Higher Education Financial Metrics

According to commonly used Higher Education standards there are four core metrics that measure your institution’s health. Taken together, these measures what is referred to as a key metric.

The key metric helps boards and management understand the financial position of your institution, but just as importantly it assesses your future prospects. Briefly, the ratios compare your operating commitments (Primary Ratio) and its outstanding long-term obligations (Viability Ratio) against expendable wealth. They basically measure the ability of your institution to live within its means on a short-term basis (Net Income Ratio) and your ability to generate an overall return on all net resources (Return on Net Assets Ratio).

Together these represent institutional risk and give you a consistent picture of overall health and potential pitfalls. However, weighted properly and placed on a common scale, you can create a single score of your institution’s financial health. This is extremely powerful – just as a single GPA is for students – because a single score allows a weakness in one ratio to be offset by strength in another.

In short, your key metric tells you whether the institution’s strategies are affordable and whether the implementation of its strategic initiatives is working.

Let us get your key metric dashboard live. Synoptix has a pre-configured dashboard that delivers your key metrics, arming you with critical data so that you can compete effectively in this hyper-competitive environment. With our out-of-the-box key metrics dashboard, our team can have you up and running quickly.