Tag: Partnerships

  • What College Leaders Learned About Change, Culture, and Strategic Partnerships – Edu Alliance Journal

    What College Leaders Learned About Change, Culture, and Strategic Partnerships – Edu Alliance Journal

    December 29, 2025 – Editor’s Note by Dean Hoke: This fall, Small College America convened two significant webinars bringing together college presidents, merger experts, and strategic advisors to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing small institutions. What emerged were not just conversations, but frameworks, insights, and patterns that deserve close attention. This article synthesizes what seven leaders shared across both sessions.

    Insights from Small College America’s Fall 2025 Webinar Series

    Featuring conversations with seven leaders navigating the most critical decisions facing small colleges today

    When Tarek Sobh arrived at Lawrence Technological University as provost in September 2020, he had a plan. He was going to transform the institution. He had ideas, energy, and expertise from his previous roles.

    And then he did something counterintuitive: he stopped.

    “The tendency of leaders, in any kind of position, to effect changes immediately is, in my opinion, the wrong decision,” Sobh told participants in Small College America’s “Guiding Through Change” webinar this past August. Instead, he spent his first semester meeting with every single colleague on campus—literally hundreds of people. “Learning the culture of the institution was immensely important and crucial.”

    Eighteen months later—not three months, not six, but eighteen—Sobh became president of Lawrence Tech. And because he had listened first, he knew exactly what needed to change and what needed to stay the same.

    This isn’t just one leader’s story. It’s a pattern—and a warning—for every college president, provost, and trustee navigating today’s enrollment pressures, financial constraints, and partnership decisions. The institutions that will survive aren’t the ones making the fastest decisions. They’re the ones making the most informed ones. And that takes time, most colleges think they don’t have.

    That eighteen-month timeline wasn’t just personal wisdom. It’s a pattern that emerged across two webinars hosted by Small College America this fall—one featuring college presidents navigating uncertainty, the other bringing together experts who’ve guided dozens of institutions through mergers and partnerships.

    What they revealed is that small colleges aren’t just facing challenges; they’re facing them in a way that’s unique to them. They’re learning to navigate them with a sophistication and strategic clarity that larger institutions might envy.

    The State of Play: No Surprises Allowed

    “There should be no surprises. Not in this business, there should be no surprises.”

    Dr. Chet Haskell has seen enough college budgets to know when an institution is headed for trouble. As a former two-time president and provost directly involved in three significant mergers or acquisitions, he’s learned to read the warning signs.

    During Small College America’s December webinar on mergers and partnerships, Haskell laid out the early indicators with the precision of a surgeon: enrollment declines, graduation rate declines, multiple years of unbalanced budgets, the need to dip into unrestricted endowments to make budgets work, declining net tuition revenue, and expenses increasing faster than revenue.

    All well-known data points. The problem? Too often, leaders avoid confronting their implications.

    “At the end of the day, no matter what you’re trying to do, the financials do matter,” Haskell explained. “Too often, I would argue, a balanced budget—revenue equals expense—is defined as success.”

    But that’s not success. That’s survival. Barely.

    “You don’t have a margin, you don’t have a mission,” Haskell continued. “You need resources for investment in new initiatives. You need resiliency in the face of external factors like COVID or recessions.”

    He offered a sobering example: two well-regarded Midwest colleges, each with endowments exceeding $1 billion. One has had eight successive years of operating deficits in the order of $8 to $10 million annually. The other has consistently generated surpluses.

    “A billion dollars can last a long time,” Haskell noted. “It’s still a finite number.”

    Which would you rather lead?

    The Composite Score Deception

    Stephanie Gold, head of the higher education practice at Hogan Lovells and a veteran of nearly three decades guiding colleges through transformative transactions, added a critical warning about regulatory metrics.

    The U.S. Department of Education calculates a composite score (between 1.5 and 3.0) that’s supposed to measure financial viability, liquidity, capital resources, borrowing capacity, and profitability.

    “I have seen institutions with passing scores that ultimately are not financially sustainable and are in a place where they will soon be unable to make payroll,” Gold said flatly.

    The real indicator? Cash flow problems. When an institution is struggling to pay its operating expenses, that’s the red flag that matters.

    The lesson is clear: constant vigilance, not wishful thinking. Know your numbers. All of them. And don’t wait for regulatory metrics to tell you there’s a problem.

    The Four R’s: A Framework for Strategic Thinking

    While financial vigilance is essential, it’s not sufficient. The August webinar featuring three college presidents—all of whom started their roles post-COVID—revealed how successful institutions are thinking holistically about their challenges.

    Dr. Andrea Talentino, president of Augustana College in Illinois, described her institution’s strategic planning process as driven by what they call “the Four R’s”: Recruitment, Retention, Revenue, and Results.

    Talentino explained how they use this framework across campus: “We try to kind of preach that around campus to get everybody thinking about the Four R’s and really use them to drive strategic planning and enrollment goals.”

