Leadership Exchange - Winter 2009

Q: Talk about the “business” side of student affairs
and the time you now spend on that part of
your operation.

BS: We manage the budget in a very transparent way, which is different from how it was done when I was a young professional, and we had a small portfolio to manage. I have worked very hard within our division and the university to make the budget process more transparent, which forces us to spend more time processing, prioritizing, and planning. It is an important model for us to use.

LM: There is a public/private distinction in terms of time spent on the budget. You have to consider the time demands for a $100 fee increase at state institutions compared to private institutions. The scope of our ‘business’ has changed dramatically. Every one of the areas I oversee has a business element to it: Even student activities and health services are now run as businesses. It is not as simple as calculating revenues and expenses. There are also contractual, legal, public relations, and political issues.

DB: The larger the institution, the more complex the activities and the more business acumen required to operate a student affairs division. At small private institutions, probably most of the money is handled by the vice president of finance and one or two other individuals in that area. At the other end of the spectrum, at a large research university, each department often has its own accountant because so much business is conducted within each department.

MJ: At USC, all major academic units and administrative units have senior business officers who have strong accounting backgrounds. The larger issue is how we define business and its impact on us. Many decisions are colored by whether or not we think there will be an impact from a business perspective. Institutional actions or responses today often are due to the political climate and the business climate and the fact that some of higher education’s staunchest supporters and most generous trustees carry a good deal of weight at our institutions. So I spend a fair amount of time on financial planning and making sure we are using budgets appropriately.

LM: Twenty years ago, 90 percent of our time was focused on student wellbeing and 10 percent was on making sure we balanced our budgets. Now that time is split evenly. This shift represents the complexity of our roles, where there are no real boundaries in what is considered educational versus business. Everything we do must be looked at through the same lenses whether you have a business, financial, government, or legislative viewpoint or a developmental and educational perspective. We must be adept at looking through all lenses simultaneously.

MJ: Because our trustees require a balanced budget each year and are conservative about incurring too much institutional debt, we are increasingly working with outside contractors to construct residential housing. We have a 1,600-bed project under construction, and we are looking to build another

5,000 beds with the support of outside developers. What makes it interesting is working through others to create housing and talking with them about how we can turn housing constructed off campus into residential colleges like the ones we have on campus. We are talking with them about placing faculty and resident assistants in these facilities to provide leadership for social education and cultural programs and linking them to our emergency systems and all other services. The goal is to make housing more attractive to parents and students. Bringing all of this back to the educational enterprise is an interesting challenge as we keep our minds on our academic mission and provide additional services to our students.

LM: New skill sets are required of all of us. I feel that I am as literate as anyone on my campus on third-party development and the construction of new residence halls. I can talk as well as anybody about indemnity and managed care insurance models for a variety of insurers. I can talk with relative comfort about recruitment and employer relations and managing partnerships with employers. We could each add to this list of formal business areas on which we spend a considerable amount of time. At the University of Pennsylvania, running three hotels taught me more about customer service and the finances of a residential operation than I learned in 20 years in campus housing. I spent time watching privatization and outsourcing deals from the inside, and I developed an understanding of how those transactions work. While my range of business experiences may be an extreme example, I do not think I am all that unique.

Q: How do these activities complement your roles as advocates for students?

DB: This is a very provocative point in that we start getting so dependent on the revenue streams, particularly of auxiliary and business enterprises, that it becomes easy for staff to forget who we are here to serve.

LM: There is a business approach to what I do and I do it on behalf of the students and the institution, both of which are part of a common community. I don’t abandon my advocacy for student needs by being a stronger business person.

BS: By being very much involved in the business enterprise, we become even stronger advocates for our students. Our students today don’t differentiate our many roles as educators, accountants, or counselors. They see the complexity of all of our work wrapped into one.

MJ: It is important to be aligned with leaders and with colleagues like your associate vice presidents. It gives you a lot of latitude. I work regularly with the associate vice president for real estate development and associate vice president for auxiliary services. You have to be proactive in building these relationships.