CFO Survey Reveals Doubts About Financial Sustainability

By Doug Lederman. Hardly a day goes by without some author or commentator predicting that the end is nigh for higher education, or significant portions of it. Such predictions understandably grate on many administrators and professors. But what do those with the closest eyes on their own institutions' bottom lines -- chief college and university business officers -- think? Turns out they're not particularly upbeat, either -- about their own colleges' futures or the higher education landscape more generally. In a new survey by Inside Higher Ed and Gallup, barely a quarter of campus chief financial officers (27 percent) express strong confidence in the viability of their institution's financial model over five years, and that number drops in half (to 13 percent) when they are asked to look out over a 10-year horizon. Read more...