COVID-19’s Forceful Financial Hit: A Survey of Campus Business Officers – Inside Higher Ed
Throughout the decade that Inside Higher Ed has been asking chief business officers how confident they are in their institution’s financial stability over five and 10 years, they’ve historically been quite a bit more confident in the near term than over the longer term. That makes sense, in many ways, given that most business leaders have a clearer line of sight into the next few years than over a decade, when who knows what might happen.
This year is different (is that an understatement or what?). Respondents to this year’s Inside Higher Ed Survey of College and University Business Officers were actually slightly likelier to express confidence in their institution’s stability over 10 years (53 percent) than over five (52 percent).
That’s less because they’re suddenly wildly optimistic about their prospects over a decade, though there was a slight uptick from 50 percent in 2019, than because the near term looks a lot murkier. Confidence in the five-year outlook dropped a full 10 percentage points from 62 percent in 2019, with particularly steep drops among business officers at community colleges and private nonprofit doctoral and master’s universities.
The dip in short-term confidence isn’t surprising, given the double-barreled impact of COVID-19 and the ensuing recession on just about every aspect of institutional budgets.