From Numbers to Action: A CFO’s Turnaround Toolkit for Higher Ed

Higher education, particularly smaller private institutions, has faced significant challenges in recent years. Since 2016, more than 135 closures, mergers, and acquisitions have been announced, casting a shadow over an industry that, at its heart, exists to uplift and serve its communities.

These financial pressures are compounded by a demographic decline, creating a steep enrollment cliff that threatens the survival of even more institutions nationwide. Many colleges are now grappling with how to bridge budget gaps without external support.

Questions arise: “How did we get here? Did we discount tuition too frequently, or too steeply? Did we underinvest in student retention?”

Every institution has its own story, and no single factor explains the financial struggles facing higher education. What is clear, however, is that colleges and universities must strengthen their financial planning and analysis capabilities to navigate both challenges and opportunities with confidence.

One CFO’s Mission to Save Higher Education

This is where Edward Patrick makes his mark. Known by many titles — fixer, firefighter, specialist in financial turnarounds — Patrick brings a rare combination of expertise and optimism to higher education finance.

As Vice President of Business & Finance and CFO, he has over 15 years of experience helping struggling institutions regain stability and strengthen their financial outlook.

In a recent role, Patrick leveraged Synario to develop both an actionable financial plan and the analysis that guided critical decision-making. His forward-looking, solutions-oriented approach offers a refreshing perspective in an industry facing unprecedented financial challenges.

Interview Highlights From Our Talk With the Higher Ed Turnaround CFO

Patrick’s experience and perspective are worth sharing, and he agreed to sit down for a conversation with Synario President, Brandon Rosenbluth. Here are the highlights:

Synario: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you spent your career doing, especially in the higher ed market?

Patrick: Thank you, Brandon. My name is Ed Patrick. I'm a Vice President of [Business &] Finance and CFO. I've been in that role for the past 10+ years. Prior to my higher education experience, I've focused on turnarounds, or what we call in accounting, going concerns. That began in my audit days at Arthur Anderson.

It’s a niche, and I like challenges. Accounting can be mundane, so I’ve tried to turn it into an opportunity to keep my mind at its peak level. I moved into higher education when the economy took a downturn around 2008, 2009.

Synario: Joining in 2008 or 2009 must have been an interesting period, especially as everyone was reeling from the Great Recession.

One question we wanted to ask is: When you first come to an institution that is struggling financially and start to implement a turnaround, what are the common challenges that you see in the various places you’ve been?

Patrick: It’s the psychology that exists at the college, as well as in any company or institution I initially walk into; it’s morale. There is a sense that there is a slow death or an inevitable demise of the organization.

What I do is talk about the optimistic side, how we are going to move forward and get out of this. I do have to evaluate the numbers and provide some level of road mapping and its full disclosure.

I talk to my business office team first, then start disseminating that information and sharing it across the campus community. The reason is, I want them to understand what the problem is, and the problems vary from institution to institution.

I share what the problem is, how we are going to remediate it, and how we're going to be able to grow from that point onward. I mentioned to my Assistant Vice President of Facilities Management, I said “Stan, we're purveyors of hope.” He looked at me like I had lost my mind, but then he did understand it.

We completed the first project successfully, on time, within budget. From that point on, the floodgates opened in terms of people providing ideas on what the next project could be. In my mind, I'm taking the going out of business sign down. The way that I do that is by talking about and sharing what I see.

I have been doing this for a while now, so I can typically diagnose what the problem is. One institution didn’t budget its unfunded scholarship, so it was going through the roof, and they were buying students.

Another institution was paying way too much on debt servicing. Interest rates were low at that time, and after refinancing the debt, it brought back over $2 million a year in cash to its bank account.

Another institution didn't manage its restricted revenues appropriately. The problems vary, and I've been solving them for a while now.

Synario: Regarding general sentiment, is that positive attitude something that you cultivate over time, or have you always walked in on day one and said, “We're going to get it done. There is hope; this is how we do it.”

Patrick: I do walk in on day one (with a positive attitude). Higher education is a mission of the heart for me. It is faith-driven. I know that certainly was the case for myself and my family. My mother was a seamstress; my dad is a postal worker.

Being able to catapult our socioeconomic position was something that I never really understood until it started happening. The value of higher education is so important, and I walk in with a certain confidence because of my faith.

