Welcome back. Refreshed? Me neither. But the show must go on. I want to start the year by sketching out the key landmarks and themes of the next year, and by extension, what smart universities and colleges need to prepare for. Let’s start with vaccine rollout, because pretty much everything depends on that. Things are mostly a mess at the moment: we have doses and they are not getting into arms as quickly as they should. This makes little sense
Ok, after nine years of this blog, you all know the drill. Yesterday was about university income trends, so that means today covers expenditures. Let’s start by looking at expenditures by type. Universities are labour-intensive places, with 59% of total expenditures devoted to compensation of one sort or another (if we were to look just at operating expenditures, it would be higher). About 10% goes into new buildings, building renovations, utilities and general upkeep. Another ten percent is devoted “buying stuff” (materials,
This year’s regular data release from the Financial Information of Universities and Colleges was delayed by about three months this year due to the pandemic, but it was released late last week. (This data does not actually include community colleges – that’s a separate survey that doesn’t get published for another few months, so sorry in advance for the university-centric material) As usual, I have a two-parter today and tomorrow to discuss the results, one on income and one on expenditure.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago how the financial position of US universities during the pandemic was going to be absolutely shattered. In the public sector, that’s because states can’t deficit finance and so a declining tax base translates directly into lower public revenues for institutions; in the private sector it’s because there’s a real question about whether any students are going to pay $40K+ for an online semester. The Chronicle of Higher Education is keeping track of the layoffs at US
Today I want to talk about economic stimulus and what that is likely to look like for universities and colleges. To be clear, the $100 billion plus in money which has gone out the door so far in emergency benefits, wage subsidies, and various other programs, is not stimulus. What we are doing now is – in the words of the excellent Jennifer Robson – more like inducing a medical coma; keep the patient (the economy) in a kind of low-functioning stasis
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