When facing financial hurdles resulting from declining enrollment and increased institutional aid to students, a small liberal arts college in the upper Midwest encountered a profound challenge. Leaders explored avenues for trimming expenses and confronted the stark realization that a dearth of objective information was hindering sound decision making. A comprehensive academic program inventory did not exist; individual academic units were responsible for maintaining academic program offerings, and this resulted in conflicting definitions of terms such as field of study, concentration, and others. Basic metrics for components such as full-time equivalent (FTE) and faculty effort became linguistic minefields, with conflicting definitions used by academic units (academic affairs and academic departments) and administrative units (finance and human resources). This linguistic discord fueled frustration, spawning conflicting narratives rooted in a myriad of shadow databases and an absence of universally accepted metrics. In a bid to surmount this impasse, executive leaders asked a consultant to conduct conversations among members of the community to establish definitions and productivity metrics, injecting life into financial discussions locked in inertia. Over several months, academic and administrative leaders were able to identify areas of common ground. Each group made efforts to determine the drivers of academic management costs, and as they were doing this, they recognized that their information systems were works in progress and might need revisions and improvements as their community’s ability to establish an academic cost stewardship approach evolved. In hindsight, the results of this effort were recognized as being a useful one-time snapshot, but its continuation was delayed for two primary reasons. Firstly, replicating the snapshot after the consultant had left proved arduous, as the work was then given to an already overwhelmed support staff. Secondly, leaders struggled to integrate the new suite of metrics into their decision-making processes, as they were accustomed to planning with an incremental budget process rather than making strategic choices aligned with academic priorities and fiscal realities. This story is not unique; it highlights a ubiquitous challenge faced by many institutions and underscores the critical need for lucid definitions, harmonized information systems, and the cultivation of academic leaders and staff proficient in making plans and informed decisions.

The Role of Academic Affairs Leaders in Decision Making

In the support of academic excellence, Section 5 offers academic leaders a foundational approach to fostering a well-informed organization that synchronizes academic program delivery and cost stewardship. Before delving into this important topic, I want to address what many higher education professionals already know. During my extensive collaborations with academic institutions, I often heard faculty and staff liken their colleges or universities to small cities, which are dependent on crucial services provided by administrative units such as the information technology department, physical plant, business operations office, and residential and dining services units, among others. The allocation of resources to these areas has long been of interest to academic leaders and faculty since the general trend has been to allocate a higher proportion of resources to these areas than to the academic mission, as discussed in Section 3. This shift in resources is, without question, an important topic worthy of discussion at many institutions; however, my focus will continue to center on the academic mission of higher education, and I will delve into the resources directly influencing learning outcomes and faculty effort in the form of teaching and learning.

Let me begin by acknowledging the complex diversity in the organizational structures of academic affairs divisions at colleges and universities. In my three decades of experience in higher education, I have never found any two academic affairs divisions that had identical organizational structures and responsibilities. For example, while academic departments roll up to colleges at some higher education institutions, at others they are grouped into multidisciplinary units (e.g., divisions or schools). This diversity arises from the desire to align organizational structures with the unique cultural norms that have evolved within each institution over decades, if not centuries. Despite this diversity, I have learned there are many more commonalities than differences in the structures and the responsibilities assigned to the organizations, and this makes the finding of common ground quite possible, provided academic leaders and faculty accept this variability and resist a one-size-fits-all approach to academic cost stewardship.

Traditionally, the divisions are led by a chief academic officer, often referred to as a provost. This person normally oversees a team of deans responsible for guiding academic units that may or may not house multiple academic disciplines. These academic units, commonly referred to as colleges or schools, encompass various academic disciplines and student levels (e.g., undergraduate and graduate). For example, a college of business may house disciplines such as finance, marketing, economics, management, and accounting. Further, each discipline is typically overseen by an academic department chair or program director who reports to the dean and is primarily tasked with facilitating academic programming and coursework delivery with their faculty colleagues in the discipline.

Beyond the realm of colleges and schools, the chief academic officer or provost often oversees a cadre of academic and administrative professionals. This group often manages critical areas such as budgeting, faculty development, enrollment management, accreditation, library services, and institutional research, among others. Notably, my observations suggest that provosts often have the most extensive span of control and diverse range of portfolios of all their executive-level colleagues (e.g., in finance and development) across the institution. At first glance, the expansive hierarchy at the top of the academic affairs organization might seem overwhelming to many; the enduring consistency in coursework delivery, coupled with incremental decision making and operations-focused planning, has enabled this larger-than-normal span of control to exist largely unchallenged by those within the industry.

