CFO Optimistic About Berklees Future Challenges remain but Berklee is on track to rebound from the largest financial crisis in its history, says Mac Hisey, senior vice president for Administration and Finance.
By
Nick Balkin
March 8, 2021
Image by Kelly Davidson
For Berklee, 2020 was supposed to be a year of celebration, with the college's 75th anniversary, a new campus in New York City, and the introduction of its first woman president. While the past year did include these exciting milestones, they took place amidst an extraordinary moment in history, one that forced Berklee to reinvent how we work, teach, learn, perform, and create.
When the pandemic hit last year, President Roger H. Brown urged Berklee to come together and do what it does best: improvise and innovate. A Boston Conservatory at Berklee student rallied more than 70 of her peers to form a virtual orchestra whose viral video inspired millions of people around the world. The institution pivoted to remote learning, tapping into Berklee Online's near two decades of expertise to create a virtual experience worthy of students' talent and time. And when students and faculty began returning to campus in January, Berklee continued to prioritize safety by expanding health care support, reconfiguring spaces to optimize social distancing, and launching a testing protocol that is among the most rigorous in higher education.
To ease the financial burden on students, Berklee took a number of critical steps, including freezing tuition for this academic year, waiving comprehensive fees for the fall 2020 semester, and substantially increasing scholarship support, including the issuance of $2,500 grants to all students who enrolled last fall. All of these actions, along with the establishment of emergency aid funding and a robust COVID-19 health and safety infrastructure, posed daunting financial challenges.
While the institution is likely to post an operating loss this year, Berklee's financial strength coming into the pandemic has helped it to absorb that loss as it prepares for what is expected to be another difficult fiscal year. But despite these challenges, Richard Mac Hisey, Berklee's senior vice president for Administration and Finance, chief financial officer, and chief investment officer, says that Berklee's overall financial outlook is healthy. We talked to Hisey about the pandemic's impact on the budget, and Berklee's fiscal prospects in the short and long term; below are lightly edited excerpts from the conversation.
Mac Hisey, senior vice president for Administration and Finance
What were the most substantial challenges we faced in the past year? What actions did Berklee take to address those challenges? The number-one challenge and number-one priority of the past year was supporting the health and safety of the Berklee community. To address this, we set up a dedicated committee to, one, vacate our campus with the onset of the pandemic, support our transition to virtual learning, and immediately issue credits and refunds to our students for unused room and board and comprehensive fees; two, design a COVID-19 safety infrastructure utilizing industry best practices; and three, plan for the reopening of our campus with appropriate modifications to our physical spaces, including the implementation of best-practice protocols, the introduction of an on-site testing center run by Tufts Medical Center with support from the Broad Institute, and the introduction of new integrated technologies to support a safe campus. Our staff and faculty have worked tirelessly and closely together to support the health and safety of our community and the optimization of our learning environments to maintain the continuation of our students' academic progress.
All of the tough decisions and hard work of the past year will support our continuing financial strength, the health and safety of our community, and the high quality of the Berklee educational experience.
-Mac Hisey
How seriously has the coronavirus affected our budget? Are there numbers you can share that illustrate that impact? COVID-19 and all of the actions we have taken in response to the pandemic produced the largest financial challenge that Berklee has ever faced. In total, we faced a financial shortfall of over $70 million, which is over 20 percent of our budget. Thanks to the tireless efforts of our community, we have successfully offset over 75 percent of that shortfall. We were able to do this through reductions across all expense categories. Unfortunately, given that faculty and staff salaries are our largest cost, this also necessitated the introduction of mandatory staff furloughs, which has had an undeniable impact on our community.
How would you describe Berklee's financial outlook, currently and into next year? As noted, we expect to record an operating loss for the year, but have the financial strength to absorb that loss. I would also note that Berklee Online has experienced very strong growth in this environment, providing thousands of students with a high-quality online experience. Berklee Online's success has been both strategic and financial, helping to lower the loss we anticipate for this year.
Berklees COVID-19 Testing Center
Image by Cristian Avila
Looking forward, we fully expect the pandemic to continue to impact us financially into next fiscal year (starting on June 1) and are planning accordingly. We are very encouraged by recent news of accelerated vaccine distribution, but nevertheless anticipate some continuing impacts on enrollment and the need to maintain our COVID-19 infrastructure for some period of time to support the health of our community. So, while we are all very excited about having all of our students back for the on-campus experience, we do expect some continuing impacts from the pand
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
CFO Optimistic About Berklees Future Challenges remain but Berklee is on track to rebound from the largest financial crisis in its history, says Mac Hisey, senior vice president for Administration and Finance.