    It’s a deceptively simple framework. But its power lies in integration. Recruitment isn’t just the admissions office’s problem. Retention isn’t just student affairs’ responsibility. Revenue isn’t just the CFO’s concern. Results aren’t just the provost’s metric.

    Everyone owns all four R’s.

    This matters because, as Talentino discovered to her surprise, institutional thinking doesn’t happen naturally.

    “I think I really overestimated the extent to which people have awareness and appreciation for institutional needs,” she admitted. “Focus on self and focus on own department rather than institutional-wide awareness was a little bit of a surprise to me.”

    She’d come from “pretty open departments that were quite supportive.” The reality at many institutions? People are siloed, focused on their immediate concerns rather than the big picture.

    Building that institutional awareness—getting everyone to think about the Four R’s—is leadership work. It doesn’t happen by accident.

    COVID’s Long Tail and the Transfer Opportunity

    The presidents also spoke candidly about enrollment realities that data alone doesn’t fully capture.

    Dr. Anita Gustafson, the first female president in Presbyterian College’s 144-year history, described what she calls “COVID’s long tail.”

    “Our class of 2025 was a very small class,” she explained. “They were seniors in high school when we had a full year of COVID, and hence we never recruited well, or maybe they didn’t even attend college in large numbers.”

    That class just graduated. And Presbyterian is finally seeing enrollment growth—about 8 to 10 percent—as that COVID cohort cycles through.

    But the recovery isn’t automatic. It requires strategic adaptation.

    For Presbyterian, located in growing South Carolina, that’s meant focusing on a population they’d historically neglected: transfer students.

    “That’s a population we have not really targeted in the past,” Gustafson said. “A lot of that is hard with the traditional liberal arts education program, because we have very robust general education requirements.”

    So they’re working with faculty to be “more transfer friendly”—adjusting requirements, smoothing pathways, removing unnecessary barriers.

    It’s the kind of strategic adaptation that requires both data and cultural sensitivity. You can’t just mandate that faculty change requirements. You have to build an understanding of why it matters and bring them along.

    Which brings us back to culture, and to the eighteen-month rule.

    Eighteen Months to Know an Institution

    The December webinar on mergers and partnerships brought together an unusual panel: Chet Haskell, the consultant and former president; Dr. Barry Ryan, an attorney who’s served as president and provost at multiple universities and most recently led Woodbury University through its merger with the University of Redlands; AJ Prager, Managing Director at Hilltop Securities and an investment banker focused on higher education M&A; and Stephanie Gold, the regulatory attorney.

    Together, they’ve seen hundreds of institutions consider partnerships, dozens pursue them, and enough fail to know what separates success from disaster.

    And they kept returning to the same timeline: eighteen months.

    Haskell emphasized that meaningful partnerships require substantial time—typically around eighteen months—to really understand another institution’s culture, operations, and true compatibility.

    Not six months. Not a year. Eighteen months minimum.

    Why so long?

    Because culture can’t be rushed. Because trust takes time. Because what institutions say about themselves and what they actually are can be very different things.

    “Building that trust between the people, the leadership in both institutions—it takes some time to get to know each other,” Barry Ryan explained. “And then you find out, maybe you find out that you have a lot more in common, and this becomes a much easier process to take.”

    Ryan has seen it work both ways. He’s been involved in mergers between faith-based institutions that seemed very different on the surface but discovered deep commonalities. He’s also seen deals fail because “they just couldn’t get over the fact that, I’m sorry, you are different than we are. We have our 39 points, and you have your 16, and it’s just not going to work.”

    The difference? Time spent building relationships and understanding culture before committing to a deal.

    AJ Prager, an investment banker who helps institutions find and evaluate potential partners, emphasized that this isn’t just about mission alignment—it’s about cultural fit.

    “We always look at transactions through the lens of mission and accelerating mission execution,” Prager said. “And so oftentimes there is mission alignment between faith-based institutions and non-faith-based institutions.”

    The real question is how cultures align. And that takes eighteen months of conversations, campus visits, joint meetings, shared meals, and honest dialogue to discover.

    The Hidden Costs Nobody Talks About

    When institutions consider mergers or major partnerships, they typically calculate direct costs, including legal fees, consulting expenses, system integration, and facility modifications.

    What they don’t budget for—and what can sink even well-planned partnerships—are the hidden costs.

    “Management time, in our experience, is the biggest hidden cost of a transaction,” Prager said. “These types of transactions are all-encompassing. They require significant, significant employee time.”

    Management time is the most valuable resource an institution has. And mergers consume it voraciously—pulling presidents, provosts, CFOs, deans, and senior staff into endless meetings, planning sessions, due diligence reviews, and stakeholder communications.

    “Whether to pursue or not to pursue a transaction is a really critical decision,” Prager continued, “because you’re tying up, if you are going to be pursuing, you’re going to be tying up your most valuable resource for a considerable amount of time.”

    And here’s the paradox: passing on opportunities can also be risky. Which is why Prager recommends that institutions prepare before opportunities arise—assessing their position, understanding their options, educating their boards with hypothetical scenarios.

