Reading the Institutional Balance Sheet
Graduate lecture translating financial statements into practical leadership signals for emerging higher education administrators.
Most administrators encounter the balance sheet as a compliance artifact. This lecture reframes it as a leadership instrument: a record of the choices an institution has already made and the room it retains to make new ones.
We work through the statements in the order a practitioner actually uses them. Liquidity first, because it determines what is possible this year. Then debt structure and covenant exposure, because they determine what is possible over the next decade.
Net assets with donor restrictions receive particular attention. Institutions frequently report healthy totals while holding very little that leadership can actually direct, and the distinction is where many strategic conversations quietly break down.
Students leave with a short reading protocol: five ratios, the questions each one raises, and the follow-up they should ask their CFO before drawing a conclusion.
Interested in this work? Institutions, colleagues, and conference organizers are welcome to start a conversation.
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