Do Lower Enrollments Take All the Blame for Higher Ed’s Woes?
We can’t ignore the casualties. In the MAACS region of CECU alone we stand witness to institutions like Triangle Tech, Pittsburgh Technical College, and Delaware College of Art and Design, all recently announcing closings.
A little noticed secondary culprit has been cited that inflation is a huge contributor.
An interesting article on this topic is titled,
“We can’t cut anymore’: Can colleges recover from the gut-punch of inflation?” 1
Even large institutions are not immune as the article cites
• “A recent budget proposal by University of Minnesota’s interim president included some form of the word “inflation” 25 times, citing increased costs for food, services and labor, among other things.”
What can you do about this? Shrinking spending is what homeowners do. How about Postsecondary Education?
A (2015) CDS Benchmarking report stated an average of 4.2 percent of institutional spending goes to IT.2
Is this approaching 10% now with lower enrollments?
If enrollment is shrinking, why not look at shrinking your IT budget?
Traditional enterprise solutions have huge maintenance and legacy costs. Modern web hosted solutions can provide significant value and cost savings. And in many cases substantially improved functionality.
Check out Campus Cloud Services as a good place to start.
Paul Rutledge, Director Sales and Marketing with Campus Cloud Services
(717) 314-8338
linkedin.com/in/paulrutledge
