Crosscutting Priority 2: Fiscal Excellence And Resource Stewardship
NJIT Makes Strategic Investments In Its Future.
This crosscutting priority is essential to the success of all other strategic priorities. By investing in our future, NJIT commits to stewarding, growing, investing, and diversifying university resources in a strategic and fiscally sustainable manner. The university will move away from its current, almost sole, reliance on tuition revenues which challenges our ability to offer a rewarding STEM-focused education to historically economically underserved students who would benefit from NJIT’s highly competitive return on investment. Recognizing that shrinking state support and increasing expenses further exacerbate the situation, we will implement strategic fiscal management aligned with our mission and vision, ensuring a vibrant and thriving campus community now and into the future.
Part of NJIT’s strategy to advance resource growth is the enhancement of the endowment, which is critical for providing sustained financial support for our expanded educational offerings. A more robust endowment will enable us to invest in innovative teaching methods, technologies, and program development. More generally, NJIT is committed to the principle of good stewardship through the responsible management and utilization of our resources including ensuring that every process is optimized for efficiency and every policy crafted for effectiveness. One strategy to achieve substantial growth of our institutional resources to support and enhance our mission is to expand STEM education for non-traditional learners. To achieve this, we will escalate the development of our STEM programs for non-traditional populations, leveraging our specialized applied learning methodology, strong industry partnerships, and faculty expertise. Our commitment to anytime/anywhere learning models will facilitate access and flexibility, catering to the evolving needs of our learners.
KEY METRICS
- Endowment size and growth rate
- Total philanthropic gifts received annually
- Net tuition revenue
- Auxiliary revenue
- State funding
NJIT, together with NJII, will continue to strengthen the university’s financial standing by achieving fiscal excellence. Strategic efforts will enhance efficiencies in sustainable enrollment growth and resource development while business intelligence and analytics will enable better decision-making in support of the university’s new hybrid budget model. New investments, led by NJII, will allow us to diversify the university’s revenue stream while also meeting the growing needs of both employers and learners through a robust portfolio of Continued Learning (CL) and Professional and Corporate Education (PCE) faculty-sponsored programs offered through our Learning and Development Initiative (LDI).
NJIT will enhance transparency and accountability of fiscal resources to incentivize growth and responsible fiscal stewardship. The governance of university assets and resources will be student-focused, leading to sustainable growth while advancing the university’s mission of teaching, research, and public service.
ACTIONS:
Implement a new hybrid budget model to increase transparency, improve stewardship at all levels, and create incentives for academic entrepreneurship.
Implement business intelligence capabilities and governance principles to create more efficient workflows in support of responsible decision-making.
Develop in-house expertise in areas including budget planning and grant writing.
NJIT will develop and implement processes to acquire, maintain, and advance the physical, human, technical, and financial resources necessary to carry out the university’s strategic priorities and fulfill its mission.
ACTIONS:
Optimize marketing resources to increase enrollment by promoting new and existing degrees that meet industry demands.
Strengthen endowment development through increased funding from alumni, corporations, and others.
NJIT will invest all resources strategically through a reimagined budget model that is responsive, transparent, and agile. The process is data-driven, providing timely and necessary information to make resource generation and allocation decisions. This will strengthen the short and long-term fiscal health of the university to realize our strategic priorities.
ACTIONS:
Establish a budgeting process based on cost-benefit analyses to drive unit-specific strategic investments in alignment with the new budget model.
Define a process and metrics to support the annual evaluation of strategic investments.
NJIT will strategically manage enrollment, the research enterprise, and fiscal and physical assets to grow revenue in order to meet student, industry, and community needs aligned with our public mission.
ACTIONS:
Grow enrollment sustainably while also increasing selectivity, expanding geographic areas of yield, and diversifying the student population.
Maximize the social impact and equity of the research enterprise and incentivize interdisciplinary and collaborative projects.
Manage fiscal assets by rewarding growth and cross-unit collaborations and incentivizing greater connections to corporations.
Optimize and enhance the physical environment to support learning and research.
Utilize university-wide data to generate insights and develop holistic revenue strategies.
NJIT will identify new and innovative means and methods to generate additional revenues.
ACTIONS:
Offer expanded opportunities for upskilling and corporate professional education using a variety of teaching modalities and shortened terms to attract more non-traditional student populations.
Expand international student markets by targeting outreach to underserved areas.
Increase our international presence through strategic partnerships with international universities and the establishment of international campuses such as NJIT-Egypt.