Of course, every institution is unique, as there are examples of administrative units (e.g., registrar’s office) that have a robust suite of managerial reports for all academic levels of granularity. In contrast, others (e.g., human resources departments) may have a limited understanding of how to organize faculty effort and compensation in a manner that is useful for long-term academic program planning. For this reason, I highly encourage institutions interested in exploring academic program costs to conduct a thorough assessment of the institutional resources identified in the previous sections. Based on my experience in this area, I offer the following approach to better understanding the current infrastructure, producing a short-term plan for developing an academic cost framework, and ensuring that resources are organized in a manner that emphasizes quality learning outcomes and financial sustainability.

Faculty Handbook

As discussed in Section 5, the faculty handbook can be a valuable resource for leaders to consider when preparing for the complexities related to establishing an academic cost framework. It should:

• Provide decision makers and developers with a detailed resource to help them better understand policies and norms developed in collaborations between faculty and administrators over many years.

• Enable administrators and staff to align their data definitions and policy language when interacting with academic units and faculty groups.

• Identify important metric parameters developed by faculty members, such as faculty effort expectations, course modality norms, and enrollment capacity expectations.

In my experience, there are few resources on campus as valuable as an up-to-date, well-documented faculty handbook. This resource often provides valuable information useful for developing key cost metrics, such as faculty effort expectations, instructional reassignments, and research efforts. More importantly, the faculty handbook is often developed as a collaborative effort between faculty and administrators through the shared governance process described in Section 7. I have seen a fair share of faculty handbooks that were outdated or contained conflicting information. As with all of the recommendations in this resource, I encourage a thoughtful approach to using this document rather than an outright acceptance of its content. Whatever its state may be, its recognition as a critical component not only provides a sound starting point for developing a robust cost framework but also creates goodwill with the faculty.

Leaders of Administrative Divisions

In Section 6, I emphasize the importance of coordination and effective communication across the administrative units critical to developing a comprehensive academic cost framework (e.g., finance, human resources, and enrollment management). I encourage individual meetings with senior leaders and staff in these administrative areas. The reason for this is threefold. First, these divisions can provide data and reports on the responsibilities they carry, so it is important to understand their operational structure and capacity to take on an additional workload. Second, these meetings are opportunities to better understand past attempts to establish a cost framework and identify where and how shortcomings occurred during these attempts. Third, the development of a sustainable academic cost framework is likely to require each of these units to modify some processes and/or policies. Therefore, identifying limitations and barriers to change should be addressed in the first steps of creating a cost stewardship framework via a collaborative change management approach.

Administrative Staff

In previous sections I emphasized the operational focus of American higher education institutions. Of course, this will reveal itself as staff members are asked to change the way they think about data entry and reporting. Inevitably, there will be interviewees who say they work the way they do because “that is the way we have always done it.” Rather than dismiss these statements as being signs of resistance to change, I encourage additional dialogue to help staff understand what is possible as opposed to what has always been. Further, our experience suggests administrative units vary in their ability and willingness to change, so identifying units where change is embraced is just as important as knowing which units or individuals prefer the status quo.

Information Systems

In Section 5, I drew attention to our experiences with academic affairs divisions and how no two were the same. I would suggest that the same could be said for the technological infrastructures found in higher education. In some cases, institutions employ a comprehensive information system that promises (and most of the time underdelivers) a holistic set of reports to answer all questions, while in other cases, there is a unique information system in each administrative unit that has little to no capacity for creating holistic datasets and reports merging data from across these systems. Although this is concerning, I would again draw attention to Section 5, where I suggested that an institution that can pass financial audits, generate accurate transcripts, and pay their employees already has the tools necessary to develop a useful academic cost framework and the subsequent decision support tools needed by academic leaders. Conducting a comprehensive assessment of one or more information systems is critical not only for the development of the cost framework but also for establishing a sustainable approach over time, as I will discuss in Sections 10 and 11.