I don't always know how I'm going to get it done, but I know I'm going to get it done. I pour myself into it. When you have the mindset that you're going to be successful, you just have to navigate around whatever barriers and challenges might come up; it is contagious.

I meet with my folks every morning, and it takes me about 15 to 20 minutes to get to my office because I pop my head in and see how they're doing. If I feel somebody's energy is low, I spend a little bit more time with them. This is a time-consuming process, but I've learned how important it is to make sure that optimistic energy is shared.

Synario: I really like the purveyors of hope comment. One of the things we talk about is beyond the model, beyond the numbers, right? The numbers are half of it, and they are a vital component of it.

What I see a lot of, and I'm probably guilty of myself, is moving beyond the numbers. The numbers are only a piece of the equation. Being able to steer people and lead people beyond that is really interesting.

I imagine you have to quickly identify short-term fixes, but then how do you balance that with the longer-term strategies to grow the institution?

Patrick: My focal point when walking into an institution is the liquidity risk. I will focus on that. I walk in with tools readily available, lines of credit, and things of that nature. I have them available. While at one institution, during my second week, the payroll manager walked into the office and said, “Mr. Patrick, I don't know if we're going to meet payroll.”

What happens in higher ed specifically is a plug. They create their expenses and plug their revenues, that's why they're predictive model is broken. Year over year, they have unfavorable operating results. You focus on how the budget is built, look for the gaps, and then use that perspective. The great thing about Synario is that it allows you to forecast a multi-year budget.

I've been doing multi-year budgets because I walk into schools and colleges that have a deficit position year over year. From an accounting perspective, I can sometimes do that, but from a liquidity and a sustainable perspective, it takes some time.

One of the major barriers (to FP&A in higher ed) is the mindset. You have board members and people who are working at the institution who want you to create a perfect model out of the gate. Meanwhile, the industry has been working on these models for decades.

They've perfected them, they're on target. We are starting to create these models now in higher education; there has to be some patience and understanding that this model is going to need to be continuously improved.

Synario: It's about that process of continuous improvement. When you create your first forecast, very few people take the time to say, “How did we do, and how are we going to improve it for next year, and how are we going to update it?” That's an important piece of the puzzle to get better at this.

Patrick: It allows you to understand your business because you're doing a comparative (analysis), “why were my assumptions not on target, good or bad, favorably or unfavorably?” You start understanding the ebbs and flows of your business.

In any industry, there's a cycle. You want to understand how that cyclical movement moves within the year, as well as within the next 5 to 10 years. Trying to understand that is the challenge in building the model.

Synario: I think it's really interesting that you mentioned that revenue has been the plug. We work with institutions of all types, and within the corporate space, there's a high focus on what revenue is, because expenses become the plug. It's the opposite in the corporate world.

We also work with other government agencies that aim to plug revenues as well. If my expense base is going to look like this, and I have all these capital projects I need to do, do I need to either raise rates or raise taxes to cover my costs?

Higher ed kind of sits in between those two worlds of government and business. You have referred to coming from industry, and you're treating it like a business, which is not always the case in higher ed. Can you talk a little bit about what you see in the industry?

Patrick: Just [10] years ago, you had more students than seats. You had more workers than jobs. You were going to meet your budget. It was somewhat of a mindless process.

It has shifted significantly, and now you have to adopt a business model. You must construct a budget that you think is going to be a predictive model for your financial outcomes for that particular year, and for the years that are forthcoming.

Be honest in terms of “what will be my revenue stream.” You're trying to home in on your business and improve the predictive model, not just try to appease a broad audience.

We have to build our revenue models to be very collaborative. What happens in higher education is that my position is in an ivory tower, just pushing forward the prior year’s budget. Then, you sit down with some of the Cabinet VP members and the President and go over it. Then have the President bless it. Of course, the board approves it.

To really build a good predictive model, you have to have collaboration, from at least the departmental level. There's buy-in in terms of this being a budget and what has to happen in a real way.

When you make some adjustments to the budget, you (should) push it down; that way, they're cutting the budget with a scalpel, as opposed to me (the CFO) in an ivory tower making these massive cuts with an axe. The approach in higher ed has to change significantly.

