Programs
A full program can still lose money.
It can hit its enrollment target and cost more to teach than it brings in. You see that when tuition and teaching cost are on the same page.
A college is too important to guess.
Sightline helps keep the college in the black by tying the budget to what each program costs and earns, down to the faculty line behind it.
The academic budget is where colleges slip out of the black.
The number the board approves is a total. Programs and faculty lines sit inside it, and most campuses cannot say what each one costs or brings in. The hires and the program changes still get approved.
Faculty lines
The line is the expense.
Salary, benefits, and the courses that person teaches. Keeping the line or changing it is a budget decision, and it needs a dollar figure beside it.
Net tuition
A larger class can bring in less.
The discount rate decides what that enrollment is worth. A fuller section at a deeper discount can move the year the wrong way.
The books
Academic affairs and finance are holding different numbers.
One office has the programs. The other has the budget. The faculty line that connects them is often a spreadsheet one person maintains.
We start from the reports you already run.
We tie them to the budget.
We check every file. We match faculty to the courses they teach, the students in those courses, and the dollars. If a salary or a tuition figure is missing, we ask. We never fill in numbers we don't have.
From there you can see what each program costs and earns, down to the faculty line behind it. Next year, send the new reports and we update it.
- Student Census and enrollment
- HR Faculty appointments
- Finance Budget and actuals
Put the faculty line on the budget.
You see what each program costs and earns, and what you spend to keep the line behind it or to change it.
Faculty and programs
Tuition comes in. Teaching cost goes out.
You can read that for a faculty line, a department, or a program.
- Teaching load against targets you set
- Small sections and high-cost lines marked
- Full-time, visiting, and adjunct, each on their own
The team
People who have sat in the chair.
- Former college presidents
- Former college CFOs
- Data scientists
They built Sightline, and they work with your campus on the budget in front of you.
A change
Keeping a line or changing it has a dollar value.
The operating statement
You can see if the college stays in the black.
Tuition, the discount rate, enrollment, salaries, benefits, and the endowment draw all land on this statement. Move a program or a faculty line and the statement moves.
Built for the people who have to decide.
Provost and academic affairs
Make program and staffing calls with cost and enrollment on the same page.
CFO and finance
Connect the academic side of the budget to the operating statement and the five-year plan.
Institutional research
Stop rebuilding the same model every budget cycle, and spend the time on the analysis instead.
President and cabinet
Give the board and the deans one consistent set of numbers, and the reasoning behind them.
See it on a sample campus. Then on yours.
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