    One liberal arts institution on the West Coast recently conducted an exercise with its board: it presented three hypothetical partner institutions and asked, “Would you merge with these institutions?”

    “It was very fascinating to see how the board responded,” Prager said. “But it was, I would say, an innocuous exercise to help educate the board to say, here’s what’s happening in the sector, and these are the types of transactions that might be coming your way, and how would you respond to it?”

    That kind of preparation —doing strategic thinking before you’re in crisis mode—can make all the difference.

    But there’s another hidden cost that’s even harder to quantify.

    “Despite being the lawyer, I think there’s a lot of emotional cost associated with these matters,” Stephanie Gold said. “These are very stressful situations for students, for faculty.”

    Students worry they won’t graduate from the institution they expected. Faculty wonder about job security. Staff fear restructuring. Alumni mourn the loss of identity.

    “I think I am constantly needing to remind myself as the lawyer who’s just working on the deal documents to get the deal done that there are a lot of humans behind this,” Gold continued. “And it is a cost on them.”

    Managing those emotional costs requires something lawyers and investment bankers can’t provide: exceptional, continuous, transparent communication.

    The Communication Imperative

    Early in the December webinar, the panel addressed a question that haunts every institution considering a partnership: when do you tell people?

    The instinct is often to wait—to avoid creating anxiety until you have something definite to announce.

    That’s wrong.

    Gold emphasized the critical importance of managing stakeholder expectations through clear, consistent communication—distinguishing between exploratory discussions and finalized agreements, and being transparent about timelines and potential outcomes throughout the process.

    Tell people early. Tell them you’re “having discussions.” Tell them the timeline will be long. Tell them nothing is decided. Tell them what you know and what you don’t know.

    And keep telling them, consistently, throughout the process.

    The alternative—trying to keep major strategic discussions secret until announcing a deal—creates exactly the kind of anxiety and distrust that makes the emotional costs unbearable.

    This communication imperative extends beyond potential mergers. It’s central to the daily work of leading change.

    Back at the August webinar, Tarek Sobh—who became president of Lawrence Tech after just eighteen months as provost—spoke about the importance of helping every employee understand their role.

    “What is most important, I think, is having all of our leaders ensure that every employee on campus understands her or his role in how the campus runs and how important what they do is to the well-being of the whole campus and its students and its budget and its reputation, and so on and so forth.”

    This isn’t feel-good rhetoric. It’s strategic communication.

    “The whole concept of somebody coming in at any level to an educational institution to get a paycheck is not what is going to make eminent institutions of higher education thrive or survive,” Sobh said bluntly.

    Every custodian, every admissions counselor, every IT specialist, every faculty member needs to understand how their work connects to institutional success. And leaders at every level—not just the president—need to articulate that connection.

    Proving Value With Data

    Communication isn’t just about process and connection. It’s also about demonstrating value, to prospective students, current students, alumni, donors, legislators, and the community.

    And in 2025, that means data.

    Sobh has learned to articulate Lawrence Tech’s value proposition with precision: “97% of my students continue on and are employed at this level, and they are guaranteed a job, and 85% live locally.”

    That’s not abstract mission language. That’s quantifiable impact.

    “Articulating your student outcomes, articulating your impact on the community from an economic impact point and social impact point of view, keeping all of your channels open and continuing to clearly articulate your value proposition is the balancing argument or statement that is desperately needed for institutions in this time and day to prove their worth,” Sobh said.

    Economic impact. Social impact. Student outcomes. Employment rates. Local retention. These are the metrics that matter to legislators deciding on state funding, to donors considering major gifts, to families evaluating whether tuition is worth it.

    The Partnership Spectrum

    One of the most valuable contributions from the December webinar was Chet Haskell’s articulation of the partnership spectrum.

    Not every collaboration needs to be a merger. In fact, most shouldn’t be.

    Haskell outlined four levels:

    1. Consortium Arrangements: Shared services like libraries, bookstores, and food services. These reduce costs without requiring deep integration. They’re relatively easy to implement and maintain.

    2. Alliances: Academic program sharing, cross-registration, joint research initiatives. These require more coordination but preserve institutional independence.

    3. Affiliations: Closer integration around specific strategic goals. More commitment than alliances, but still stopping short of a merger.

    4. Full Mergers/Acquisitions: Complete integration, with one institution typically absorbing another or creating an entirely new entity.

    The key is matching the level of partnership to institutional needs and readiness.

    Haskell distinguished between crisis-driven partnerships—where institutions wait until they’re running out of money—and strategic partnerships, where institutions proactively explore collaborations that could benefit both parties. The latter, he argued, is far preferable.

    But strategic partnerships require something crisis-driven ones don’t have: resources in reserve. You can’t negotiate from desperation. You need time, financial capacity, and leadership bandwidth to explore options thoughtfully.

    Which means the best time to start building partnership relationships is before you need them.

    Remember the eighteen-month rule? If you wait until a crisis to start talking to potential partners, you won’t have eighteen months. You’ll have eighteen weeks, maybe eighteen days.

