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CRM and SIS Solutions for Schools

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As a school striving to broaden its reach, you likely already understand the importance of personalized communication to attract and retain students. That may sound like a lot of work because, without the right tools, it certainly can be. Fortunately, our team, with over fifteen years of experience working closely with educational institutions, has developed specialized solutions that address key challenges faced by schools looking to streamline their processes and boost enrollment.

HEM’s custom-built solutions—Mautic by HEM, a powerful Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and marketing automation system, and HEM’s Student Portal, an all-in-one Student Information System (SIS)—offer the tools you need to manage your admissions and student engagement efforts seamlessly. Let’s explore how you can give yourself the gift of efficiency this holiday season with these systems!

Simplify student management and boost recruitment efficiency!

Transform your student portal experience. Get a FREE HEM-SP demo today.

Understanding CRMs and How They Benefit Your Institution

What is a CRM and how can it benefit educational institutions? A CRM, or Customer Relationship Management system, is a platform that helps organizations manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle.

For educational institutions, a CRM is essential in managing prospective student relationships, tracking their progress through the admissions funnel, and keeping detailed records of interactions. At its core, a CRM enables schools to create personalized experiences for prospective students, allowing them to engage in meaningful ways at every stage of their journey.

Mautic by HEM, our tailored CRM for educational institutions leverages the open-source marketing automation platform Mautic to deliver a seamless experience designed specifically for the education sector. With features like lead segmentation, automated workflows, custom reporting, and multichannel marketing, Mautic by HEM empowers schools to enhance their lead management and marketing efficiency.

By segmenting contacts based on their stage in the admissions process, program of interest, or geographical location, your institution can ensure that each prospect receives targeted messages that are more likely to result in conversions.

Reach out to us for a demo to see how Mautic can boost efficiency for your school’s marketing campaign!

Mautic by HEM: Supercharge Your Lead Management and Marketing

Mautic by HEM goes beyond a standard CRM, combining powerful customer relationship management with advanced marketing automation to help you maximize your student recruitment efforts.

Mautic makes it easy to manage a large number of prospective students by allowing you to segment, organize, and follow up with prospects efficiently. By automating workflows and assigning follow-up tasks, your team can manage their workload better, ensuring that each prospect receives timely attention.

Source: Mautic | HEM

Example: Do you see how centralizing prospect information helps you track the effectiveness of your campaigns and determine the next step in the enrollment funnel? Here, prospects are categorized by their current stage in the enrollment process, their program of interest, the channel through which they first interacted with your institution, and what sort of contact they are. That’s all the information you need to craft an appropriate and compelling follow-up message tailored to each unique responsibility. Mautic helps you with that part too!

In addition, Mautic by HEM’s marketing automation tools enable you to scale up your email marketing, create dynamic landing pages, design forms, and automate workflows. This allows your institution to maintain a high level of personalized engagement with prospects across multiple channels, thereby improving your reach and effectiveness in digital recruitment.

The solution’s custom reporting features also give you detailed insights into your admissions pipeline. With Mautic by HEM, you can monitor productivity, track lead progress, and evaluate channel performance, which will help you refine your approach and allocate resources to high-impact activities.

Ensuring timely follow-up is essential for converting leads to students, and Mautic by HEM enables automated SMS and email follow-ups, allowing you to communicate with leads through their preferred channels. Whether it’s sending reminders, booking meetings, or making calls, Mautic by HEM has the tools your team needs to maintain a consistent communication flow.

Source: Mautic | HEM

Example: Viewing the contact history for each prospect lets you know how they prefer to communicate. In addition to other vital data such as name and contact information, you can craft a highly personalized message such as the SMS pictured above.

Finally, Mautic by HEM also helps your team manage their daily tasks and workload. With integrated calendars, workflow assignments, and productivity tracking, your staff can stay organized and focused on what matters most—building relationships and driving enrollments.

Why You Need an SIS for Your School

Now, what is a Student Information System (SIS)? Student Information System software is designed to manage student data from application through graduation. An SIS handles everything from enrollment and class scheduling to academic records and financial management. This centralized database makes it easy for staff to track student progress and streamline administrative tasks.

HEM’s Student Portal integrates CRM and SIS functionalities to provide an all-in-one admissions and student management platform. Tailored to meet the demands of educational institutions, the portal includes tools for application management, payment processing, and student record tracking. This integrated solution enables institutions to centralize and simplify operations, allowing your staff to focus on building meaningful relationships with prospective and current students.

