Advocacy and Research

NACUBO is your advocate in action and, has on a number of occasions highlighted the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion to support the business officer profession as a whole.

• The State of Higher Education
  Read our observations in NACUBO’s latest State of Higher Education reports. Explore the challenges in the sector—among them the value of a college degree, as well as racial and economic disparities among students for access and completion.

• Diversity in endowment management
  NACUBO President and CEO Susan Whealler Johnston has responded to a letter sent by six members of Congress concerning diversity among the leadership of firms managing college and university endowments. The letter highlighted NACUBO resources and our commitment to encouraging diversity in asset management leadership.
  
  
• DREAMers and DACA
  NACUBO has actively worked to argue that the rescission of DACA will inflict harms not just on impacted DACA recipients, but also on colleges, universities, and the country as a whole. 
  
  
• Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v Harvard
  NACUBO Weighs In on Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard
  NACUBO joined the American Council on Education and 35 other higher education organizations and associations on an amicus brief underscoring our collective interests enabling diverse learning environments and the importance of institutional freedom to establish educational missions and objectives. The brief was filed on July 30 in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts and states, “The Supreme Court has made clear many times over that higher education institutions may, within broad limits, define the diversity that will produce the educational benefits they seek for all students and use their admission processes to further that goal.”
  
  
• Veterans and Service Members
  NACUBO has monitored and worked on changes to military student assistance programs that affect college and university business offices.

Learn more about our advocacy in action by visiting our Advocacy web page or by emailing advocacy@nacubo.org.

NACUBO Research

• NACUBO-TIAA Study of Endowments. In 2018 we included a question concerning diversity and inclusion in institutional hiring policies. The inclusion of this question in this study and future surveys will bolster our efforts to highlight the need for greater diversity in college and university asset management with solid analytical backing. Building up a statistically sound data repository enables NACUBO to better ascertain market trends in this area and allow us to respond to our member institutions accordingly.
• National Profile on Chief Business Officers. This triennial report tracks changes in the demographic characteristics, job duties, and plans for career transitions and retirements of business office chief executives at colleges and universities.
• Tuition Discounting and College Access for Underrepresented Students. This Perspectives piece further examined our annual tuition discounting study by analyzing whether increasing tuition discount rates between 2011 and 2015 was associated with an increase in the enrollment of underrepresented minority students. Findings indicate that institutions that increased their tuition discount rates the most had above-average increases in their proportions of undergraduates from underrepresented backgrounds.