Measures of Accountability in Higher Education

The Brand Identity Test

Ten Things Higher Education Leaders Must Consider

1.A national accreditation review may be just as rigorous as a regional accreditation review as participating schools are subject to increasing outcomes based accountability.

2.The demographics that make up your student body are changing rapidly and this has implications for your admissions/marketing efforts, specifically by the year 2018/2019 white high school graduates will become the minority.

3.Educational outcomes among racial and ethnic groups in the United States are significantly lower than white groups and for our nation to remain competitive, we must work to close the racial achievement gap

4.Parent education and family income continue to be two primary factors that can predict and influence educational attainment and academic achievement.

5.Racial Identity Development is a real process people go through no matter what their race is part of preparing your graduates to compete in a more diverse world may include incorporating theories on this subject into your first year experience or other curricular areas.

6.A best practice for online program/degree delivery is to integrate academics with on-ground campus operations but separate operational student service areas.

7.Your institutions operational budget should be on a Proforma model especially when entering into a strategic planning phase.  Understanding revenue and expenses based on program, enrollment, retention and other variables, over the course of 2-4 years, will assist leaders with making granular level decisions that are critical to achieving strategic objectives.

8.Every employee should have key performance metrics.

9.A graduation rate of 55% within 6 years of entering a four-year program is a BAD THING.

10.Admitting students to your institution simply because they met the enrollment criteria has a direct impact on student success and retention.

Literacy, Teaching, Technology and the Impact on Women and Children

Survive and Thrive During Fall Start Season

It comes around each year for admissions professionals, as reliable as the sunrise and sunset or death and taxes, depending on your perspective.  New students arriving at our campuses to begin their studies each fall.  This period of time represents the culmination of months of work that was preceded by planning and hopefully a training program to keep us finely tuned throughout the duration.  No matter how many annual start terms your school has, the concept of the “big fall start” is alive and well in educational institutions across the nation.

Whether we have a pro-active or reactive admissions process, whether we are for-profit, non-profit, career related or liberal arts centered we all want the same thing: to achieve our start goals and ensure the continued financial viability of our institutions. 

Check-in day can go awry for the best of us.  As Vice President of Enrollment at a traditional college in New England I was once rescued by the athletic director after having spent 2 hours personally crisis-managing 200 students and families that overwhelmed the financial aid clearance station.  As a person who suffers from bouts of low-blood sugar and stupidly having not eaten that morning the stress, heat and empty stomach began to get the best of me.  However like any good enrollment person, I was too caught up with problem solving our start day to notice I was having problems.  Re-enforcements were brought in and I was fine and the backup, resolved.

In consulting I leverage my own experience in guiding clients through the maze of enrollment issues they face.  At this time of year I take a moment to reflect back on what I’ve learned and pass along some tips to help other enrollment leaders survive and thrive over the next few weeks.

In no particular order:

1. Stay hydrated

2. Eat regularly (protein, fruits and veggies)

3. Pick a goofy word to say when you are stressed out and about to “blow” your lid.  Something that will make you and others laugh.

4. Be proactive across all departments that impact the start.  This means taking steps in advance to avoid problems at check-in and during that critical pre-add/drop deadline.

5. Subtract 10% from the number you think will start and report that as your forecast, it is the best way to manage expectations.

6. Meet as many new students and families as possible.  This is important for you and them.

7. Make it fun for everyone involved.  How about a “show rate” contest with your staff?  Divide the group up in two and decide whichever group has the best show rate at start will be served breakfast by the loosing team.  This helps to boost morale and should be fun spirited!

8. Print out start lists, check-in lists and just about any list you may need.  Computers and networks have a strange way of going down at this time of year.

9. Make an extra effort to show your appreciation to co-workers and staff around your school.

10.  Once it’s all over, take a few days off before you come back to lead a full debriefing session.

In the end, remember we are facilitators of the education process.

Have fun out there!

No Way out of Debt for US Colleges???? -Phooey!

In an October 2007 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education a venture capitalist was asked if the trend of VC's or "for-profit" organizations purchasing non-profit institutions would continue. To paraphrase, the reply was essentially "no."

The Problem with the Tides

That was then. Maybe our VC's answer had to do with an honest opinion or perhaps it was motivated by a wish to undercut interest in this potentially lucrative investment opportunity. The motivation doesn't matter as what may be true one day may change completely a short time later, as reliable as the changing tides.

In recent weeks we have learned of the purchase of Daniel Webster College in Nashua, New Hampshire by Indianapolis based ITT/ESI, Inc. as well as the purchase of Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa to the for-profit Columbia Southern University in Orange Beach, Alabama. The College of Santa Fe in New Mexico was recently saved when a group of local investors purchased the institution and made a deal with the for-profit Laureate Education to manage academic programs.