HEM’s Student Portal: Revolutionizing Student Management

HEM’s Student Portal takes SIS integration to a new level, offering an all-encompassing admissions and student management system designed specifically for educational institutions. The Student Portal simplifies the application process, offering a virtual admissions assistant that guides students from start to finish. Students can inquire, apply, pay, and even enroll through an easy-to-use interface.

Source: Student Portal | HEM

Example: A customized Student Portal will guide students through your application process from initial form submission to payment in a user-friendly format as pictured above.

Customizable forms and a centralized management system make it easy for your staff to track applications, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. Additionally, the portal seamlessly integrates with Mautic by HEM, allowing you to manage marketing and admissions in one place. By streamlining communication and automating workflows, this system supports your institution’s goals for efficiency and high-quality engagement with prospective students.

The Student Portal allows for comprehensive data management, tracking all aspects of student data from initial inquiry to graduation. With detailed records and customizable reports, your team can monitor application status, manage payment processing, and keep detailed academic records, providing staff with a complete view of each student’s journey.

Source: Student Portal | HEM

Example: Here, you can see our centralized application management system. See all incoming applications and determine which applications were started and not completed. In addition, the Student Portal platform allows you to track prospects based on name, program, whether they’ve been sent an invoice, and whether that invoice has been paid. This information is valuable as it clarifies the next step for each contact.

Furthermore, the portal’s quote builder tool allows prospective students to calculate program costs, offering them a transparent view of financial requirements. This provides clarity and builds trust, making it easier for students and their families to plan for the financial aspects of their education.

Designed to improve efficiency across all departments, the Student Portal facilitates better collaboration by centralizing data and providing tools for managing projects and tracking progress. This comprehensive approach allows staff to work towards strategic institutional goals, fostering a collaborative environment that drives both student success and institutional growth.

Experience the HEM Advantage: Efficiency

Mautic by HEM and the HEM Student Portal offer transformative CRM and SIS solutions that empower educational institutions to work smarter, not harder. By combining lead management, marketing automation, admissions tracking, and student data management, HEM’s tools create a cohesive system designed to meet the unique needs of schools. That’s what we accomplished for Micheal Vincent Academy.

Founded by Tally B. Hajek, a multi-talented recording artist and makeup artist, and her husband Michael Vincent, a renowned celebrity photographer, MVA teaches around 350 students annually. Each student gains expert instruction and builds a professional portfolio, launching them toward successful careers in beauty and media.

MVA sought an organized, streamlined solution to manage its student recruitment efforts, and they found the answer in Mautic by HEM. This customized CRM software, specifically tailored for educational institutions, allows MVA to efficiently automate its marketing efforts and seamlessly follow up with prospective students.

Transformative Results for a Thriving Institution

With Mautic, MVA’s team can now easily track and manage leads. The CRM’s powerful reporting tools give the academy a clear view of each lead’s journey through the admissions process. Staff can track the progress of every prospective student, monitor recruitment team activities, and measure productivity—all crucial for a private institution focused on cost-effective outreach. Furthermore, the lead-scoring feature in Mautic enables the recruitment team to identify and prioritize high-value leads, allowing MVA to concentrate on students who are genuinely interested and likely to succeed within the academy’s creative programs.

As Tally Hajek highlights, the organizational capabilities of Mautic are essential to building meaningful connections with prospective students. “We value connections with prospective students, but connections cannot happen without organization,” she explains. The system enables her team to foster relationships with students who are both committed and well-suited to the academy’s professional and artistic environment.

Moreover, HEM’s attentive and supportive customer service has made the partnership especially rewarding. “We love working with the HEM team,” says Hajek. “We feel like they really understand us and want us to succeed.” With HEM’s customized solutions, MVA has significantly increased staff efficiency in student recruitment, giving their team the tools to excel in a competitive educational market and helping the academy continue to thrive as a leader in beauty and media education.

Imagine a system that handles every step of the student journey—engaging prospective students, nurturing leads, simplifying applications, and supporting students through their academic journey—all from a single platform. HEM is dedicated to providing solutions that help you enhance recruitment, boost enrollment, and offer the seamless digital experience that students expect.

To see how Mautic and the HEM Student Portal can transform your institution, request a demo today and discover the possibilities of giving yourself the gift of efficiency.

Give Yourself the Gift of Efficiency

This holiday season, give your institution the ultimate gift: the power to work smarter, not harder. HEM’s custom-built solutions, including Mautic CRM and the HEM Student Portal, are designed to streamline your operations and boost your team’s effectiveness.

