Business Question

HEA 640 Assignment #1

Overview

Using the Budget Template document in the Reading and Resources area of the module, you will create an initial departmental budget for the upcoming fiscal year based on research and the assumptive facts of the scenario introduced in the Final Project Guidelines and Rubric and below. Your budget should reflect planned expenses and revenue by line item and by month of planned encumbrance. Be sure to state what compliance and regulatory requirements, if any, were considered and annotate your line items. Also, consider the feedback that was given by classmates in this module’s Budget Review Discussion.

Prompt

Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:

1. Your budget should reflect planned expenses and revenue by line item and by month of planned encumbrance. What compliance and regulatory requirements had to be considered?
2. Annotate your line items. Why have you made the choices that you made? What information informed your decision for each item? See instructions in the Budget Template document for how to annotate entries.

Institution Scenario and Initial Budget Assumptive Facts: In preparing your initial budget, you will work with your instructor to build and justify an annual operating budget for the Office of Student Leadership and Engagement within Student Affairs at a large public university. Your instructor will serve as your budget-approving authority, the vice president of Student Affairs. Certain assumptive facts are provided to bring contextual relevance to the given scenario. You will also be asked to reforecast your budget based on a 10% decline in fall enrollment. To be successful, you need to acknowledge current challenges in the higher education financial landscape, examine enterprise frameworks governing the allocation of revenue streams, demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the basic concepts that comprise the annual budgeting process (including reforecasting activities), evaluate and interpret financial statements specific to the higher education environment, and then reflect on the budget process and how it addresses college priorities.

For your initial annual budget, utilize the following assumptive facts (you may also identify and introduce additional assumptive facts into your planning as you deem appropriate):

• You are the director of the Office of Student Leadership and Engagement within the Division of Student Affairs at a large, public university.
• You have four full-time staff members, one part-time (10-hours per week, non-benefited) staff member for social media, 10 student workers on Federal Work-Study, two part-time graduate student educators, and your position as director.
• Consider fringe benefits to be 32% of each annual salary.
• Your current budget (including staff) is $1,628,000.
• The college created its original budget based on 16,280 full-time enrollments (FTEs).
• The fall enrollment was down 10% from the budget, only 14,652 FTEs.
• Your facility and technology expenses are paid from a budget outside of your area.
• Your department receives all funds based on enrollment at $100 per FTE.
• Line items in your budget include many individual items and activities.
  • Office supplies
  • Student staff training
  • Staff professional development—two staff to attend NACA, one staff to attend ACPA or NASPA
  • New student orientation
  • Marketing materials
  • Institutional membership to American College Personnel Association (ACPA), National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA), and National Association for Campus Activities (NACA)
  • Two students to attend Social Justice Training Institute (STJI)
  • Travel
  • Meals and entertainment
  • Staff salaries
    • Director: $75,000 x 32% (fringe benefits, such as medical, dental, etc.) = $24,000 + $75,000 (base salary) = $99,000 total
    • Assistant director: $65,000 x 32% = $20,800 + 65,000 = $85,800 total
    • Two entry-level coordinators: $55,000 x 32% = $17,600 + $55,000 = $72,600 x 2 (coordinators) = $145,200 total
    • One part-time social media position: 10 hours per week x $20 an hour for 32 weeks = $6,400 total
    • Two part-time graduate student staff: 10 hours per week x $15 an hour for 32 weeks = $4,800 x 2 (staff) = $9,600 total
  • Salaries and benefits are $346,000.
  • The 10 work-study staff salaries are paid via their Pell Grants; therefore, there is no cost to the department.

Note: Based upon our classroom discussions, certain assumptive facts may be identified that have not been provided here. Consequently, your instructor may ask you to incorporate new facts at any time prior to the submission of your initial budget or reforecasted budget milestones. These possible last-minute changes to your budget are reflective of the real-world higher education environment, and budget managers must be able to demonstrate fiscal flexibility in light of new changes in the financial landscape.

What to Submit

Submit your budget using the Budget Template document and include, at the bottom of the budget or in a separate document, explanations of budgeting choices for each line item and the information and data that informs those choices.

HEA 540 Assignment #2

HEA 560 Milestone Three Guidelines and Rubric

Because the clear majority of higher education institutions are not self-sustaining enterprises, many are dependent upon state and federal forms of financial assistance, whether those funds are indirectly obtained through students’ federal or state financial aid awards, directly obtained through state appropriations, or whether the funds support other aspects of the enterprise, including research and development. Given the expense of higher education to state and federal government, students, families, or other donors, these important stakeholders increasingly hold higher education institutions accountable for student outcomes.

