Higher education institutions strike a delicate balance between offering an indispensable public good that needs to be of the utmost quality and the need to be financially sound. Ensuring that an institution's mix of products, methods of operation, and funding sources will allow it to operate long into the future is crucial to allowing the institution to continue to be of value to its students, its community and its owners.

Higher education makes a sacred promise: to give students an experience that prepares them to do anything they can dream of. To deliver on this promise, institutions must ensure that they understand the needs of their students, of employers, and their environment, and that this translates to curricula, content delivery methods, and assessments that focus on the learning outcomes that will maximize students' chances of success.

The world has been and continues to be transformed by technology, and students' lifestyles and the learning modes available to them are changing just as fast. ​ It is important for institutions to keep pace with innovations to allow them to attract a broad array of students and maximize their ability to positively impact their environment.

Tuition is a significant investment that students make with high expectations, and institutions' services play a key role in translating these expectations into reality. ​ Delivering superior service is fundamental to ensuring that students are positioned to achieve their ambitions. It also ensures that an institution's most powerful advocates, its students, are helping to enhance the standing of the institution on an ongoing basis.