From managing prospective student leads to enhancing engagement and improving communication, these tools empower your staff to focus on what truly matters—building connections and driving success.

Simplify student management and boost recruitment efficiency!

Transform your student portal experience. Get a FREE HEM-SP demo today.

FAQ

Question: What is a CRM and how can it benefit educational institutions?

Answer: A CRM, or Customer Relationship Management system, is a platform that helps organizations manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle.

Question: What is a Student Information System (SIS)?

Answer: Student Information System software is designed to manage student data from application through graduation.

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December 25, 2024
California and other states are rushing to regulate AI. This is what they’re missing

This article was originally published in December 2024 in the opinion page of The Los Angeles Times and is republished here with permission.

The Constitution shouldn’t be rewritten for every new communications technology. The Supreme Court reaffirmed this long-standing principle during its most recent term in applying the 1st Amendment to social media. The late Justice Antonin Scalia articulated it persuasively in 2011, noting that “whatever the challenges of applying the Constitution to ever-advancing technology, the basic principles of freedom of speech and the press … do not vary.”

These principles should be front of mind for congressional Republicans and David Sacks, Trump’s recently chosen artificial intelligence czar, as they make policy on that emerging technology. The 1st Amendment standards that apply to older communications technologies must also apply to artificial intelligence, particularly as it stands to play an increasingly significant role in human expression and learning.

But revolutionary technological change breeds uncertainty and fear. And where there is uncertainty and fear, unconstitutional regulation inevitably follows. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, lawmakers in at least 45 states have introduced bills to regulate AI this year, and 31 states adopted laws or resolutions on the technology. Congress is also considering AI legislation.

Many of these proposals respond to concerns that AI will supercharge the spread of misinformation. While the worry is understandable, misinformation is not subject to any categorical exemption from 1st Amendment protections. And with good reason: As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson observed in 1945, the Constitution’s framers “did not trust any government to separate the true from the false for us,” and therefore “every person must be his own watchman for truth.”

California nevertheless enacted a law in September targeting “deceptive,” digitally modified content about political candidates. The law was motivated partly by an AI-altered video parodying Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy that went viral earlier in the summer.

Two weeks after the law went into effect, a judge blocked it, writing that the “principles safeguarding the people’s right to criticize government … apply even in the new technological age” and that penalties for such criticism “have no place in our system of governance.”

Ultimately, we don’t need new laws regulating most uses of AI; existing laws will do just fine. Defamation, fraud, false light and forgery laws already address the potential of deceptive expression to cause real harm. And they apply regardless of whether the deception is enabled by a radio broadcast or artificial intelligence technology. The Constitution should protect novel communications technology not just so we can share AI-enhanced political memes. We should also be able to freely harness AI in pursuit of another core 1st Amendment concern: knowledge production.

When we think of free expression guarantees, we often think of the right to speak. But the 1st Amendment goes beyond that. As the Supreme Court held in 1969, “The Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas.”

Information is the foundation of progress. The more we have, the more we can propose and test hypotheses and produce knowledge.

The internet, like the printing press, was a knowledge-accelerating innovation. But Congress almost hobbled development of the internet in the 1990s because of concerns that it would enable minors to access “indecent” content. Fortunately, the Supreme Court stood in its way by striking down much of the Communications Decency Act.

Indeed, the Supreme Court’s application of the 1st Amendment to that new technology was so complete that it left Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Mike Godwin wondering “whether I ought to retire from civil liberties work, my job being mostly done.” Godwin would go on to serve as general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia — which, he wrote, “couldn’t exist without the work that cyberlibertarians had done in the 1990s to guarantee freedom of expression and broader access to the internet.”

Today humanity is developing a technology with even more knowledge-generating potential than the internet. No longer is knowledge production limited by the number of humans available to propose and test hypotheses. We can now enlist machines to augment our efforts.

We are already starting to see the results: A researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently reported that AI enabled a lab studying new materials to discover 44% more compounds. Dario Amodei, the chief executive of the AI company Anthropic, predicts that “AI-enabled biology and medicine will allow us to compress the progress that human biologists would have achieved over the next 50-100 years into 5-10 years.”

This promise can be realized only if America continues to view the tools of knowledge production as legally inseparable from the knowledge itself. Yes, the printing press led to a surge of “misinformation.” But it also enabled the Enlightenment.

The 1st Amendment is America’s great facilitator: Because of it, the government can no more regulate the printing press than it can the words printed on a page. We must extend that standard to artificial intelligence, the arena where the next great fight for free speech will be fought.

