Endowment growth in 2011 came in no small part because universities have increasingly invested in private equity--the same private equity that has become a hot-button issue on the 2012 campaign trail, with some candidates and commentators calling into question its social value. Private equity is "of increasing significance" for endowments. It made…

Higher education pays off handsomely for society. Yet on a nationwide basis, states' support for higher education per full-time-equivalent student has fallen to just $6,290, the lowest in 15 years. A dedicated source of funds for higher education is problematic. But what if state and federal lawmakers applied the impeccable logic of the gas tax to…

American higher education is at a crossroads. Technological innovations and disruptive market forces are buffeting colleges and universities at the very time their financial structure grows increasingly fragile. Disinvestment by states has driven up tuition prices at public colleges, and student debt has reached a startling record-high of one…

The University of North Texas at Dallas (UNT-Dallas) was conceived 10 years ago as a public institution along tried-and-true lines--a comprehensive metropolitan university meant to serve a diverse student population and to improve the economic outlook of a part of the city that prosperity has left behind. But that was before management consultants…

Most colleges have steered through the first jolts of the recession without resorting to layoffs, cutting employee benefits, or imposing across-the-board freezes on hiring. But the economic pain is afflicting campuses in many other ways, according to the findings from a new survey of chief business officers conducted last month by "The Chronicle"…

A newly compiled analysis by the U.S. Department of Education and obtained by "The Chronicle" shows that 114 private nonprofit degree-granting colleges were in such fragile financial condition at the end of their last fiscal year that they failed the department's financial-responsibility test. Colleges that fail the test are subject to extra…

This article reports that the Higher Education Price Index (HEPI), a widely used measure of colleges' costs, rose by 3.6 percent for the 2008 fiscal year, which ended on June 30. But even as they reported the good news of that moderate increase, experts at the Commonfund Institute who maintain the index noted that broader economic trends could…

The end of the fiscal year usually isn't a momentous occasion for colleges. But this June 30 could be a day of reckoning many never expected. Colleges borrowed billions of dollars over the past decade to improve facilities and fulfill their ambitions. Now the consequences may be about to blow up in their finances. The author reports on how…

By just about every objective measure, the $88-million in debt that Wartburg College has carried since late 2005 poses a risk. The college's debt load--twice the amount that it takes in annually from tuition and other revenue--has raised red flags with its accreditor, alarmed some faculty members, and left Wartburg with a credit rating just one…

Despite a shaky economy, Quinnipiac University is currently developing a new campus called York Hill to eventually include residence halls for 2,000 students, a mammoth parking garage, and a $40-million student center. The university has also just acquired an office park a few miles away in North Haven that the space-crunched institution plans to…

This article examines how the University of Kansas has changed in 20 years. Twenty years ago, annual operating expenses for the University of Kansas campus here were $204-million. Today the institution spends more than triple that, even though its enrollment, 26,000, is almost exactly the same. During the same period, tuition and fees for in-state…

This article reports that the credit crisis tying global financing systems into knots has left hundreds of colleges scrambling for cash to pay their bills and to cover the spiking interest on their debts. While it is still unclear to what extent the federal government's new $700-billion bailout package will help unwind the credit tangle, the…

According to a survey conducted by the Association of University Technology Managers, at least two dozen universities each earned more than $10-million from their licensing of rights to new drugs, software, and other inventions in the 2005 fiscal year. The number of institutions creating large numbers of spinoff companies based on their…

The $5.7-billion endowment at Washington University in St. Louis is a nest egg that makes a lot of things possible. Endowment proceeds begat the whimsical, stainless-steel spherical sculpture now hanging in the lobby of the sleek new art museum, which gives off a fun-house mirror effect from below; the sprawling collection of books on the Third…

The still-unfolding economic crisis is bigger, more fundamental, and for good or ill, transformational for all of society. Yet the reaction in higher education has been, for the most part, strikingly timid. The timidity could be especially harmful considering all the challenges colleges already face, including the coming demographic shifts in the…