UNFREEZING THE PANTS OF HIGHER EDUCATION: DEALING WITH THE VORTEX OF ADMINISTRATIVE ACEDIA

“The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.”
Theodore Roosevelt

The polar vortex is a large upper-level zone of cold air that hovers over the northern artic region of the globe during the winter season. When the polar vortex is pushed further south, this frigid air pocket can occasionally reach portions of the United States. According to AccuWeather’s Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson, “such a vortex is capable of delivering subzero temperatures for several days at a time.”

The recent polar vortex of 2019 has created historic sub-zero wind chills in the upper Midwest States. Thanks to a trend started in 2016 by Minnesota resident Tom Grotting, the brutal arctic cold has also provided the perfect opportunity for the creation of disembodied ice-pant sculptures, clothes that are soaked, frozen and artfully posed to look as if the wearer has been paralyzed by the severe weather. Consequently, as the wind chill in Minneapolis-Saint Paul plunged to 55 degrees below zero, hundreds of petrified uniforms of bodiless police, mail carriers, hitchhikers, parking attendants, and headless ice-hockey players eerily appeared along the otherwise empty streets of the Twin Cities.

Like the deep freeze that precipitated the sculpting of frozen pants in the upper Midwest section of the United States, a vortex of institutional challenges has unfortunately created the condition of administrative paralysis or, acedia, in many of the nation’s colleges and universities.  The word acedia has historically been used by ecclesiastical writers to refer to “the spiritual and physical lethargy which can plague individuals pursuing the eremitic life” (OrthodoxWiki). Referencing King David’s 91st Psalm, the Catholic Education Resource Center personifies the monastic malady, referring to it as the “Noonday Devil . . . the unnamed evil of our times.” In contemporary parlance, acedia is commonly used to describe symptoms of indecision, lethargy, and a sense of hopelessness with what might be perceived as futile activities.  Understood in this fashion, acediamay be used to characterize the “frozen pants of inertness” that has unfortunately immobilized many of the nation’s institutions of higher learning.

In his insightful article, Why Good is Still the Enemy of Great for Most Colleges and Universities, James Seidelman, the former Provost of Westminster College and President of the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, laments that many stakeholders in some of the most vulnerable educational institutions in America “are either satisfied with a false sense of security about their competitive positioning or are paralyzed by culture, process, or leadership . . . clinging to the status quo seeing it as a safer, comfortable, and less risky choice.” Seidelman concludes that the reluctance of many small colleges and universities to face difficult realities by advancing innovation and change is generally the result of: (1) falsely seeing themselves as a low-risk institution, (2) misjudging their capacity to make the jump in status to low-risk, and (3) being paralyzed by a lack of leadership, campus politics, or both.

As a consequence of the aforementioned administrative indecision, the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) reports that colleges and universities are increasingly unable to raise enough revenue to cover their operating costs. According to the Association, although a tuition discount rate above 35% puts a college in the danger zone, particularly when it is heavily dependent on tuition, the average tuition discount rate for full-time freshmen in 2017–18 was nearly 50%! Education Dive, a leading publication for leaders in the education industry, supports NACUBO’s ill-fated data, testifying that more than 100 for-profit colleges closed in 2018. In addition, 40 mergers and 20 nonprofit private colleges suspended operations during the same time-period.

While generally grim, the most specific sector of vulnerability in higher education is the large number of small institutions, particularly those located in rural areas in the Northeast, where 40% of these colleges and universities have fewer than 1,000 students. Like NACUBO and Education Dive, the 2016 report by Parthenon-EY, Strength in Numbers, warn that 77% of these small colleges and universities exhibited three additional high-risk factors that threaten their survival. These include: (1) high tuition discount rates, (2) dependence on tuition for more than 85% of revenue, and (3) having endowments that cover less than a third of their expenses.

According to a 2018 Moody’s Investors Service Report, private college closures have risen to a rate of about eleven (11) per year. The report was released a few years after Moody’s ominous prediction that closure activity would as much as triple and mergers would double by 2017.  Moody’s negative outlook for the higher education industry is based on data that found that 1 in 10 public and private colleges suffer from “acute financial distress” because of falling revenues and weak operating performance. While Moody’s is projecting a future increase in closures to 15 per year, Futurist Magazine anticipates a 50% college failure rate by 2030. The following exhibit shows the number of four-year colleges that have actually closed between 2002-2017.

Undoubtedly, administrative acedia created by longstanding Pollyanaish indecision, has significantly contributed to the current state of affairs. As a result, without adequate endowments, large reservoirs of potential students, significant differentiation in the market, and high brand value, a large number of the nation’s small colleges and universities are what could be called high-risk institutions. While the current adverse effects of declining enrollment and resource scarcity are indeed problematic, to avoid more serious consequences these institutions of higher learning must demand swift and prudent action from their leadership.

The good news is that the administrative “pants” of high-risk colleges and universities do not have to freeze in the vortex of acedia. Long-term sustainability can be achieved with appropriate focus and discipline. By utilizing a data-driven and evidence-based approach to culture, process, and change, colleges and universities can transform the vortex of challenges that threaten to freeze their educational mission into windows of opportunities that they can actually initiate and control. What is needed to thaw the current situation is the immediate implementation of a strategy for institutional mobilization.

