According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there were 4,298 degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the United States as of the 2017-2018 school year. Of these, 1,687 were private institutions.
While many members of the public don’t believe there is much of a difference between public and private universities, this way of thinking is false. Private and public institutions are quite different, and the main difference is that private colleges do not receive funding from state legislatures. Instead, they rely heavily on student tuition and fees, as well as private donations.
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The lack of state funding and the need for individual donations often leads private university tuition to be higher, which snowballs into tighter budgets and a strong focus on controlled expenditure. Allocation gets even more complicated if the university has multiple campuses with different types of projects or funds to manage.
This begs the question: How can private universities successfully manage all the different facets of financial operations?