    Start the conversations now. Build the relationships. Understand the cultures. Then, when opportunity or necessity arises, you’re ready.

    State Demographics and Local Adaptation

    The August webinar also surfaced an important reality: national enrollment trends matter less than state demographics.

    Presbyterian College, in growing South Carolina, is seeing enrollment growth. Augustana College, in declining Illinois, faces different challenges.

    “South Carolina is a state that’s growing, and so that does help us,” Gustafson noted. About 60% of Presbyterian’s students come from South Carolina. “But we have to be very vigilant because we can’t guarantee that that will happen another year.”

    Meanwhile, Talentino at Augustana is adapting to Illinois realities by adding multilingual enrollment counselors, working with community-based organizations in urban areas, and creating summer bridge programs to support student success.

    Lawrence Tech, in Michigan, focused on developing three new graduate programs in high-demand areas—strategic program development based on market analysis rather than faculty interests.

    Each institution is adapting to its local context. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution.

    But there are common principles: know your market, track your data, be willing to change, and move before crisis forces your hand.

    The Board Challenge: Governance in Crisis

    Throughout both webinars, a consistent theme emerged that none of the panelists explicitly stated, but all of them circled back to: boards aren’t prepared for the strategic decisions facing small colleges today.

    This surfaced most starkly in the December Q&A session, when one participant observed that “colleges and universities cultivate irrational loyalty to the institution, which runs counter to the thought of mergers and partnerships and alliances.”

    Read that again: irrational loyalty.

    It’s the same emotional attachment that makes alumni generous donors and passionate advocates. But when an institution faces existential decisions—whether to merge, how to restructure, which programs to cut—that loyalty can become a liability.

    Another participant noted that “board members oftentimes don’t know how to act or ask the right questions, given the way that higher education oftentimes designs and recruits their board of trustees.”

    This is the structural problem: most small college boards are composed primarily of alumni who love their institution. They’re selected for their capacity to give and their willingness to advocate. They’re rarely selected for their expertise in finance, operations, technology, strategic restructuring, or M&A.

    Which means that when a president brings forward a partnership proposal or a CFO presents financial projections, the board often lacks the framework to evaluate what they’re hearing.

    They ask questions like, “Will we keep our name?” What about our traditions? How will this affect our identity?

    These are reasonable emotional questions. But they’re not the strategic questions that determine whether a partnership will work: What are the combined revenue projections? How will academic programs integrate? What’s the governance structure? What happens to debt obligations? Where are the synergies and where are the conflicts?

    The panel’s recommendation was consistent: board education before a crisis.

    Run hypothetical merger scenarios when there’s no actual deal on the table. Present three possible partner profiles and ask: Would we consider this? Why or why not? What questions would we need answered?

    Help boards understand financial metrics that matter beyond the composite score. Teach them to ask hard questions about cash flow, operating margins, and strategic positioning.

    And consider diversifying board composition—not to diminish alumni representation, but to complement it with specific expertise the institution needs: finance professionals who can read balance sheets, technology executives who understand digital transformation, healthcare or corporate leaders who’ve navigated mergers.

    Because when crisis arrives—and for many small colleges, it will—you need a board that can think strategically, ask sophisticated questions, and make difficult decisions based on institutional sustainability rather than emotional attachment alone.

    The eighteen-month rule applies here too: you can’t educate a board in six weeks when a partnership opportunity appears. You need to start now.

    The Bottom Line

    When Tarek Sobh arrived at Lawrence Technological University in September 2020, he could have started changing things immediately. He had the expertise. He had the mandate. He had ideas.

    Instead, he spent eighteen months listening.

    And when he finally became president and began implementing changes, he did so from a position of deep cultural understanding. He knew which changes would be embraced and which would face resistance. He knew whose support he needed and how to earn it. He knew what the institution was and what it could become.

    That’s not just one president’s wisdom. It’s the pattern that emerged across both webinars—from college presidents navigating daily challenges to experts guiding institutions through transformative partnerships.

    Know your numbers. Build your relationships. Understand your culture. Communicate transparently. Prove your value with data. Give yourself time.

    And remember: there should be no surprises.

    The challenges facing small colleges are real. The demographic cliff is arriving. Financial pressures are mounting. Political scrutiny is intensifying.

    But the leaders in these webinars aren’t panicking. They’re planning. They’re adapting. They’re building partnerships. They’re preparing their boards. They’re quantifying their value. They’re listening to their cultures before trying to change them.

    They’re giving themselves eighteen months to get it right.

    That’s not paralysis. That’s wisdom.

    And it might be exactly what saves small college America.

    Looking Forward: Proactive, Not Reactive: Three Conversations to Start This Week

    If you’re a president, provost, CFO, or trustee, here are three conversations you can start right now—before crisis forces them:

    1. With your board: Schedule a working session on hypothetical partnerships. Present three different institutional profiles (a larger regional university, a peer liberal arts college, a specialized technical institution) and ask: “If each approached us about a partnership, what questions would we need answered? What would make us say yes? What would be dealbreakers?” Don’t wait for an actual proposal to discover your board can’t evaluate one.