In order to retain state and federal funding, higher education institutions must achieve accreditation, which is most often granted by regional accrediting agencies. Each of the six regional accrediting bodies in the United States has its own set of standards by which institutions are judged in three dimensions: assessment of student learning outcomes, assessment of overall institutional effectiveness, and ongoing strategic planning activities.

The wide variety of stakeholders in higher education have demanded greater transparency in terms of institutional accountability. Therefore, programs like the Voluntary System of Accountability provide formal means for institutions to share data regarding their undergraduate profiles, undergraduate success and graduation rates, financial aid awards to students, admissions profiles, classroom environments (e.g., class sizes, student-to-faculty ratios), and percentages of full-time faculty. With these data elements more readily available to the public than they were in the past, stakeholders—including students, parents, and legislators—are better able to discern whether institutional investments are paying off and judge whether institutions are performing as well as they should.

While external stakeholders, including governmental officials, are increasingly holding institutions responsible for achieving student success outcomes, it is important not to neglect the internal stakeholders who are often responsible for implementing policies. For instance, an admission policy seeking to increase students’ enrollment may mean that existing admission staff need to review more admission applications, lead more students on tours, or respond to more inquiries. Increased headcounts affect the number of courses offered by departments and programs, potentially impacting faculty teaching workloads. Internal stakeholders advocating for enrollment of students from diverse backgrounds may point toward the lack of multicultural student services as a potential problem in recruiting new students. The capacity of internal stakeholders to support—or stymie—the recommendations of policies should be carefully considered at this stage of policy development.

In Module Five, you will create a stakeholder map providing a visual representation of the internal and external stakeholders and narrative statements discussing these stakeholder perspectives in more detail. Additionally, you will consider the impact on internal stakeholders—those who work in areas of institutional operations—and develop an action plan for how you would work in concert with these stakeholders to enact your proposed policy.

Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:

1. Internal and External Stakeholders
   1. Recommend internal and external stakeholders to participate in the crafting of the policy and what their roles will be in the crafting of the policy. You might also consider the possible impacts of the policy: Which internal and external stakeholders should be invited to attend? What are the roles of the internal and external stakeholders?
   2. Integrate the perspective of a higher education professional as discussed in your one-to-one interview with a professional regarding the state, federal, and institutional policies believed to have the greatest impact on students’ access and success.
   3. Create a stakeholder map using a power interest grid of internal and external stakeholders. Describe these stakeholder populations in more detail and rank those that you believe will have the most influence on the decision to enact the policy, will be most negatively affected by the policy’s implementation, and will have the most to gain from the policy’s implementation.
   4. This critical element will require a minimum of one to two pages following APA format.
2. Action Plan and Additional Resources
   1. Design an action plan that will result in necessary responses from internal and external stakeholders to the implementation of the policy. Based on possible consequences of the implementation of policy, you might consider predicting potential responses from stakeholders. In preparation for these responses, what are some proactive strategies that could impact future decision making regarding the implementation of policy?
   2. Describe additional resources, for and from internal and external stakeholders, that the institution will need to provide and identify based on implementation of the policy. Consider comparing and contrasting the original policy, as depicted within the mission and vision, and the new policy. What are some of the justifications for the additional resources?
   3. Describe how you might work with internal and external stakeholders to implement the policy most effectively. Develop specific steps that you will take, including proactive strategies you may take to work with stakeholders. Create an outline for a communications plan to meet the needs of these stakeholders.
   4. This critical element will require a minimum of one to two pages following APA format.
3. Institutional Impacts
   1. Analyze the impact of institutional operations for increasing enrollment, retention, and completion through implementation of this policy.
   2. Describe how institutional operations may need to adjust to meet the policy requirements. Provide a minimum of three examples of areas of institutional operation that may be affected. Predict how your proposed policy will impact internal institutional stakeholders and consider how these stakeholders will respond to the policy given their roles in policy implementation. Compose two to three responses that you may consider using when discussing the policy outcomes with those stakeholders.
   3. This critical element will require a minimum of one to two pages following APA format.

What to Submit

Your paper must be submitted as a four- to five-page (plus a cover sheet and reference page) Microsoft Word document with double spacing, 12-point Times New Roman font, one-inch margins, and at least three sources cited in APA format (following the APA Manual 7th Edition). Ensure that the cover sheet and reference page as also in APA format.