Synario: Focusing on revenue and just overall forming of a budget, you've spoken about the importance of a break-even analysis. “Know your break-even” is something that I hear you say. Can you explain what that is and how you use it?

Patrick: The break-evens are for that particular year. I also include it in my projections down the road. Once I establish my truth, what I think I'm going to achieve from all my revenue streams, the grant revenue, the gift revenue, the auxiliary revenue. Then, I want to home in on what my auxiliary is.

I'm going to include that with my tuition and fees. That's my student revenue, because I want to know what each component is going to bring in, then I can say, “OK, enrollment, based on our trending, based on what we think we can achieve in these other revenue streams, this is what we need to do from an enrollment perspective. How do we achieve that?”

That's looking at it from a business perspective, because admissions are our sales team. Higher ed has not looked at it in that regard. In admissions, what has happened is that there's a lack of dialogue or sharing of information from the academic affairs side.

They're selling a true product that we're providing here, and not just selling an experience. You do some joint sessions and conferences with your faculty when you need that level of expertise.

Another opportunity in higher ed is to merge marketing and communication. What happens is that the importance of communication trumps marketing. Everywhere I've been, marketing is playing a much bigger role now. It creates a brand outside of the ten-mile radius that the campus resides in.

I see colleges and universities; in their minds, they have a brand, but no one really knows who they are. They feel that they are compromising their brand, but they don't really have one.

So, marketing paves the way for that and allows our sales team, admissions, to get out there and talk about the college that now these students have heard about, and their families have heard about, from our marketing campaigns.

They're not focused on creating brand awareness; higher ed is taking a hit, and it's because of the lack of marketing.

When you look at the outcomes, and being able to share what the true outcomes are over a five- or ten-year lifetime period, it's not debatable. When you look at it from the short term, the first two to three years, then you know there is some opportunity there, but it depends on what your mindset is.

Synario: Looking back to the corporate world, how we go to market and how we present ourselves, it's all marketing and sales. There are certainly institutions out there that have a brand.

Some of the smaller institutions or regional colleges and universities are in competitive situations. They’re trying to recruit from different areas of the country that maybe they've never recruited from. They need to invest that time and resources. And sometimes money.

Can you speak to how you balance resources, whether it be investments or actual ad spend for recruiting new students versus the retention of existing students?

Patrick: When you're looking at any project and investment, for instance, you say, “I'm going to expand marketing. I'm going to expand my admissions team.” Those are investments, human capital investments, or really, truly, capital investments.

Whenever I'm walking in the door, there's a sense of urgency. I'm looking at the shortest ROI or return on investment with whatever endeavor we're looking at.

Part of tactical and strategic short-term goals is being able to communicate that out to the campus. I'm a big supporter of having these open forums, and the entire campus community is allowed to join, and we can talk about our projections.

We talk about the strategic and tactical planning and why we're not going to increase faculty salaries, but we're going to renovate the residence halls. We must improve our first- and second-year retention. We can improve there. We’re going to expand the admissions team because we can improve enrollment.

Understanding the sequence of “by the time I move past my break-even” (is important) because I share that too. Then I have excess cash, excess revenue, and we can really look at how we're going to manage that.

That’s when the conversation of increased wages and other benefits can be considered. It's truly about having an open forum discussion; there's a lot of distrust with faculty and the campus community. Those initial forums tend not to be friendly, but they're open. By virtue of doing that repetitively, you gain trust, and that's important.

I want to share because deep down, I think that people care about the campus. And I've made some adjustments based on some insights.

For instance, there was a computer lab (on campus); they said, “Ed, you don't need to buy more desktop computers. The students are coming in and plugging in, so just have plugins out to reduce your costs significantly,” and “just make sure you have really good Wi-Fi.”

There are ways that you can share and make some adjustments accordingly. People see the pathway, and eventually they buy into it, because they see what the industry is experiencing. It feels like there's one or two colleges that are nearing closing or consolidation every week. It is really a shaking out of the industry that's occurring.

Synario: Back to being a purveyor of hope. If you have come into a turnaround … I'm sure it's known that the places where you were starting aren't in the best financial positions, so being able to project that vision of how we're going to fix things, I suspect people aren't always happy about it, but that's OK.

