Ricardo Azziz has held quite a few govt positions in larger schooling and led the merger that resulted in Georgia Regents College, now Augusta College. He’s principal at Strategic Partnerships in Increased Training, or SPH, Consulting Group.
He writes the common Merger Watch opinion collection on company restructuring in larger schooling.
Headlines usually refer to high 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 faculties are inanimate.
We must be clear — institutional selections should not taken by inanimate objects. They’re made by the school or college’s leaders, after variable durations of reflection, information gathering and dialogue. Nevertheless, the necessity for tight headlines usually underemphasizes the worth and demanding nature of management in figuring out the longer term — in larger schooling and past.
The upper schooling panorama is altering quickly, and customarily not for the higher. Consequently, extra institutional leaders might want to think about what different larger 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 workforce and I work intently with these devoted — and infrequently rightfully anxious —leaders, together with school and college chief executives and their boards, as they think about and navigate the uneven waters of “Large Scary Change.” This work leads me to want three needs for larger schooling leaders in 2025, particularly that they:
- Be disposed to accepting the info.
- Be keen to discover all strategic choices.
- Be agreeable to accepting exterior assist.
First, accepting the info might sound apparent. However I’ve witnessed a lot magical pondering in govt places of work and boardrooms in faculties 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 alter within the close to future and return to ranges noticed in 2013 is just unrealistic.
If an establishment has been repeatedly working a deficit whereas leveraging market positive factors in its endowment and the occasional unrestricted philanthropic reward to stability the finances, then anticipating this pattern to immediately reverse displays a level of magical pondering.
Bear in mind additionally that merely evaluating the numbers of 1 yr to the subsequent may be terribly deceptive. Vital developments can solely be acknowledged when at the very least eight to 10 years of information is reviewed. But too usually govt leaders and their groups are sometimes unable or worse, unwilling, to current this information 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 school or college. As creator Jim Collins reminds us in his guide “Good to Nice,” efficient leaders should be keen — and search — to face the brutal info.
Second, institutional leaders must be keen to discover all strategic choices. Nevertheless, to discover all strategic choices, institutional leaders should possess three attributes: They will need to have the mandatory experience, be keen to dedicate the mandatory time, and have the ability to actively search the information required to satisfy the challenges dealing with larger schooling.
To successfully discover all strategic choices, larger 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 surroundings altering quickly, boards and govt groups should be keen to speed up the velocity at which they keep on high of rising developments.
Increased schooling leaders must be reminded of the quip attributed to the late Jack Welch, former CEO of Normal Electrical: “If the speed of change on the skin exceeds the speed of change on the within, the tip is close to.”
Exploring strategic choices in an everyday and well timed method additionally calls for being keen to know all strategic choices — not simply those who nibble on the edges of the issue, just like the myriad of techniques marketed to extend enrollments, model recognition, tutorial choices and price reducing.
Increased schooling leaders also needs to intentionally goal to know 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 must finally pursue the choice. However the train will allow them to be extra acquainted with, and fewer anxious about, contemplating these main restructuring occasions if wanted. Ultimately, larger schooling leaders ought to needless to say markets with large extra capability, rising prices and lowering demand over the long run are ripe for consolidation.
Third, larger schooling leaders should be extra keen to simply accept exterior skilled help. Whereas it could come throughout as self-serving contemplating the companies my firm supplies, the fact is that enterprise — and even contemplating — main restructuring occasions, similar to a merger or deliberate closure, will not be one thing that almost all larger schooling leaders have really carried out earlier than.
School leaders shouldn’t underappreciate the complexities and nuances of those occasions, both when exploring them, or when really negotiating and implementing them. Additional, leaders ought to acknowledge their restricted bandwidth to handle the various actions required to make sure an initiative’s success, significantly since in addition they must proceed to give attention to managing their establishments as very best.
Whereas maintaining heritage and historical past alive in a merger requires cautious planning, doing so in a closure — even a deliberate one — is tough. It’s then my hope and need for 2025 that school and college leaders will heed the recommendation I’ve laid out — and achieve this earlier than they lose all remaining model, monetary and enrollment property that make them a gorgeous associate, or earlier than they miss out on potential alternatives to quickly improve their aggressive power.