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December 24, 2024
Weed, Wagering, Warehouses, and Wall Street

As social observers at the Higher Education Inquirer, we have noticed a US youth society showing increasing signs of anxiety and cynicism. Both of these emotions are understandable, but they have to be treated with care.

This angst among so many young adults shows up not just in suicides and drug epidemics but in many other destructive but subtler ways that don’t make the news as much.

Weed dispensaries are growing. It’s good that marijuana possession is no longer a crime. But smoking marijuana is not safe. To say it’s less dangerous than
alcohol may be true, but it’s only a rationalization.

Gambling addictions may also be related to this trend in destructively
impulsive thoughts and behaviors. If your life has little meaning, you
can find some meaning in talking about sports and betting with your
bros. Betting alone can be worse.

Doom spending shows that many younger folk are overspending because they have less hope. It’s not the same as shopping therapy because the outcome is not feeling better, but of feeling even worse. Overall, may help increase the need for warehouses and warehouse jobs, but also damages those around you in ways you may not even see.

Who Benefits?

The only people who benefit in the long run are those who profit from pain. The people on Wall Street. And the rich people who invest in that pain. In the end, even those people, or their loved ones, may be subject to a cynicism they may be forced to notice.

Other Possibilities

If you are spending money that could be spent on
something else,for the future, you are doing a disservice to yourself
and those around you.These trends among US youth are the opposite of
youth global trends in frugal living, living that can lead to greater
happiness and meaning.

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December 23, 2024
Is England really the world champion in overqualification?

By Golo Henseke (LinkedIn) Associate Professor in Education, Practice and Society at the Institute of Education (IoE), UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, and Francis Green, Professor of Work and Education Economics, also at the IOE.

A recent report by the Organisation of Economically Developed Countries (OECD) claims that nearly four in ten employees in England are overqualified for their jobs, the highest rate among OECD countries. If accurate, this statistic seems to reflect a substantial waste of human capital and raises questions about the state of the UK labour market and education system. However, closer scrutiny suggests that the figure may be misleading, stemming from methodological quirks specific to the English data rather than an alarming surge in overqualification.

Dubious Comparisons

The OECD findings are based on a once-in-a-decade survey of adult skills, an ambitious international undertaking aiming for comparability across countries and economies. Yet, qualifications are inherently tricky to standardise internationally. For example, how does an English GCSE compare to a US high school diploma? The nuances of national education systems can render such comparisons tenuous.

England’s reported 37% overqualification rate, up from under 30% a decade earlier, is at odds with other data. Our surveys of the British workforce, which employ similar methodologies, show a modest drop in overqualification rates between 2006 and 2017, from 30% to 26%. If the reported OECD figures are to be believed, the rise would imply an extraordinary shift since 2017: approximately 2.5 million additional workers would have been relegated to roles beneath their qualifications within just a few years. This appears implausible. It is also at odds with a decline in graduate overqualification from 34% in 2012 to 30% in 2023, as our independent analysis of OECD’s data shows.

A more likely explanation lies in changes to the OECD’s survey design for England. In 2012, UK respondents were presented with a comprehensive list of nearly 60 qualifications when reporting job requirements and personal attainment. In 2023, this was reduced to just 19 options, with significant alterations to how response options were presented. The switch to a simplified classification may have skewed the responses, particularly below degree level, contributing to the measured overqualification rates.

This issue is not confined to England. A similar methodological shift occurred in France, where the reported overqualification rate fell from 30% to 19%. Conversely, in the US, where questionnaires remained broadly consistent, the reported increase was a more credible five percentage points.

A Structural Issue, Not a Graduate Problem

Apart from this problem of potentially inconsistent measurement over time, the rush to attribute England’s supposed peculiar problem of overqualification to an oversupply of graduates is misplaced. Our re-examination of OECD’s survey data shows that, in England, graduates face lower risks of overqualification than non-graduates: the overqualification rate among non-graduates is 17 percentage points higher than among those with a degree. This gap between graduates and non-graduates broadly aligns with our own data from the British Skills and Employment Surveys.

The Director for Education and Skills at the OECD, Andreas Schleicher, has been quoted saying that the UK’s higher education sector is “overextending” itself, with universities offering credentials that lack substantive value. However, with this oversimplified reaction, he is surely aiming at the wrong part of our education system.

