Higher Education, Fiscal Administration, and Budgeting

An Applied Approach

By (author) Gabriel R. Serna, Spencer C. Weiler

Publication date:

29 August 2016

Length of book:

180 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781475825619

This book takes an applied approach to budgeting and fiscal administration in higher education. It presents new and aspiring leaders in higher education and student affairs with the fundamental knowledge and skills to supervise, analyze, and implement budgets that make the best and most effective use of limited resources. By exploring the foundational elements of fiscal administration and outlining the process step-by-step, this text carefully takes leaders through real-world examples and includes myriad opportunities for application. Indeed, a major goal of this text is to provide readers with a set of technical skills that can be applied across a range of contexts. Our expectation is that current and future higher education and student affairs leaders will find this text invaluable in their day-to-day work and that the material presented here will help them engage in fruitful decisions around the allocation of scare resources.

Foreword
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction and Overview
Phase I: Foundations
Chapter 2: Getting to Know a Higher Education Budget
Chapter 3: Revenue and Costs/Expenditure Structures in Higher Education
Chapter 4: Basics of Financial Ratio Analysis
Chapter 5: Forecasting, Accuracy, and Judgment
Phase II: Developing and Overseeing the Total Program
Chapter 6: The Operating Budget Process and Cycle in Higher Education
Chapter 7: Oversight and Budget Variance Analysis
Phase III: Foundations of Capital Budgeting and using Debt
Chapter 8: Capital Budgets without Debt
Chapter 9: Capital Budgeting and Debt
Phase IV: Linkage, Philosophy, and Conclusion
Chapter 10: Budgeting and Strategic Planning
Chapter 11: Conclusion
References and Further Reading
About the Authors
Index

Gabriel Serna and Spencer Weiler’s Higher Education, Fiscal Administration, and Budgeting is exceptionally well crafted, providing critical insights into how institutional budgeting actually happens and how it should happen. The authors go beyond the normal high-level considerations (though those are included) to provide specific guidance regarding the skills college and university budget managers will need to do their jobs right. Students of higher education, future administrators, and those currently working within higher education will benefit from Serna and Weiler’s work.