From the Editor, November 2009 

This month Jim Markel asks, “What if?” What if the assumptions we make when evaluating a proposal prove to be off the mark?  What if we had gone another way?  Obviously, we have to base our decision on something and past experience is the most likely foundation.  But Jim suggests that we need to be comfortable with the risks and benefits that might flow from basing our decisions on other less familiar assumptions, the roads less taken.

Your editor took a look at salary and other financial data from 2008-09 and 2009-10, as published in the Almanac Issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education for those years.  Although interesting, the current year data is probably obsolete and campus business leaders will have to look elsewhere for a basis for current financial decision-making.  “How to Budget and Manage on Campus as the Nation Recovers from the 2008-09 Recession” has yet to be written.

Neil Markee,
Editor-in-Chief, Purchasing Link