{"id":324,"date":"2012-08-27T09:37:10","date_gmt":"2012-08-27T16:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www2.nau.edu\/news-p\/wordpress\/?p=324"},"modified":"2016-02-20T12:12:19","modified_gmt":"2016-02-20T19:12:19","slug":"fiscal-sustainability-integral-to-naus-triple-bottom-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/fiscal-sustainability-integral-to-naus-triple-bottom-line\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiscal sustainability integral to NAU&#8217;s \u2018triple bottom line\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #003300;\"><em>By Laura Huenneke, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><\/em>This university is justifiably proud of its accomplishments and commitments in sustainability. Yet I wonder how many of us fully appreciate that sustainability goes beyond environmental awareness and responsibility.<\/p>\n<p>For NAU to remain a leading institution, we must keep our eyes on the\u00a0 \u201ctriple bottom line\u201d of people, planet and profit. That requires attention not just to long-term environmental health but also to a vibrant human society and stable economic enterprises.<\/p>\n<p>Recently there\u2019s been considerable attention to the long-term financial viability of higher education institutions. Where state support for public institutions has eroded, and the ability of students to pay increasing tuition and fees (and incur increasing debt) is constrained, how are colleges and universities doing in managing their own long-term financial futures?<\/p>\n<p>While some are struggling, NAU is doing remarkably well.<\/p>\n<p>We are in the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesustainableuniversity.com\/\">top 25 percent<\/a>\u00a0of high performers in an\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bain.com\/Images\/BAIN_BRIEF_The_financially_sustainable_university.pdf\">extensive analysis<\/a>\u00a0demonstrating the financial difficulties facing many institutions. The report highlights loss of institutional focus, over-leveraging and rapid increases in debt, and administrative\/infrastructure inefficiencies as being key risks to sustainability.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<em>Chronicle of Higher Education<\/em>\u00a0posted a follow-up\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/chronicle.com\/blogs\/innovations\/galloping-to-insolvency\/33867?cid=pm&amp;utm_source=pm&amp;utm_medium=en\">column by Peter Wood<\/a>\u00a0arguing that some institutional commitments (e.g., to diversity or to operational\/environmental sustainability) actually contribute to lack of focus and financial discipline.<\/p>\n<p>Not so at NAU. Instead, it seems to me we\u2019ve made great progress on these commitments, and they are central\u2014not peripheral or unfocused\u2014to our values and mission. What do you think\u2014do we have to compromise on our values to achieve true financial sustainability?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"search-results-excerpt-link\" href=\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/fiscal-sustainability-integral-to-naus-triple-bottom-line\/\">By Laura Huenneke, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs This university is justifiably proud of its accomplishments and commitments in sustainability. Yet I wonder how many of us fully appreciate that sustainability goes beyond environmental awareness and responsibility. For NAU to remain a leading institution, we must keep our eyes on the\u00a0 \u201ctriple bottom&hellip;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":1691,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-views-from-nau"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}