Decision Support

Our experience suggests higher education institutions often implement a unit-level approach to collecting, maintaining, and reporting information as opposed to developing an institutional or central approach. There are strengths and challenges with each of these perspectives, and it is important to recognize them early in the development process. Additionally, I have found that unit-level approaches often require individual staff to take on the collection, maintenance, and reporting roles; this not only creates risk as staff leave the institution but often minimizes the availability of analytics for two reasons. First, these individuals tend to focus on operations and compliance, as this is normally emphasized by administrative leaders (e.g., human resources and enrollment management) due to the risk of performing poorly in these areas. Second, developing a complex academic cost framework not only requires an elevated level of analytic skills but also an understanding of many functional activities across campus (e.g., curriculum, staffing, and finances), and this is not normally the purview of the junior staff, who usually undertake this type of work at the unit level. Identifying where an institution stands on the unit or institutional analytics continuum is critical for developing a strategic approach to establishing a useful and sustainable cost framework. I will discuss this further in the next sections when the magnitude and complexity of this type of project become more obvious. Figure 6.1 shows various levels of decision support assets. The one at the mature end of the continuum can help institutions identify strengths and weaknesses in key areas such as talent, strategy, and technology.

Figure 6.1 Levels of Maturity of Decision Support Assets

Understanding how this continuum can hinder or enhance institutional research and adjustments that can improve an institution’s decision support capacity are discussed in Sections 10 through 12.

Data Integrity

In Section 5, I spent a significant amount of time describing the value of employing and communicating a formative learning approach when developing a comprehensive academic cost framework. Nowhere is this more important than when considering data integrity. This is especially relevant when you consider two trends experienced at dozens of institutions. First, individuals who work in academic institutions have long memories, and if someone errs by releasing incorrect information, the long-term impact can be negative for the individual or unit perceived to have made the mistake. Second, curriculum and coursework files are replete with customizations and modifications that can make interpretation and comparisons exceedingly difficult. I will continue this discussion further in future sections; however, the point I want to emphasize here is that it is important to address perceived gaps in data integrity sooner rather than later and as often as needed.

Transitioning from Assessment to Implementation

Admittedly, I have spent a significant amount of time outlining the obstacles and challenges associated with developing an academic cost framework. This is intentional. Our shared and unwavering position on this matter is that starting the development of an academic cost framework without the due diligence necessary to understand the institutional and administrative culture and operations puts the project at risk. As efforts continue, these mistakes will likely continue to show up and impede progress over the long term. Alternatively, proper due diligence will engage faculty and staff and create a level of ownership and accountability among them. As we transition to Section 10, I will continue to refer to earlier sections, and I encourage academic and administrative leaders to do the same as a reminder that this is a collaboration, and everyone associated with the project should be an active participant with a sense of ownership and accountability.

Key Points

Colleges and universities face challenges in developing academic cost stewardship frameworks because they have had an operational focus that limits both strategic and long-term planning.

The faculty handbook, institutional policies, and administrative units play crucial roles in gathering data and aligning policies for effective academic cost stewardship.

A comprehensive assessment of information systems is essential for effective data management and decision support.

·Transitioning from assessment to implementation requires due diligence, engagement, and a culture of accountability to ensure success in academic cost stewardship.

Exercise for Provost, Senior Academic Administrators, and Faculty Leaders

Assessing the current state of academic cost stewardship requires a cross-institutional approach involving key administrative units. I offer the following two activities as ways to begin collecting information and developing a shared understanding of the strengths and opportunities associated with the current approach.

1. Cross-Functional Workshops on Information Systems and Data Integrity: Organize workshops that bring together staff from different administrative units (e.g., human resources, finance, enrollment management) to discuss the current state of information systems and data integrity. These workshops should focus on understanding the limitations of existing systems, sharing best practices, and identifying common data integrity issues. The goal is to foster a collaborative environment in which staff can work together to improve data quality and system integration.

2.  Faculty Handbook Review Sessions: Conduct sessions in which faculty and administrators collaboratively review and revise the faculty handbook. These sessions should aim to clarify policies, norms, and metric parameters such as faculty effort expectations and course modality norms. The objective is to ensure that the handbook is up to date, consistent, and a reliable resource for developing a robust academic cost framework.

By engaging in cross-functional workshops and faculty handbook review sessions, leaders lay the groundwork for a more integrated, efficient, and transparent approach to managing academic costs. These activities are not just procedural necessities; they are crucial steps for fostering a culture of collaboration, concern for data integrity, and continuous improvement. It is imperative that leaders take these recommendations seriously and place a high priority on them, using appropriate resources to support a successful outcome.