A Misguided Narrative

In addition, he is almost certainly targeting the wrong side of the labour market. Overqualification in the UK is likely driven, not so much by an oversupply of graduates as by a failure to create enough middle-skill jobs and robust vocational pathways outside universities.

Overqualification is indeed a pressing issue. Even at a rate nearer 3 in 10, overqualification in England is higher than in most other advanced economies in the OECD. Overqualification depresses wages, diminishes job satisfaction, and undermines long-term productivity as underutilised skills atrophy. But this knee-jerk pinning of blame just on education, particularly on higher education, misses the mark, and forgets about the external benefits that education brings for society and the economy. Instead, England’s policymakers must address the structural deficiencies in the labour market, particularly the lack of opportunities for those with intermediate qualifications.

Simplistic diagnoses risk distracting from the real challenges. England’s education system is not producing “too many” graduates. Instead, its economy and further education system fail to provide sufficient opportunities to harness the potential of those not bound for higher education. To strengthen qualification pathways outside universities, a targeted strategy to foster middle-skill employment (while addressing skill shortages) is urgently needed. Without some recognition of these complexities, public discourse about overqualification will continue to generate more heat than light as university fees are set to surpass £10,000.

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December 23, 2024
The Tragic Optimist’s Guide to Surviving Capitalistic Nihilism (Dasia Sade)

Higher Education Inquirer : The Tragic Optimist’s Guide to Surviving Capitalistic Nihilism (Dasia Sade)

The Tragic Optimist’s Guide to Surviving Capitalistic Nihilism (Dasia Sade)

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December 23, 2024
Hume’s Fork and the Truth About Knowledge (Thoughtforge)

Higher Education Inquirer : Subjective & Objective: Hume’s Fork and the Truth About Knowledge (Thoughtforge)

Subjective & Objective: Hume’s Fork and the Truth About Knowledge (Thoughtforge)

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December 23, 2024
Escalating Humanitarian Needs (Center for Strategic & International Studies)

Higher Education Inquirer : Global Conflicts to Watch in 2025: Escalating Humanitarian Needs (Center for Strategic & International Studies)

Global Conflicts to Watch in 2025: Escalating Humanitarian Needs (Center for Strategic & International Studies)

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December 22, 2024
How a new Arizona school will use AI to teach students in 2-hour models (ABC 15 Arizona)

Higher Education Inquirer : How a new Arizona school will use AI to teach students in 2-hour models (ABC 15 Arizona)

How a new Arizona school will use AI to teach students in 2-hour models (ABC 15 Arizona)

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December 22, 2024
Brand or Bust: How Universities Can Thrive in the Face of Crisis

Today’s weekend reading is by Zeenat Fayaz, Director of Brand & Strategy at The Brand Education, and Brian MacDonald, Chief Creative Officer and a co-founder at Zillion.

Pandemics, enrolment cliffs, budgets, student mental health, social media disinformation: higher education in crisis, globally, and it sometimes feels like crises are the new normal. This article explores these challenges in three key markets – the US, the UK and Canada – and proposes a change in the way universities think about communications to overcome such hardships.

The Challenge

Universities develop institutional strategies for growth and sometimes invest in brand strategies for perception management. However, when crisis communications are not integrated into these strategies, they can become distractions from them. Often when crises arise, neither institutional nor brand strategies are equipped to address them effectively. Nor does addressing them support either strategy.

With crises seemingly becoming more frequent, this is an unsustainable model – the longer crises continue, the longer the distraction from institutional and brand strategies.

The Opportunity: From Survive to Thrive

With crisis management becoming a continual need, universities need a crisis strategy that doesn’t indefinitely distract from institutional and brand initiatives – one that allows universities to address all the audiences of the crisis with messages and media relevant to each. If this sounds like a brand, that’s because it is! We propose a new approach, a “thrive mode,” in which brand strategy elevated to equal status with institutional strategy, and crisis management is integrated into both.

This approach transforms crises from distractions into opportunities to clarify the institution’s distinctive position and enhance its reputation.

Survive versus Thrive: A Deeper Look

Survive mode is a reactive approach to crises, treating each as a unique, temporary problem. It focuses on short-term damage control with transactional communication, often disconnected from overall institutional and brand strategies. Success in this mode is merely the survival of the institution and its brand reputation.

Thrive mode, conversely, is proactive, viewing crises as opportunities to reinforce institutional and brand strategies. It aims for long-term reputation enhancement through brand-based communication that leverages institutional expertise and core values. Success is defined as emerging from crises with an enhanced reputation and stakeholder understanding, measurable by existing brand performance indicators.