Virtually every institution is impacted in one way or another by the recession and its economic impact. The ability of institution and academic leaders to morph into change agents within their organizations has never been more critical. Failure to make this change may have some potentially sobering effects. In the best case, they will merge with bigger schools; sell themselves to for-profit organizations or offer vocational training that elite colleges eschew, says Sandy Baum, a senior policy analyst at the College Board.

In the worst case, they will shut down permanently.

Does this describe YOUR institution?

The institutions in greatest danger of shutting down include many small non-profit, tuition driven institutions that without a significant reputation or clear value proposition may be found heaving with debt from a decade of luxury building. Moody's has downgraded or has a number of such institutions on its "watch list" while Fall 2008 to Spring 2009 retention rates took a historic dip and assets were frozen and/or lost significant value. Standard & Poor's predicts bankruptcies will rise from the typical one or two schools that fold each year.

"Small colleges with no reputation could go out of business," said Baum. "They're very tuition driven, so if they can't get tuition revenues, they'll be in really bad shape."

A Change Agents' Top Five Solutions:

1. Program Review: Look at relevance and either update or eliminate your degree programs. What does your pipeline on new program development look like? How do you compare with competitors?

2. Key metric performance: Ask each VP to come up with metrics to manage every staff member in their departments. You may be startled at what they come up with (or don't come up with).

3. Retention: this is the low hanging fruit. They are there already, why can't you keep them? Be honest!

4. Tuition roll-backs: Before you raise tuition, first cut back on underperforming areas and see how that impacts your budget. Take a look at the various "no frills" degree offerings to help off-set and reduce tuition expenses for working students and families.

5. Realigning Budget management: It still shocks me that institutions cut or cap enrollment at programs with high demand because of budget cuts. Does your institution do this? If so, fire your VP of Finance, they don't understand how to manage a modern higher education budget.

A Change Agent's Top Challenge: Speed!

Significant concessions must be made and artful diplomacy with key stake holders must be achieved regardless of union contracts in order for institutions to move through these challenges with the speed and dexterity required to navigate the significant challenges they face. Despite diplomacy and concessions you will still find "hold-outs" who cannot or will not move quicker. These personalities have single handedly caused the closure of a number of institutions around the country. Leadership must develop a strategy to get everyone on board with being a "speedy" change agent or their efforts will be in vain.

 The anxiety associated with facing such challenges may seem too much. A group therapy session of sorts may be required before all the players come to acknowledge the reality of their situation. This acknowledgement will be required before any significant action can occur that will put the institution on better ground. Human resource offices may be engaged with the kind of personnel development and culture change management they have not practiced previously.

All areas of the campus community must be integrated into the solution for a solution to work.  For more ideas and information about this or related topics, please contact Dominick Miciotta at Dominick@edtekservices.com

Do Flashy Acceptance Letters Result in More, Quality Enrollments?

A Word About Assessment & SAT Scores

Do students achieve the stated learning objectives? What is the percentage of faculty with terminal degrees? What is the acceptance rate? What College Board http://www.collegeboard.com/ tier groups comprise your new class? We see program assessment, classroom assessment and the noted "general" assessment categories. Each provides a set standard of practices and a schedule for reporting results. When navigating the minefield of assessment with an eye that is focused on what's important, how do we determine what counts?

The answer may be an easy, 'it depends on your perspective' but if we had to select one assessment of the higher education experience, what would (or should) it be?

Those of us who work in higher education are aware of the challenges of pleasing multiple constituencies: administrators, trustees, directors, regulators, accreditation commissions, faculty governance, unions and not to mention students and their parents. We debate assessment regularly. This article discussed the issue of making SAT scores optional during the admissions process http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/26/sat. In this case we are assessing the validity and impact on making SAT scores optional as an admissions requirement. This is an important issue to discuss and the early results of this study appear to reveal what we could have guessed: dropping the SAT as an admissions requirement increases diversity and average GPA's of the incoming class and in public institutions results in higher academic achievement. Great! All public institutions should drop the SAT as a requirement. Since public institutions are usually more affordable and dropping this requirement increases diversity and diverse populations tend to have a greater financial need, from an enrollment marketing perspective, this is a win-win-win situation.

One Very Obvious Take on Online Learning Marketing: Affordability

There are many positive aspects to online learning, but one that should be stressed is affordability. Considering the average cost of a four year education, and considering the economic situation that most Americans find themselves in, any opportunity to save money would be very much welcomed.

By following the link below, you can get to a service that finds and ranks online education programs, and does so within financial parameters that you suggest.

http://geteducated.com/