    2. With your leadership team: Review your financial indicators beyond the composite score. Do you know your real cash flow position? What is your operating margin trend over five years? Your net tuition revenue per student? If a crisis emerged in twelve months, what partnerships or changes would you need to have been building toward now? Move before you have to.

    3. With peer institutions: Identify 2-3 colleges (whether potential partners or not) and start building authentic relationships with their leadership. Not transactional networking—genuine understanding of their challenges, culture, and strategic direction. The eighteen-month rule means those relationships need to start today.

    These conversations won’t solve every problem. But they’ll position you to make better decisions when opportunity or necessity arrives.

    And they’ll help you build the institutional muscle memory for strategic thinking—the kind of thinking that distinguishes colleges that thrive from colleges that merely survive.

    —

    Small College America’s webinar series is moderated by Dean Hoke of Edu Alliance Group, Kent Barnds of Augustana College and featured Dr. Anita Gustafson (Presbyterian College), Dr. Andrea Talentino (Augustana College), Dr. Tarek Sobh (Lawrence Technological University), Dr. Chet Haskell (higher education consultant), Dr. Barry Ryan (university leader and attorney), AJ Prager (Hilltop Securities), and Stephanie Gold (Hogan Lovells). For more information about Small College America, visit http://www.smallcollegeamerica.net.

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  • Powering college readiness through community partnerships

    Powering college readiness through community partnerships

    Key points:

    Texas faces a widening gap between high school completion and college readiness. Educators are already doing important and demanding work, but closing this gap will require systemic solutions, thoughtful policy, and sustained support to match their efforts.

    A recent American Institutes for Research report shows that just 56.8 percent of Texas’ graduating seniors met a college-readiness standard. Furthermore, 27 percent of rural students attend high schools that don’t offer Advanced Placement (AP) courses. This highlights a significant gap in preparedness and accessibility.

    This summer, distinguished K-12 educators and nonprofit leaders discussed how to better support college-bound students.

    The gap widens

    Among them was Saki Milton, mathematics teacher and founder of The GEMS Camp, a nonprofit serving minority girls in male-dominated studies. She stressed the importance of accessible, rigorous coursework. “If you went somewhere where there’s not a lot of AP offerings or college readiness courses … you’re just not going to be ready. That’s a fact.”

    Additional roundtable participants reminded us that academics alone aren’t enough. Students struggle considerably with crucial soft skills such as communication, time management, and active listening. Many aspiring college-bound students experience feelings of isolation–a disconnect between their lived experiences and a college-ready mentality, often due to the lack of emotional support.

    Says Milton, “How do we teach students to build community for themselves and navigate these institutions, because that’s a huge part? Content and rigor are one thing, but a college’s overall system is another. Emphasizing how to build that local community is huge!”

    “Kids going to college are quitting because they don’t have the emotional support once they get there,” says Karen Medina, director of Out of School Time Programs at Jubilee Park. “They’re not being connected to resources or networking groups that can help them transition to college. They might be used to handling their own schedule and homework, but then they’re like, ‘Who do I go to?’ That’s a lot of the disconnection.”

    David Shallenberger, vice president of advancement at the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Dallas, indicates that the pandemic contributed to that soft skills deficit. “Many students struggled to participate meaningfully in virtual learning, leaving them isolated and without opportunities for authentic interaction. Those young learners are now in high school and will likely struggle to transition to higher education.”

    Purposeful intervention

    These challenges–academic and soft skills gaps–require purposeful intervention.

    Through targeted grants, more than 35,000 North Texas middle and high school students can access college readiness tools. Nonprofit leaders are integrating year-round academic and mentorship support to prepare students academically and emotionally.

    Latoyia Greyer of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Tarrant County introduced a summer program with accompanying scholarship opportunities. The organization is elevating students’ skills through interview practice. Like ours, her vision is to instill confidence in learners.

    Greyer isn’t alone. At the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Development Officer Elizabeth Card uses the grant to advance college readiness by strengthening its high school internship program. She aims to spark students’ curiosity, introduce rewarding career pathways, and foster a passion for STEM. She also plans to bolster core soft skills through student interactions with museum guests and hands-on biology experiments.

    These collaborative efforts have clarified the message: We can do extraordinary things by partnering. Impactful and sustainable progress in education cannot occur in a vacuum. Grant programs such as the AP Success Grant strengthen learning and build equity, and our partners are the driving force toward changing student outcomes.

    The readiness gap continues to impact Texas students, leaving them at a disadvantage as they transition to college. School districts alone cannot solve this challenge; progress requires active collaboration with nonprofits, businesses, and community stakeholders. The path forward is clear–partnerships have the power to drive meaningful change and positively impact our communities.

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  • How to build smarter partnerships and become digitally mature

    How to build smarter partnerships and become digitally mature

    Across higher education, the conversation about digital transformation has shifted from connection to capability. Most universities are digitally connected, yet few are digitally mature

    The challenge for 2026 and beyond is not whether institutions use technology, but whether their systems and partnerships enable people and processes to work together to strengthen institutional capacity, learner outcomes, and agility.

