Ricardo Azziz has held quite a few government positions in increased schooling and led the merger that resulted in Georgia Regents College, now Augusta College. He’s principal at Strategic Partnerships in Increased Schooling, or SPH, Consulting Group.
He writes the common Merger Watch opinion collection on company restructuring in increased schooling.
Headlines typically refer to schools and universities as taking one kind of motion or one other — say “College of the Arts land $8.3M in bids for two buildings,” or “Gannon College and Ursuline School announce official merger deal.” But schools are inanimate.
We must be clear — institutional selections should not taken by inanimate objects. They’re made by the faculty or college’s leaders, after variable intervals of reflection, knowledge gathering and dialogue. Nonetheless, the necessity for tight headlines typically underemphasizes the worth and demanding nature of management in figuring out the long run — in increased schooling and past.
The upper schooling panorama is altering quickly, and usually not for the higher. Consequently, extra institutional leaders might want to take into account what different increased schooling consultants and I have termed “Large Scary Change,” i.e., mergers, acquisitions, closures, company conversions and main strategic partnerships. Not surprisingly, in a earlier evaluation my coauthors and I recognized a “dedicated and understanding governing board” and the “proper management” because the No. 1 and No. 2 key parts, respectively, of upper schooling merger success.
Ricardo Azziz
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My group and I work carefully with these devoted — and sometimes rightfully anxious —leaders, together with school and college chief executives and their boards, as they take into account and navigate the uneven waters of “Large Scary Change.” This work leads me to need three needs for increased schooling leaders in 2025, particularly that they:
- Be disposed to accepting the information.
- Be prepared to discover all strategic choices.
- Be agreeable to accepting exterior assist.
First, accepting the information might sound apparent. However I’ve witnessed a lot magical considering in government workplaces and boardrooms in schools and universities throughout the nation.
If an establishment’s enrollment has been declining repeatedly for a decade or extra, maybe with general full-time equivalents falling greater than 35% throughout that point, then anticipating that pattern to vary within the close to future and return to ranges noticed in 2013 is just unrealistic.
If an establishment has been repeatedly operating a deficit whereas leveraging market positive aspects in its endowment and the occasional unrestricted philanthropic present to steadiness the price range, then anticipating this pattern to out of the blue reverse displays a level of magical considering.
Bear in mind additionally that merely evaluating the numbers of 1 yr to the following will be terribly deceptive. Essential tendencies can solely be acknowledged when not less than eight to 10 years of information is reviewed. But too typically government leaders and their groups are sometimes unable or worse, unwilling, to current this knowledge to their boards.
Whereas magical realism can work nicely in literature, it usually works poorly when planning for the operational and monetary realities of a faculty or college. As writer Jim Collins reminds us in his e book “Good to Nice,” efficient leaders have to be prepared — and search — to face the brutal information.
Second, institutional leaders must be prepared to discover all strategic choices. Nonetheless, to discover all strategic choices, institutional leaders should possess three attributes: They should have the mandatory experience, be prepared to dedicate the mandatory time, and be capable of actively search the information required to satisfy the challenges going through increased schooling.
To successfully discover all strategic choices, increased schooling leaders — together with chief executives and their groups, and the governing boards that they reply to — should undertake common and intensive strategic planning. At minimal, they need to do that on a yearly foundation.
With the monetary, market, demographic and regulatory setting altering quickly, boards and government groups have to be prepared to speed up the pace at which they keep on high of rising tendencies.
Increased schooling leaders must be reminded of the quip attributed to the late Jack Welch, former CEO of Basic Electrical: “If the speed of change on the skin exceeds the speed of change on the within, the top is close to.”
Exploring strategic choices in a daily and well timed method additionally calls for being prepared to grasp all strategic choices — not simply those who nibble on the edges of the issue, just like the myriad of ways marketed to extend enrollments, model recognition, educational choices and value chopping.
Increased schooling leaders also needs to intentionally purpose to grasp the place and position of main restructuring alternatives, together with mergers, acquisitions and even deliberate closures.
Understanding the facility, alternative and challenges of those main restructuring occasions (i.e., Large Scary Change) doesn’t imply institutional leaders have to in the end pursue the choice. However the train will allow them to be extra conversant in, and fewer anxious about, contemplating these main restructuring occasions if wanted. In the long run, increased schooling leaders ought to remember that markets with huge extra capability, rising prices and reducing demand over the long run are ripe for consolidation.
Third, increased schooling leaders have to be extra prepared to simply accept exterior knowledgeable help. Whereas it could come throughout as self-serving contemplating the companies my firm gives, the truth is that enterprise — and even contemplating — main restructuring occasions, reminiscent of a merger or deliberate closure, isn’t one thing that the majority increased schooling leaders have truly carried out earlier than.
School leaders shouldn’t underappreciate the complexities and nuances of those occasions, both when exploring them, or when truly negotiating and implementing them. Additional, leaders ought to acknowledge their restricted bandwidth to deal with the various actions required to make sure an initiative’s success, notably since in addition they have to proceed to concentrate on managing their establishments as absolute best.
Whereas conserving heritage and historical past alive in a merger requires cautious planning, doing so in a closure — even a deliberate one — is troublesome. It’s then my hope and need for 2025 that school and college leaders will heed the recommendation I’ve laid out — and accomplish that earlier than they lose all remaining model, monetary and enrollment belongings that make them a lovely accomplice, or earlier than they miss out on potential alternatives to quickly improve their aggressive power.