The provost asks
Which programs actually pay for themselves?
Sightline shows the margin on every program, department, and faculty line: tuition in, teaching cost out.
A college is too important to guess.
Sightline is financial planning for colleges. It shows what every program, department, and faculty line costs and brings in, and what the next five years look like if you change them. Built for the provost, the CFO, and the institutional research office.
One department, dollar by dollar
- Gross tuition $5.20M
- Institutional discount −$2.81M
- Net tuition $2.39M
- Instruction −$1.28M
- Department costs −$0.37M
- Contribution margin +$0.74M
- Credit hours
- 4,100
- Credit hours per line
- 456
- Instruction cost per credit hour
- $312
What if
One line is raised to a full teaching load
+$70k a year
The questions on the table this year.
Enrollment is softer, discounts are deeper, and the board wants a plan. On most campuses the answers live in a spreadsheet one analyst understands, or in a consultant's report from three years ago.
The CFO asks
If the fall class comes in 8% short, what happens to the budget?
A five-year forecast that moves when enrollment, tuition, or discounting does.
The deans ask
What do we actually save if we convert this line to adjunct teaching?
The dollar value of a staffing change across the five-year forecast, before anyone commits to it.
The board asks
Where are we in three years if nothing changes?
A no-changes baseline beside every plan, on one operating statement.
No new system to feed.
Sightline works from reports your campus already produces. Our team does the heavy lifting.
-
01
Send what you already have.
Your institutional research office exports standard reports from the student, HR, and finance systems you run today. That's the whole ask.
-
02
We build your model.
Our team checks every file, connects faculty to courses to students to dollars, and flags anything that doesn't add up. We never fill in numbers we don't have.
-
03
Your team takes it from there.
Explore the results, test decisions, and bring one set of numbers to cabinet. Next year, send the new reports and the model rolls forward.
One model of the academic enterprise.
Faculty, courses, students, and the budget, connected. Change one and see the effect on the rest.
Faculty and programs
What every line costs and earns.
Net tuition in, teaching cost out, for every faculty line, department, and program.
- Teaching load against targets you set
- Small sections and high-cost lines flagged
- Full-time, visiting, and adjunct mix
English · faculty lines
- Line 01 Tenure-line +$184k 612 credit hours · 5 sections
- Line 02 Tenure-line +$121k 540 credit hours · 5 sections
- Line 03 Visiting +$96k 498 credit hours · 6 sections
- Line 04 Tenure-line −$38k 276 credit hours against a 450 target · 3 sections under 10 students
- Line 05 Adjunct +$22k 180 credit hours · 2 sections
Students
Who stays, and what they pay.
612 first-years this fall
- First-year retention
- 80%
- Discount rate
- 54%
Scenarios
Price a decision before the meeting.
Humanities staffing plan
Plan total, each year +$285k
Five-year forecast
See five years out, and what moves the line.
Tuition, discount rate, enrollment, salaries, benefits, and endowment draw all feed the operating statement. Flip a change in the plan and watch it land.
Operating margin
- Tuition +3.5%
- Discount 54%
- Incoming class −8%
- Salaries +2.5%
- Benefits +6%
- Endowment draw 4.5%
Illustrative figures from a sample campus.
Built for the people who have to decide.
Provost and academic affairs
Make program and staffing calls with cost and enrollment on the same page.
CFO and finance
Connect the academic side of the budget to the operating statement and the five-year plan.
Institutional research
Stop rebuilding the same model every budget cycle, and spend the time on the analysis instead.
President and cabinet
Give the board and the deans one consistent set of numbers, and the reasoning behind them.
Common questions about Sightline.
- How much work is this for our team?
- Your institutional research office sends a set of standard reports from the systems you already run. Our team does the checking, matching, and loading, and only comes back to you when something doesn't add up.
- What if our data is messy?
- Every campus's is. We fix formatting and coding issues ourselves. We never invent numbers. If a salary or a tuition figure is missing, we ask.
- We already have a budgeting system. How is this different?
- A budgeting system tracks what you plan to spend. Sightline connects that spending to teaching and enrollment, so you can see what each program costs to run, what it brings in, and what changes if you move something.
- How is it different from hiring a consultant?
- A consultant delivers a report once. Sightline stays current every year and lets your own team test the next question without starting a new engagement.
- Will Sightline tell us what to cut?
- No. It tells you what a specific change is worth. Your leadership decides which changes to make.
- Who on campus can see our data?
- Only the people you invite. Each institution has its own private workspace, and your administrators decide who gets access.
- What does it cost?
- Pricing depends on the size of your institution. We'll walk through it on a call.
See it on a sample campus. Then on yours.
Book a walkthrough