    Boundless Learning’s 2025 Higher Education Technology and Strategy Survey underscored this transition: 95 per cent of leaders said education management partners are appealing, and one in three described them as extremely so. Yet preferences are changing: modular, fee-for-service models now outpace traditional revenue-sharing arrangements, signalling a desire for flexibility and control.

    Leaders also identified their top digital priorities: innovation enablement (53 per cent), streamlined faculty workflows (52 per cent), and integrated analytics (49 per cent). In other words, universities are no longer chasing the next platform; they want systems that think.

    Why systems thinking matters

    That idea is central to Suha Tamim’s workAnalyzing the Complexities of Online Education Systems: A Systems Thinking Perspective. Tamim frames online education as a dynamic ecosystem in which a change in one area, such as technology, pedagogy, or management, ripples through the whole. She argues that institutions need a “systems-level” view connecting the macro (strategy), meso (infrastructure and management), and micro (teaching and learning) layers.

    Seen this way, technology decisions become design choices that shape the culture and operations of the institution. Adopting a new platform is not just an IT project; it influences governance, academic workload, and the student experience. The goal is alignment across those levels so that each reinforces the other.

    Boundless Learning’s Learning Experience Suite (LXS) embodies this approach. Rather than adding another application into an already crowded environment, LXS helps institutions orchestrate existing systems; linking learning management, analytics, and support functions into a cohesive, secure, learner-centred framework. It is a practical application of systems thinking: connecting data flows, surfacing insights, and simplifying faculty and learner experiences within one integrated ecosystem.

    From outsourcing to empowering

    The shift toward integration also reflects how universities engage external partners. Jeffrey Sun, Heather Turner, and Robert Cermak, in the American Journal of Distance Education, describe four main reasons universities outsource online programme management:

    1. Responding quickly to competitive pressures
    2. Accessing upfront capital
    3. Filling capability gaps
    4. Learning and scaling in-house

    Their College Curation Strategy Framework shows that institutions partner with external providers not just to cut costs, but to build strategic capacity. Yet the traditional online programme management (OPM) model anchored in long-term revenue-share contracts has drawn criticism for limited transparency and loss of institutional control.

    Our own data suggest that this critique is reshaping practice. Universities are moving from outsourcing to empowerment: seeking education-management partners who enhance internal capability rather than replace it. This evolution from OPMs to Education Management Partners (EMPs) marks a decisive turn toward collaborative, capacity-building relationships.

    The Learning Experience Suite fits squarely within this new model. It is not an outsourced service but a connective layer that enables institutions to manage their digital ecosystems with greater visibility and confidence, while benefiting from enterprise-grade integration and security. It exemplifies partnership as a mechanism for capability development, a move from vendor management to shared strategic growth.

    From fragmentation to fluency

    Many institutions remain caught in what might be called digital fragmentation. According to our survey, nearly half of leaders cite data silos, disconnected platforms, and inconsistent learner experiences as obstacles to progress. These are not isolated technical issues; they are systemic barriers that affect pedagogy, governance, and institutional trust.

    Tamim’s framework describes such misalignment as a state of “disequilibrium.” Overcoming it requires coordinated action across levels, strategic clarity from leadership, adaptive management structures, and interoperable tools that make integration intuitive. The objective is to move from digital accumulation to digital fluency: an environment where technology amplifies, rather than fragments, institutional purpose.

    Learning Experience Suite was designed precisely to address this. By connecting data across systems, enabling real-time analytics, and ensuring accessibility through a mobile-first design, it allows institutions to build coherence and confidence in their digital operations.

    Building partnerships

    The next phase of higher education technology will be defined not by the tools universities choose but by the quality of their partnerships. As scholars like Sun have cautioned, outsourcing core academic functions without transparency can erode autonomy. Conversely, partnerships grounded in shared governance, open data, and aligned values can strengthen the academic mission.

    For Boundless Learning, this is the central opportunity of the coming decade: to reimagine partnership as co-evolution. Universities, platforms, and providers function best as interconnected actors within a wider learning system, each contributing expertise to advance learner success and institutional resilience.

    When viewed through a systems lens, the key question is no longer whether universities should outsource, but how they orchestrate. The challenge is to combine the right mix of internal capability, external expertise, and interoperable technology to achieve measurable impact.

    That, ultimately, is what digital maturity requires and what the Learning Experience Suite was designed to deliver.

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  • New heights in tertiary partnerships

    New heights in tertiary partnerships

    If we are serious about tackling the challenges posed by the Post-16 Education and Skills white paper, we need to rethink the relationship between our universities, colleges, and local economies.

    This is particularly important for institutions located outside the country’s major cities and conurbations – where the devolution agenda is somewhat more complicated.

