The College That Mortgaged Everything

When Timothy Pinnow arrived at Finlandia University as its new president last summer, he wasn’t naïve about its financial situation. It was a tiny liberal-arts college in a remote part of the country, bruised by years of budget cuts and struggling to attract students. But the board told him the institution had a balanced budget, and Pinnow thought he could help turn things around. Pinnow had a track record of developing new programs and finding new revenue, having spent more than a decade at Colorado Mesa University, where he was most recently senior vice president for strategic initiatives. He thought that made Finlandia a good fit. He also knew the campus, having been there when he was 16 and 17 for Lutheran summer teen-leadership camps, an influential time in his life.