Applying ROI Concepts at Ohio Community Colleges
In Ohio, many community colleges have experienced enrollment declines, which are predictably accompanied by losses in tuition revenue. Incremental increases in state funding each year also are not guaranteed, with funding based entirely on student outcomes allocated through Ohio’s performance funding model. Sources of “new” money for investment, therefore, are hard to find. But Ohio community colleges were recently permitted to raise tuition rates and implement a new career services fee, prompting college leaders to consider the best use of these resources.
With this as its backdrop, the OSSC (which is housed with the Ohio Association of Community Colleges) saw the opportunity—and need—to hold a statewide convening of vice presidents of academics and student affairs and chief financial officers to dig into the business model of community colleges. With the support of JFF, the Ohio center invited rpk Group to make the case for strategic finance and to offer tools and training to guide institutional budgetary and business development decisions.
The rpk GROUP developed a custom ROI template to help colleges map out multi-year project expenditures and funding sources, examine unit costs, and estimate the potential net revenue generated from improvements in student retention and average SCH load.
The experiences from Ohio can offer lessons to other colleges interested in new financial models.