Mobilization

OINOS Consulting has developed a Decision Mobilization Process (DMP) for strategically re-aligning vision and operations to appropriately reflect an institution’s mission and context, thereby, positioning it to advance a more suitable value-proposition in the higher education sector. The method entails five (5) interrelated steps that engage a select team of administrators, faculty, staff, and trustees to judiciously evaluate and make informed decisions concerning key areas of their respective school’s institutional risk. The team should, additionally, include alumni, major donors, business, and civic leaders. Experienced consultants work with the DMP Team to facilitate progress and the development of an appropriate Mobilization Plan to respond to the vortex of challenges that currently threaten its survival. The following exhibit outlines the DMP methodology that can also be used by a school in a state of temporary closure.

Decision Mobilization Process

The decision to redesign and/or resume operations of an institution of higher learning should be based upon empirical evidence that can be broadly supported by its trustees, faculty, administration, alumni, major benefactors, and lenders. In their book, Turnaround: Leading Stressed Colleges and Universities to Excellence (2009), Martin, Samels, and Associates, present 10 Risk Indicators that small colleges and universities can utilize as an index for conducting such a self-evaluation. Based on a comparison of data, drawn from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the Risk Factors may be listed as follows.

Risk Factors for Small Four-Year Private Educational Institutions

In their report, Learning from Closed Institutions: Indicators of Risk for Small Private Colleges and Universities (2013), prepared for the Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities Association (TICUA), Dawn Lyken-Segosebe and Justin Cole Shepherd expand Martin and Samels’ data to include (a) low enrollment, (b) low endowment levels, (c) high debt and deficit positions, (d) liquidity, and (e) deferred maintenance were challenges common to small colleges and universities at the time of their closure.  The following checklist of 20 Risk Indicators allow for a deeper assessment of the broad challenges previously outlined by Martin, Samels, and Associates.

Risk Indicators

As decisions to redesign and/or resume operations of a college or university should be based on an honest assessment of well identified metrics, the 20 Risk Indicators outlined by Segosebe and Shepherd are reviewed according to a Likert-style scale during the first step of the Decision Mobilization Process.

Step 2: Mission/Business Model Evaluation

Navigating through high-risk environments require building a disciplined administrative culture of persistence and controls. In his noted book, Good to Great (2001), best-selling management author Jim Collins suggests that such a culture is the result of answering three questions: (1) what you do best, (2) what drives your economic engine, and (3) what ignites the passion of your stakeholders. Collins refers to the sum of this “understanding” as the “Hedgehog Concept,” to which high achieving organizations display fanatical devotion to inform their questioning process, dialogue and debate, executive decision-making, and analysis of outcomes.

During the 2nd Step of the Decision Mobilization Process, team members will use Collins’ three questions to identify their respective school’s Hedgehog of differentiation. Revisions, and/or alternatives, for advancing a college/university’s mission should be prudently designed to leverage this understanding. Ideally, the Team will conclude that an institution can maintain its current operating model without major modifications to its existing institution/governance structures. Nevertheless, genuine and candid attempts at meaningful Hedgehog alignment might yield valuable possibilities for creative adaptation.

Serious assessment of an educational institution’s mission will certainly be a sensitive process. Every college mission, however, should be periodically tested for relevance, since the original premise for an institution may not be sustainable in subsequent cultural contexts. Consequently, institutions of higher learning should wisely utilize the current vortex of administrative challenges to synchronize its founding principles with contemporary educational, economic, social, and political realities.

In an interview for Inside Higher Education, Laura Schweitzer, President of Union Graduate College, suggested that college boards should really think about how to best serve their mission. She suggests that at-risk colleges should explore methods of survival that include mergers, absorptions, affiliations and partnerships as viable alternatives to closure. Consequently, apart from identifying their particular Hedgehog of differentiation during this phase of the Decision Mobilization Process, the Team will examine a number of emerging business models for small, multi-state, and nonprofit college systems to determine if the mission of their respective institution of higher learning can be more effectively expedited in another administrative form.

Step 3: Interventions/Modifications

An essential role of the DMP Team is the development of interventions and/or modification to effectively contravene the risk factors and mission/business model weaknesses unmasked during the previous procedures of institutional evaluation. Each intervention/modification should, therefore, include a rationale that reinforces its proposed adoption. In addition to being specific, realistic, and timely, interventions and/or modifications should have unequivocal support of the Team’s representative constituencies.

In his 2014 Forbes Investor article entitled, Top Issues Facing Higher Education, the late John F. Ebersole, former president of Excelsior College, and a visionary educational leader, outlines 10 issues and trends that he believes will impact higher learning in the coming years. Apart from developing interventions/modifications for the results identified during previous procedure, the DMP Team will use the 3rd step in the process to discuss how/if their respective institution of higher learning can leverage its capacities to take advantage of the following sector trends and issues outlined by Ebersole.