ORLANDO, Fla. — College leaders face no shortage of challenges in the year ahead. They’re up against an uncertain federal policy landscape, challenges to international enrollment and, for some institutions, operating models that may no longer be working.
This week, top leaders attending the Council of Independent Colleges’ Presidents Institute — an annual gathering of hundreds of leaders of private nonprofit institutions — shared those woes and more with Higher Ed Dive.
They pointed to the end of Grad PLUS loans, which will be phased out starting this year. Graduate students will also soon face federal student lending caps of $100,000 for most programs and $200,000 for professional degrees.
The U.S. Department of Education hasn’t yet put out formal regulations that define which programs will be considered professional. But late last year, during a process called negotiated rulemaking, the agency reached consensus with a group of stakeholders on regulatory language that would exclude some major programs, such as graduate nursing degrees, from the higher lending caps.
Despite these challenges, college presidents also pointed to several opportunities such as focusing on workforce development, using artificial intelligence and striking partnerships with other institutions.
On the last front, a handful of private nonprofit colleges formalized plans to combine in the past couple of years.
That includes St. Ambrose University, in Iowa, acquiring nearby Mount Mercy University, a fellow Catholic institution. Likewise, Gannon University is acquiring Ursuline College — two Catholic colleges located in Pennsylvania and Ohio, respectively.
Below, we’re rounding up responses from seven college presidents on what they see as the biggest challenges and opportunities in the year ahead.
Responses have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
President: Bryon Grigsby
Institution: Moravian University, in Pennsylvania
HIGHER ED DIVE: What do you see as the biggest opportunity in the year ahead?
BRYON GRIGSBY: Workforce development is the biggest opportunity. We’re starting an aviation program, and it’s because aviation programs are in crisis right now. Pilots are needed. People work in the airlines, in the airports, air traffic controllers — we saw all the problems that were happening with that. This is just going to get worse over the next 10 years. So I think all of us are involved in workforce development — real, substantive workforce development for our communities.
What do you see as the biggest challenge?
GRIGSBY: Funding the workforce development. It costs an incredible amount of money to create pilots. And the federal government just restricted how much loans they can take out, which prevents people who want great jobs but don’t have rich families to be able to afford that.
We’re seeing that in the healthcare industry. You know, not counting nursing and [doctor of physical therapy degrees] and [physician associates programs] as professional programs damages the ability of those students to be able to get those jobs and to be contributing members to society.
I wish the federal government would see that we’re trying to solve the workforce. We need the funding for the students so they can solve that as well.
President: Valerie Kinloch
Institution: Johnson C. Smith University, in North Carolina
What do you see as the biggest opportunity in the year ahead?
VALERIE KINLOCH: The biggest opportunity is deepening partnerships with people across different types of institutions, thinking beyond where we are to think more nationally and globally about building those types of partnerships.
What do you see as the biggest challenge?
KINLOCH: I would say the biggest challenge is a lack of resources. To sustain the types of educational institutions that we know we should requires more resources, and not just finances, but also partnerships, talent, and I think those things are going to be really important.
President: Donald Taylor
Institution: University of Detroit Mercy
What do you see as the biggest challenge in the year ahead?
DONALD TAYLOR: We don’t really know ultimately what the federal financial aid budget is going to look like for next year. And now there’s talk about, maybe there’s going to be another government shutdown.
My biggest challenge right now is not knowing because half of our students are first generation. If the House budget ends up cutting Pell by 25% and they eliminate [Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant program] and all these others, that’s going to significantly impact first-generation, low-income students.
What do you see as the biggest opportunity?
TAYLOR: There’s tremendous opportunity and willingness and interest by Congress, and all the way through the White House, about better leveraging and better understanding how we can utilize AI for efficiencies, for tutoring. There’s all kinds of possibilities in our sector. The thing that we were always criticized about was we’re way too slow. We’re like one of these giant tanker ships in Alaska — it takes forever to turn, but I think that’s changing.
President: Amy Novak
Institution: St. Ambrose University, in Iowa
What do you see as the biggest challenge in the year ahead?
AMY NOVAK: The unknown of the regulatory environment and certainly the impact it might have on graduate student loans. But I’m confident we’ll work our way through that and be able to make sure our students have access to the funds to secure their overall enrollment.
What do you see as the biggest opportunity?
NOVAK: For me, it is about partnerships, strategic alliances and thinking creatively about how higher education serves the populations that we know need to have higher education, and to do so in a way that reduces costs while expanding access and opportunity. I’m excited about the mergers, the acquisitions and the partnership opportunities that are really coming forward through discussions that we’re having among colleges.
President: David King
Institution: Ursuline College, in Ohio
What do you see as the biggest challenge in the year ahead?
DAVID KING: The biggest challenge, very simply stated, is our business model no longer is such that we can really meet the marketplace demands.
What do you see as the biggest opportunity?
KING: The opportunity is to think differently about a business model without moving away from the mission. That’s critical. Merger and acquisition is one answer to that question. How might we think differently about a business model as a way to sustain — not change — our mission, our core values, the objective of our students?
President: Todd Olson
Institution: Mount Mercy University, in Iowa
What do you see as the biggest challenge in the year ahead?
TODD OLSON: With the federal context in the U.S., there’s just a lot of complexity and some unknowns about how things will play out at a time when higher education remains really vital in our country, to our students and to our communities.
That’s the thing I’m probably most worried about — uncertainty around things like the Grad PLUS loan program, status of international students, access to higher education in the U.S. That constellation of issues seems like the biggest challenge.
What do you see as the biggest opportunity?
OLSON: As we’re coming together with another university in this strategic combination, we are really part of a move to reinvent what undergraduate education — and in some cases, graduate education — looks like in this country.
The chance to hold onto the shared Catholic mission that our two universities have, the chance to hold onto a central focus on the well-being and flourishing of our students, and at the same time, the chance to invent something brand new, and to take some bold steps as our economic conditions change, as our society changes, it is a privilege and a great opportunity to be part of a moment of reinvention. That is something I’m enthused about and optimistic about.
President: Walter Iwanenko Jr.
Institution: Gannon University, in Pennsylvania
What do you see as the biggest challenge in the year ahead?
WALTER IWANENKO JR.: About a quarter of our enrollment has been global students, and we’ve seen a significant drop, which is definitely hitting the budget and causing us to do some restructuring to adjust for the loss in revenue and student population. That’s a huge challenge.
What do you see as the biggest opportunity?
IWANENKO: With the change in demographics and the pressure on the traditional four-year experience, I think workforce, work-based learning, the two-year certification tech world — where traditional four-year institutions have maybe stayed out — I think there’s going to be an opportunity for institutions to start to dive into that world, to really try to diversify our student populations.