Hallmarks of Higher Education’s Most Strategic Finance Functions

This report helps finance leaders develop the strategic capabilities of their units. Specifically, it identifies the five characteristics—or hallmarks—of effective strategic finance functions, and trends that institutions are pursuing to achieve these hallmarks.

Higher education institutions are confronting a host of external pressures, including changing demographics, heightening competition, and increasing affordability and value concerns. These pressures are compelling finance teams to perform more—and more complex—financial activities. University finance functions need strategic teams to conduct these expanded financial activities, but most finance units were not built for strategic financial planning.

These hallmarks describe finance units with optimal strategic data infrastructures, staff profiles, and organizational structures to support institutional strategy across the next decade.