Walk A Mile In Her Shoes

Maintenance Over Management: A Survey of Business Officers

The sky has not fallen -- but pieces of it could soon be hitting a campus near you.

That is one way of summing up the findings of Inside Higher Ed' s first-ever Survey of College and University Business Officers, released today in advance of the annual meeting of the National Association of College and University Business Officers. (A copy of the survey report can be found here. )

The survey, the second of a series in which Inside Higher Ed is gauging the views of key higher education constituents, reveals a surprisingly upbeat assessment about the financial state of American college campuses (especially private nonprofit ones), as seen through the eyes of their chief finance and business officials, 606 of whom responded to the survey.

About one in six business officers at both public and private nonprofit colleges described the financial health of their respective institutions as “excellent,” and another 57 percent of public-college CFOs and 47 percent of private-college CFOs characterized their respective institutions’ financial health as “good.” Business officers at public and private institutions alike also generally rebuffed the notion that the budget cuts their institutions have suffered so far have damaged the quality of their academic programs or academic support for students -- opinions that many other people on their campuses are unlikely to share.

Sanguine as they were about what has happened to date, however, business officers at public institutions were far less optimistic about the near future than were their private college counterparts. While about three-quarters of public college CFOs described the current health of their campuses as good or excellent, less than one in five said their institutions were in much better shape now than they were two years ago, and only one in 10 said they expected their colleges to be in better shape in 2012 or 2013 than they are now. Private college and university CFOs were nearly three times likelier to believe that their institutions will be better off in May 2013 than were public college business officers.

And financial officials at all types of institutions appeared to recognize that the cuts are beginning to take a toll: about 60 percent of all respondents to the survey disagreed or strongly disagreed that “my institution can make additional and significant budget cuts without hurting quality.

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, Noting that the firm is also in discussions to expand into Asia by the end of the year and South America after that.

This series D round brings the total money the company has raised to $60 million. So what makes this footwear business any different than the bazillion others out there? After all, it’s not every day that a new Zappos hits the marketplace.

Founded in 2009 by Lee, Kardashian, Robert Shapiro, and M.J. Eng, the site has expanded to 3 million subscribers who pay $39.99 per month, which they can use as a credit toward the purchase of a personalized selection of shoes, jewelry, and handbags priced at $39.99 each. Users can skip a month if they click on "skip the month" by the fifth day of each month.

It was the site's strong social-media platform—it is on Facebook and Twitter and also has its own YouTube channel—that held strong appeal to investors who are seeing major interest in the sector .

“We believe the company, anchored by strong management, is poised for continued strong growth as it continues its relentless focus on providing a customer-centric solution to fashion shoppers,” said John O'Farrell of Andreessen Horowitz, Los Angeles Business reports.