    Beyond the city

    We all know that local economies depend on responsive, joined-up skills systems. Together colleges and universities bring proximity to communities and employers, backed up by research, innovation, and regional influence. And this is why meaningful collaboration between them really does matter, whether it is responding to the skills agenda; local devolution; the Lifelong Learning Entitlement; the need for more flexible and inclusive pathways into HE; local innovation ecosystems; and economic regeneration and regional productivity.

    There needs to be sector commitment that a better coordinated and more coherent system is required, particularly if we are to deliver on the government’s renewed national ambition for two-thirds of young people to have a higher-level qualification (Level 4 and above) by the age of 25.

    The UK government’s Post-16 Education and Skills white paper sets out a transformative vision for how universities and colleges should collaborate to build a more integrated and responsive skills system. FE will be encouraged to offer Level 4 and Level 5 courses targeting our regional priority sectors and needs, as identified with our Strategic Authorities through their Growth and Skills Plans. This has implications for universities, who will need to ensure there are pathways from these new courses into the curriculum, and for Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP) partners, with whom links will need to be strengthened. In short, we need to work regionally, and locally, to better align our offering with local employer demand and government Industrial Strategy priorities.

    In practical terms this means more employer-responsive co-designed curricula and new flexible pathways to help ensure smoother transitions between FE and HE, perhaps with joint qualifications and credit transfer systems. We must now be co-architects of a skills ecosystem that is agile, inclusive, and economically aligned.

    The case of Exeter

    The University of Exeter and Exeter College have cultivated a strong collaborative relationship over the past 25 years, deepening our partnership through a formal Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) established nine years ago and now in its second iteration. A fundamental driver for the relationship was the realisation that Exeter is an unusual geography in that it is the only UK city in which post-16 education is served solely by one Russell group university and one outstanding tertiary college. This has enabled us to take an experimental approach.

    At the heart of a successful collaboration sits ambition, the need, or even responsibility to drive social mobility and to make a difference to a place. Not just because of a policy, but because when HE and FE collaborate – it creates real synergy and a powerful force for change. The key to success, like most things in life – is people, but not just people, the right people at the right level in both the college and university believing collaboration is important. Dare we say it is also important, as an organisation, to know yourself, and to be clear about the purpose of each organisation – so that competition is minimised or eliminated. If your first thought is to monetise the partnership, it is likely to fail.

    Driving innovation

    Progress in FE-HE collaboration has often either come from more recent innovations such as degree apprenticeships, or through a need to work in new ways to deliver within regional funding streams. As a starting point, universities need to map and understand their local FE landscape to identify potential complementarities in skills provision, learner demographics, and employer relationships.

    This enduring alliance is anchored by high-level commitment and strategic alignment, for example, with senior university leaders actively participating on the college board. Such integration ensures shared vision and governance, shared accountability, and the blurring of traditional boundaries and silos.

    Our partnership here in Exeter extends across multiple initiatives, including joint sponsorship of the Ted Wragg Multi Academy Trust and the Exeter Mathematics School, as well as membership of regional initiatives such as the South West Institute of Technology, reflecting a shared commitment to educational innovation and regional development.

    A key feature of this collaboration is the development of thematic “escalators” – these are best understood as pathways that connect college and university expertise in areas such as digital, sport, and green technologies. They have led to the establishment of pathways from FE to HE and consistent curricula. New escalator activity is now happening in both civil engineering and health. These benefit students by providing levels of certainty and logical routes for progression and boost the local economy by attracting young people from the Devon community, who are more likely to gain employment in our local businesses after they graduate.

    The health escalator is particularly timely, aligning with current government priorities and offering new opportunities for joint programming and research. The sport escalator stands out as a model of success, enabling college HE students (validated by the University of Exeter) to progress athletically by playing for university teams, in partnership with local clubs. These escalators exemplify how the institutions are creating seamless transitions and shared platforms that benefit students, staff, and the wider community.

    Locally owned

    Our escalators began life as labour market tools developed collaboratively by the university, Exeter College, and Exeter City Council, following representation from local employers who had been unable to source the right skills locally for what were good, well-paid positions. This last point is important because this is not just about satisfying employer needs (which is challenging enough), but supporting social mobility, wealth creation, and retention of talent.

    Skills escalators enable FE and HE partners to target existing resources effectively and to identify and fill gaps in provision. Our initial data analytics skills escalator resulted in new FE courses at the college, new postgraduate degrees at the university, and several new degree apprenticeships. So successful was this exercise that we have recently repeated it with two new escalators focused on green skills and social care.

    Such skills escalators play to university strengths, especially their research and knowledge exchange. They also play to genuine FE strengths around employer-responsiveness and rapid curriculum change. You can read more about our skills escalators in the new Universities UK and Association of Colleges report – delivering a post-16 skills system.

    Getting civic

    Given their presence in the Post 16 Skills White paper, it is also worth referencing the role of our civic university agreements (CUAs). These have been around nationally for several years and have even had their own national impact accelerator. But to be truly impactful they need commitment and underlying operational capacity. In Exeter, our CUA brings together the University, Exeter College, the City Council and Royal Devon University Hospital (NHS), with skills, again, as a top priority – helping provide strategic oversight and governance to practical on the ground activity.