The change from survive to thrive offers numerous advantages. It allows for pre-crisis planning and offers efficiency by integrating with existing strategies. It allows for quicker, more coherent responses that align with overall brand and institutional messaging using existing brand communication tools. It involves broader stakeholder groups and leverages institutional expertise to provide a more valued response, resulting in trust and enhanced reputation beyond the immediate crisis.

Case Studies: Putting Thrive Mode Into Action

Survive mode has been displayed across headlines and news sites around the world since the inception of encampments and campus protests around the world since the advent of the Israel/Gaza conflict. Numerous university presidents provided testimony in front of Congressional hearings that reflected badly on their institutions. And the universities did survive, albeit with varying degrees of damaged brands, dismissed presidents, irate donors and declining applications.

With thrive mode responses, instead of preparing, as in some cases, to offer legal testimony, consider the many different outcomes that could have been achieved by placing university experts in Middle Eastern studies, philosophy and ethics, comparative religions, history, or many other relevant fields at centre stage. Thrive mode would have prompted a response about higher education’s and individual institutions’ leadership in education on Middle Eastern issues, or how they are preparing students to participate in civil discussion and achieve breakthroughs in understanding. Such discussions would have haloed positively on these institutions by reinforcing their brand values with audiences outside the university, and by clarifying their roles in supporting dialogue, tolerance and understanding.

Issues around academic freedom have been increasingly roiling universities in the UK, with the Academic Freedom Index (AFI) recording declines in each of the last nine years. The assessments measure interference by politicians, externally appointed management, and activists. Numerous crises have arisen involving scholarly censorship, the mainstreaming of racism and transphobia, and the stifling of academic pursuits that do not demonstrate profitable impact. The universities’ responses focused much negative attention on higher education, as a whole, and individual universities, in particular, in government, news media, and public opinion. And the responses allowed these negative stories to effectively lead the conversation, placing the universities in a reactive position. Survive mode squandered the opportunity to highlight universities’ research successes and student outcomes as well as to demonstrate leadership on important topics.

Thrive-mode responses could have allowed institutions to talk about important discoveries that would not be possible under recent restrictions on academic freedom. About alumni who have made important contributions to the economy or society who would not qualify for student support today. About the universities’ missions and their historical relationships to government and society. About brand values that the universities rely on to drive their results. These responses would allow the universities to participate in, guide, and lead these conversations, putting their brands in positions to make an impact on important external audiences.

With ongoing budget crises and newly imposed restrictions on the number of foreign student visas, universities in the UK and Canada are in uncharted territory. It’s not merely threatening many institutions with declines in funding, hard choices, and in some cases closure, but potentially reforming the entire higher education landscape. In a leaderless crisis where nobody knows what it will look like in the end, acting on coordinated institutional, brand, and crisis strategies effectively demonstrates leadership: with students, faculty, staff, alumni, and most importantly with the government. The opportunity is to talk about the budget crisis as a new lens through which to view the institutional strategy. A budget crisis does not change objectives like entering The Russell Group or becoming Canada’s premiere STEM educator. It may change the process of how an institution gets there – the timeline for milestones, the need for partners, the establishment of fundraising goals, etc. And brand strategy lays out ways to discuss how the crisis will affect its implementation with key audiences. This is what thriving looks like in the face of this crisis: opening and leading important conversations with governments, reassuring parents and inspiring students.

Conclusion

As Warren Buffett noted, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” In today’s media environment, a brand can be severely damaged in seconds. By integrating crisis management into overall institutional and brand strategies, universities can transform crises from threats into opportunities for growth and reputation enhancement. While crises may be inevitable, this framework offers a path for universities not just to survive, but to thrive in challenging times..

Zeenat Fayaz is Director of Brand & Strategy at The Brand Education. Zeenat’s experience working with QS and THE gives her unique insight into the way institutions are evaluated and ranked. Today, Zeenat helps top-tier universities understand the power of branding and use this to enhance their global reputations. You can find Zeenat on LinkedIn here.

And Brian MacDonald is the Chief Creative Officer and a co-founder at Zillion. He has worked on strategic, creative, and branding projects for dozens of universities in the US, Canada, and overseas. His work focuses on how branding can drive institutional revenue, and his work has raised more than $6 billion for his clients. You can find Brian on LinkedIn here.

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December 21, 2024
$Becoming good at math is easy, actually (Han Zhango)$

Becoming good at math is easy, actually (Han Zhango)

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December 20, 2024