The Role of the Faculty in Academic Decision Making

One of the unique features of higher education is the significant amount of control faculty have over the curriculum and program delivery. This current approach is largely driven by the acknowledgement that faculty are the experts in their academic disciplines and are in the best position to decide what portfolio of courses should make up an academic program and what programs should be offered. For example, the faculty members assigned to a traditional economics department normally oversee all aspects of the development, maintenance, and elimination of economics courses and programs. Faculty members assigned to an academic department conduct their work as a group, and once they have decided on modifications to the curriculum (if any), they deliver a proposal that usually circulates through a faculty-led committee structure, with final approvals normally resting with the dean and provost. While there is a process for colleagues outside of the academic department to vet the proposal, deviations from departmental decisions are infrequent, and the process tends to focus on compliance and accreditation concerns rather than mission-fit and cost stewardship. Interdisciplinary curricula such as the general education or core curriculum may be subject to additional oversight measures and also remain largely within the purview of the faculty. Although the path for adding and maintaining academic courses and programs is often clearly articulated in the institution’s faculty handbook, the same may not be said for the path for sunsetting or eliminating programs that may have outlived their usefulness. This lack of balance often leads to the proliferation of academic programs and places leaders (e.g., president and provost) in the unenviable position of having to cut obsolete or low-performing academic programs or majors, an action that almost always coincides with significant resistance from the institutional faculty.

My contention, and reason for calling attention to this approach, is that getting to the point where senior leaders, such as the president or provost, are making academic program cuts should be viewed as a systematic failure of the institution to steward academic resources in accordance with accepted shared governance principles. To address this systematic failure, I want to emphasize that the independent nature of curriculum development is not the culprit. Rather, the failure is often due to the lack of data-informed decision-making tools, largely symbolic program review processes, and limited transparency of resource allocation decisions. Therefore, I once again suggest establishing and deploying a customized and transparent academic cost stewardship approach to alleviate much of the friction between faculty and academic leaders by aligning financial accountability with the units consuming the resources—such as the college, school, and academic department.

Tracing back to the story shared at the beginning of this section, I posit that developing an institutional academic cost framework and approach, although challenging, is not the most arduous task encountered when establishing a culture of transparency and accountability. Plainly stated, an institution that can pass financial audits, generate accurate transcripts, and pay their employees on time already has the tools necessary for developing a valuable academic cost framework and the subsequent decision support reports needed by academic leaders. The primary challenge is educating people, the most important asset of any institution, to make use of academic cost data to inform both the operational and strategic decisions necessary to align coursework delivery with financial realities. More specifically, three challenges must be addressed to successfully implement this strategy: developing academic leaders’ fiscal skills, coordinating data from isolated information systems, and aligning budget planning cycles with the academic calendar.

Developing Academic Leaders’ Fiscal Skills: Faculty development programs often lack an emphasis on budget planning and fiscal management skills. This creates a steep learning curve for those transitioning to academic leadership roles (e.g., academic department chairs or associate deans). This lack of development, hindered by incremental budget processes and limited information, creates an environment in which faculty with a desire to take on leadership roles must learn on the job and can rely only on the few support systems in place for assistance. This lack of development is especially damaging when institutions have term policies in place for these positions.

Coordinating Data from Isolated Information Systems: Sustaining a detailed and trusted academic cost stewardship system is highly dependent upon having access to data housed in key administrative areas such as finance, human resources, enrollment management, and student records units. In many cases, institutional data are collected, stored, analyzed, and reported within administrative units, and the level of collaboration and effort needed to compile them year after year is significant. As a result, one administrative unit experiencing issues such as turnover in key positions and poor data standards can have a profoundly negative impact on an academic cost stewardship approach.

Aligning Budget Planning Cycles with the Academic Calendar: As discussed in Section 4, faculty members often view the budget planning process as haphazard and top-down. Creating a budget planning cycle that aligns with the academic calendar is an essential component of creating a collaborative budget planning process. Further, the budget planning process must integrate academic cost information to ensure commonality across definitions and language.

I also want to emphasize the importance of creating an intentional and transparent process to be used by all stakeholders as they ponder the performance of academic programming given the current financial realities of the institution. Effective implementation of this process creates a mutual understanding among administrators and faculty, supports institutional collaboration, and identifies opportunities for academic program innovation.

Applying a Formative Learning Approach

As formally trained academics, we are taught to identify flaws in research and information shared with us through journal articles, textbooks, and many other sources. Not surprisingly, this skill is enhanced when faculty receive data from administrative units in the form of census reports, data factbooks, salary equity analyses, and other documents. Figure 5.1 illustrates the various reactions key stakeholders may have as they develop an academic cost stewardship framework. In general terms, faculty and staff reactions are likely to be influenced by their relative proximity to the changes brought on by aligning academic programming with fiscal realities. This means that a robust change in the leadership approach, with an emphasis on interpersonal communication, is necessary to ensure impacted parties have an opportunity to participate in a meaningful way.

