Robert Knight has over 30 years experience in senior administration and finance roles at academic institutions in the US and Canada. Robert recently retired after serving as VP-Finance and Business Operations at the University of Northern British Columbia.
Can you describe your career so readers will have a sense of where you started and what some of your influences were?
Sure. I was one of those people who thought he could change the world and make it a better place, so I ended up going into government work immediately after graduation.
But after half-a-dozen or so years working in a government agency, I really felt like I needed to do something for me and my family’s financial future - so I decided to go back to school and get an MBA, which is what really launched me on my higher ed career. I spent a number of years working at Case Western Reserve University, the school where I had earned my MBA, at a time when the school was really growing by leaps and bounds.
Afterwards, I moved up and moved on to larger institutions (mostly in the U.S.), taking on more responsibilities until 2016, when I became VP of finance at the University of Northern British Columbia. Along the way, my responsibilities expanded beyond pure finance. I had dabbled in IT, HR, Marketing, and was able to experience a wider picture of higher ed. I felt like I was giving back in the way I had wanted: helping young people get educated and become contributing members of society. Maybe not changing the world, but…
Has the role of CFOs changed a lot in the time that you've been working in the academic field? Do you see any particular changes coming?
I’d say it’s changed pretty dramatically. The CFO is no longer just the green eyeshade person or the bean counter; they really have to be part of the management team and help develop strategy alongside the president and the provost. They have to contribute vision for the institution, while coordinating with the board and other external stakeholders, as well as having to relate to faculty and students.
So you have to be a much more well-rounded, emotionally intelligent individual who uses those soft skills as well as the more traditional hard skills.
As for what's coming ahead: based on what's happened in the last year-and-a-half during this pandemic, I believe CFOs will be a crucial part of change management. So, how we're going to help our institutions not only survive, but thrive. They’ll have to help leadership think very creatively about how to reposition themselves for an uncertain future.
Looking back, what were some of the biggest changes that you witnessed (besides the pandemic) and how did they affect your career and your point of view?
There are a few major trends I’ve noticed over the last three decades. For example: the retrenchment of public investment in universities. Public institutions suddenly had to start learning how to deal with far fewer resources. Typically, they now find themselves in an environment where not only was state support being cut but also where resistance to tuition increases came from all sides: students and parents as well as the state legislature. The public was questioning the value of higher education and wanted more accountability so those kinds of changes really reshaped higher education in the US. Then, of course, there are the demographic changes, where the pool of traditional-age college students is shrinking in certain parts of both the US and Canada.
But I think the biggest change was the shift in the level of public support for education - both financial support and the view that the most important factor of success is to have a college education. That started being called into question and even more so now.
These changes may have actually helped me advance in my career because institutions needed people that could lead them through dealing with shrinking resources or changes in demand.
It also reinforced my feelings about the value of higher education and, in particular, how important the liberal arts are. Because they’re often the first programs under attack when there's financial issues to deal with. I've always been a very fervent believer in having a good liberal arts education as a foundation for entry into society and into good jobs, as well as preparation for grad school.
Can you speak about the differences between the American and Canadian education systems in your experience?
I found them to be quite significantly different. It took me a while to really adjust when I first came back to Canada in 2015, with a term position at Saint Mary’s University here in Halifax. So one major difference is in the accounting standards, which surprisingly makes a very big difference - more so if you're in finance - but they also spill over into other areas of university life.
In Canada, a scholarship or financial aid is regarded purely as a cost, whereas in the US, it's considered a discount from tuition. So when you treat it differently for accounting purposes, you get very different financial ratios, which might then lead you to very different insights into the performance of the institution or what decisions one ought to make about resource allocation. It’s surprising that something that would seem as small as that actually has such a big impact.
Another major difference is cultural; namely, how citizens view higher education and how students view it. For example, in the US, universities give lip service to the student government whereas in Canada student governments can really make a difference in how the university operates. So students in Canada have a much bigger and more relevant voice in governance of the institution, though I don't think they often realize or appreciate that.
Along the same lines, there’s a lot more unionization of faculty and staff in Canadian institutions than in American institutions. That changes the governance and operation of the University quite a bit, in that in Canada you’re going to typically have to deal with multiple unions, sometimes with conflicting needs and demands.
One more thing that’s kind of interesting is that Canadians perceive higher education as a public good, as in, “It's like health care, we have to make it as close to free as possible.”
That also means Canadian students don't have the same history and culture of philanthropy that's so important in the US and so they're often resistant to the idea of giving back to the university after graduation. It’s subsidized by taxpayers but I would try to explain to students how in the future, they’ll be the ones paying higher taxes for universities because alumni aren’t donating as much as they ought to.
Have you had any notable professional disappointments or professional highlights?
The biggest disappointment in my career was that I had really hoped that I would end my career where it started, but that’s not how it worked out. I was upset about it, but got some very good advice from one of my best school professors who was in labor relations. He said “You know Robert, you can be angry, you can threaten an age discrimination lawsuit - but the best thing you could do is move on, go get a better job somewhere else.” And that's exactly what happened.
If you knew someone starting out in the areas that you've worked in, what advice would you give them?
Learn as much as you can from the people working around you, especially from the people that you supervise. Many times, I got additional responsibilities that I had to learn a lot about while I was on the job. If I’m supervising human resources or information technology or facilities, I better learn as much as I can from the people that I was actually supervising.
Part of that is also being able to admit that you don't know everything; just because you're the boss doesn't mean you're automatically the smartest guy in the room. You have to know how to learn from these other people that you work with and you have to be a teacher to them as well.
The other piece of advice is one that actually took a long time for me to take: learn how to delegate. When I finally learned how to do that, I was quite pleasantly surprised that it really helped everybody, it helped me and it helped the institution. There's no job too big or too small, too hard or too easy that you can’t delegate.