Although most educational institutions, especially the state-funded ones, do not operate with the stated goal of achieving financial profitability, maintaining a healthy treasury remains a crucial priority for them. To ensure financial prudence, provosts and academic officers must adopt effective budgeting strategies and direct their investments towards academic affairs only after a thorough cost-benefit analysis.

 

Investing in the right teaching capabilities

 

A good sign of growth for any educational institution is an increase in the year-on-year enrollment and the consequent growth in the need for more faculty members and training facilities. Having adequate teaching capabilities does not only mean maintaining a healthy teacher-to-pupil ratio but also requires having the ‘right’ teaching capabilities. Having the right teaching capabilities means having personnel and training facilities that are capable of teaching students the skills that make them employable. For instance, it would be suboptimal to invest in the faculty and resources for, let’s say, SQL, when there is a greater demand in the job market for R programming. Understanding job market trends will enable provosts to identify the academic programs that will have greater value and also the ones that will lose relevance.

 

Using job market insights to guide budgeting and investment

 

Until recently, there weren’t too many ways for educational institutions to gain job market insights to plan job market ready academic programs and curriculums. With the rise of job market analytics tools for educators like Talismatic, provosts and other academic administrators can gauge in advance the demand for courses and skills, and plan the academic affairs accordingly. Identifying the most in-demand skills can help provosts identify the teaching capabilities they need to invest in and, therefore, plan their budgets proactively. Planning curriculums and academic programs based on job market insights can not only help minimize risky investments but also bring long-term sustainability and success by guiding universities in the right direction.