Figure 5.1 Addressing Conflicting Viewpoints

As I have noted several times to this point, the development of an academic cost framework is a complex endeavor and requires patience because of issues that may appear, including the quality and completeness of data, clarity of varying definitions, errors in calculation, and lack of information. I cannot overstate the importance of recognizing that a formative learning approach is immensely valuable for guiding this work, and to be used early and often. For example, today, reports are often associated with winning or losing. This is especially true when reports are used for comparative purposes or resource allocation decisions. There will be academic programs that cost more than others due to the nature of the discipline and pedagogical requirements. Even faculty who are the most ardent supporters of transparency may succumb to angst and defensiveness if they perceive their metrics to be too low or too high. Another consideration is the sheer volume of information that must be integrated across administrative units that do not normally integrate these data sources in a meaningful way. Inevitably, some of the data may be lost in translation or simply incorrect.

Providing academic leaders and faculty with the opportunity to review and reflect upon this information during one-on-one and small group meetings will ultimately shed light on these shortcomings and serve as an opportunity to ensure information is accurate and contextually appropriate. As discussed earlier, it is possible to develop an academic cost framework in a relatively brief period of time, but doing so may lead to the skipping over of important steps in the process, losing revealing aspects of the context, and difficulties in sustaining continued development. Academic leaders should consider, early in the process, how this development might continue once the original academic cost framework is created and distributed, especially if the work was completed by someone from outside the institution such as a consultant. Additionally, I suggest the institution give developers access to all of the data necessary (e.g., from the finance, human resources, and registrar’s offices) so they may continuously collaborate with administrative units to improve upon the cost framework while simultaneously improving data quality and retrieval.

As mentioned earlier, this section provides academic leaders with a starting point for considering the short- and long-term development of a decision support tool that values the interplay between coursework delivery and cost management. I recognize the content shared to this point would suggest there is not a quick fix when considering the establishment of a robust academic cost framework that incentivizes faculty participation and strategically aligns institutional resources. This prompts me to carry this discussion forward further, since it is important to ensure a formative approach to this work.

Key Points

• Academic leaders and faculty play crucial roles in aligning program delivery with cost stewardship to support academic excellence.

• The organizational diversity of academic affairs departments and multidisciplinary nature of curricula require a customized approach to developing an academic cost stewardship framework.

• The provost is pivotal in managing a broad range of academic and administrative functions.

• Developing a transparent academic cost framework is essential for informed decision making.

• A formative learning approach to framework development and sustainability is necessary, with an emphasis on patience and continuous improvement.

Exercise for Senior Academic Administrators

Understanding how information is developed and shared across an institution is critical before taking on a project as complex as academic cost analysis. Senior academic administrators are reliant upon nearly every unit, including finance, human resources, enrollment management, and information technology―and the list goes on. Yet, I have often found that the organizing and sharing of information between these units and academic affairs can be uneven at best and non-existent at worst. To address this, I offer two activities the academic affairs team may undertake to strengthen this understanding and develop potential solutions.

1. Collaborative Visioning Session – Organize a session in which the provost and the academic affairs team envision the ideal state of collaboration within the university. Use techniques such as brainstorming or mind mapping to capture ideas about what effective collaboration looks like, the benefits it would bring, and the steps needed to get to the finish line. This positive, forward-looking activity can help the team focus on the desired outcome and motivate them to work toward it. Conducting visioning retreats has proven to be helpful for team members as they work collaboratively in visioning related exercises.

2. Cross-Division Scenario Role-Play – Develop scenarios that reflect typical interactions between academic affairs and other divisions. Have members of the academic affairs team role-play both their own roles and those of staff from other divisions. This exercise can help team members understand the perspectives, challenges, and motivations of their colleagues in other units, fostering empathy and highlighting communication gaps or misunderstandings. For example, a member of the team can play the role of the institution’s budget office representative working with the academic affairs budget officer during the budget preparation cycle. Another team member can play the role of the human resources officer working with academic department chairs during hiring season.

The topics presented here underscore the vital importance of understanding and improving the flow of information across various divisions within the university. As previously shared, the success of senior academic administrators rests on deep interconnections, and it relies on a meaningful collaboration between finance, human resources, enrollment management, information technology, and more. However, the current state of information sharing, and organizational alignment is often far from ideal. By participating in the Collaborative Visioning Session and Cross-Division Scenario Role-Play, academic affairs teams can take significant steps toward bridging these gaps. These activities are not just theoretical exercises; they are practical, actionable steps toward building a more cohesive, efficient, and effective academic environment. The success of any academic cost analysis project, and indeed the broader academic mission, hinges on our willingness to embrace these changes and work collaboratively.