Patrick: It is. When people have lost their hope, you work differently, you drag, you know, and without spending a dime, you increase productivity just by injecting this.

This notion of hope, this vision, saying “hey, we're going to get out of this, and this is how we're going to do it,” productivity increases. That's what I've seen after the first six months of going through town halls.

Synario: You’ve mentioned that there are basically two models. There’s a growth model, where you have to invest (and there might be a period of financial strain), versus a cost containment model, which, given the challenges facing the industry, I see a lot of.

Can you talk a little bit about how you think about both, and maybe how you've communicated and worked with institutions to focus on growth?

Patrick: In this highly competitive industry, you have too many colleges and universities. Therefore, there must be some shrinkage.

There are not enough students. When we're looking at a cost containment model, in essence, you're saying, “I'm going to cut” or “I'm going to manage my expenses to the extent that it's going to allow me to stay in business.”

However, when you couple that with enrollment erosion, that model is not sustainable. All you're doing is dying a slow death. There is some risk that higher education institutions must accept, and you have to say, “OK, I have to adopt a revenue growth model because I need to at least flatten the decline in my enrollment.” That would represent growth.

Take student surveys and campus community surveys; we call them climate surveys. We can really understand, from a student perspective, “What is it that you want? What do you see?”

That's important because the students represent our customers. I've been in places where they thought that the residence halls needed renovating, but when we took a survey of the students, it was number six on their list. One through five could be accomplished at half the price. So, we saved a ton of money and improved our retention.

Keep in communication with your students because that is your customer base. Part of my frustration in higher education is, we have a VP of Enrollment, but truly that's a VP of Admissions.

We don't have a VP that's responsible for retention, with the exception of two institutions I've worked with; this is pretty commonplace. They have a retention committee; they don't have one person who's responsible for overseeing and understanding the ins and outs of student retention.

You have a VP that's looking at 25 to 30% of your customer base, but you don't have a VP that's responsible for 70 to 75% of your customer base. That business model is broken.

What happens from a budgeting perspective is: For instance, you're in July. I want to understand not just what my new student population is, but also my overall enrollment. Am I going to meet my budget? I want to get a sense of that now.

You can start teeing up anything that you might have to consider before the September drop-ad occurs, and you're two-and-a-half months into the budget year. Adjusting (the budget) can be significant at that point.

We want to understand the impact of new student populations, but also understand what the impact will be on retention. Surveys are effective. Having some discussion and communication with the student groups, without any other administrator or faculty member around, is effective. 

That translated into us looking at a new food service provider, investing in Wi-Fi, and investing in resident hall improvements. Retention increased by about 4.5% in one year. Which was more than we thought (it would be).

Synario: You mentioned you would put a greater emphasis on FP&A and the role of CFO. Since we work with a wide range of institutions, we know that even the smallest university or college is a multi-million-dollar business.

Even in the world of higher ed, small higher ed is still a big business. In a lot of cases, you're right. If there's not that kind of FP&A professional who can help derive value and strategize for the organization overall, there are missed opportunities.

Patrick: When I'm walking into a situation, I'm very tactical. I know to look at the future, but there are some immediate items that need to be addressed.

I have relationships with banking investment professionals. What I always say is “throw it over the fence,” and they look at it and give me their feedback. I can tackle that while I'm tackling other items.

From an FP&A perspective, if Synario provided that outsource option, not only to provide the tool but also the actual building of the model (it would be effective). Even if I have the ability (to model), I don't always have the time.

There's an opportunity because there's a lack of acumen in building that type of predictive model. When you lack the ability and you lack the experience, you push it off.

However, if you know you need that to occur, and you have the option to have someone build it or help build it, you can present it to the board. You see that they're excited about it, and if the board is excited, the president's excited. That creates energy behind it. That's an opportunity for Synario.

Bringing Hope and Clarity to Higher Education Finance

Ed Patrick’s story is proof that with the right mindset, leadership, and tools, even the most challenging financial situations can be turned around. His success demonstrates the power of clear forecasting, collaborative planning, and data-driven decision-making, all made possible with Synario.

Whether your institution is facing immediate financial strain or simply preparing for what’s ahead, Synario helps higher education leaders model multiple scenarios, see the impact of every decision, and chart a confident path forward.

See how Synario can help your institution plan with confidence. Request a demo today.