    We believe that CUAs, supported by FE-HE memoranda of understanding, can provide the strategic framework for tertiary education to succeed, with escalators helping us to deliver tangible change. But ultimately, an effective tertiary landscape will demonstrate responsiveness, progression, and continuity, and in doing so success will need to be measured through different types of metrics and the rewarding of collaborative labour-market driven provision, and not just individual institutional performance.

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  • Tertiary Collaborations in Practice: what partnerships between colleges and universities actually do and where to go next

    Tertiary Collaborations in Practice: what partnerships between colleges and universities actually do and where to go next

    UK universities are under mounting financial pressure. Join HEPI and King’s College London Policy Institute on 11 November 2025 at 1pm for a webinar on how universities balance relatively stable but underfunded income streams against higher-margin but volatile sources. Register now. We look forward to seeing you there.

    This blog was kindly authored by Josh Patel (@joshpatel.bsky.social), Senior Researcher at the Edge Foundation.

    The Prime Minister’s new target is for two-thirds of young people to participate in higher-level learning by age 25. This encompasses not only undergraduate degrees but also higher technical education and apprenticeships, all delivered under a single funding model for all Level 4-6 courses. Some have described this as England’s turn to tertiary, six years after the Augar Review called for a more ‘joined-up system’.

    Since at least the 1990s, English post-secondary education has been characterised by market-based regulatory apparatus and fragmentation. Further education is associated with technical and vocational education, and training and entry to the labour market; higher education with professions, leadership, and research. Oversight of both is dispersed across multiple agencies and further disconnected from adult and lifelong learning. Critics have argued that, consequently, market logics have sustained wasteful competition and produced a homogenised system that privileges higher education over further education, to the detriment of equity and national skills needs.

    If Augar exposed the limits of market-driven differentiation between further education and higher education, tertiary approaches in the devolved nations illustrate how greater collaboration and integrated oversight offer a potential corrective. Wales and Scotland have advanced considerably in a ‘tertiary’ direction and developed governance modes that exercise holistic stewardship over funding and quality regimes. They are justified on grounds of efficiency, concertedness, and the capacity to advance the common good. In Wales, Medr uses its statutory powers under the Well-being of Future Generations Act to guide institutions in meeting duties on equality, sustainability, and civic mission. In Scotland, the Scottish Funding Council leads the Outcome Agreement process, through which colleges and universities set out activities in return for funding. Even in England, partnerships at a regional level, such as those in the North East or through Institutes of Technology, aim to facilitate partnerships to align lifelong learning with local economic needs. In 2021, the last time a representative survey of the scale of collaboration took place, 80% of colleges and 50% of universities in the UK had formal programme links (and it is likely that collaboration has grown since then).

    Despite this prevalence and enthusiasm, research on how the benefits arising from tertiary collaboration manifest at the level of institutions and students is limited. In a short exploratory study with the Edge Foundation, I examined one facet of tertiary systems in Scotland and England: the creation of formal student transition ‘pathways’ between colleges and universities. The aim was not a comprehensive survey, but to sample something of the nature of collaboration in existing systems, to gather evidence to think with and about the concept of tertiary and the place of collaboration and competition.

    Collaboration as an adaptive strategy

    Existing collaborations are, perhaps surprisingly, not foremost concerned with any given common good. Instead, collaboration often emerges as an adaptive strategy within conditions of resource scarcity. Local ‘natural alliances’ in shared specialisms, mutual values, and commitments to widening participation were important in establishing trust necessary to sustain joint work. Yet, as the study found, institutional precarity is the principal driver.

    One Scottish interviewee put it plainly:

    ‘If I’m sitting there and I’ve got 500 applications, like 10 applications for any place, I’ve got good, strong applications. I’m not going to be going, right, how am I going to look at different ways to bring in students?’

    Well-resourced institutions do not collaborate out of necessity: those under pressure do. Partnerships often take the form of a ‘grow your own’ recruitment pipeline, guaranteeing transitions between partner institutions. Universities could ask ‘some tough questions’ of colleges if progression was lower than anticipated. In some cases, institutions agree to partition markets to avoid directly competing for the same students.

    Collaboration could also be used as an instrument of competition. In Scotland, articulation agreements (under which universities recognise vocational qualifications such as HNDs and HNCs and admit students with advanced standing) are commonplace. Colleges in this research reported ‘some bad behaviour’ where partner universities would use these agreements to siphon off students from colleges to secure enrolment numbers. This was contrary to the wishes of colleges, which argued that many such students might benefit from the more intimate and supportive college environment for an additional year, better preparing them to enter the more independent learning environment of university.

    What collaboration offers students

    Where collaboration was stable, tangible benefits followed for learners. Partnerships combine colleges’ attentive pedagogies and flexible resources with university accreditation and facilities. This enables smaller class sizes, greater pastoral attention, and sometimes improved retention and progression, particularly in educational cold spots. Colleges bring local specialisms and staff expertise, often linked to industry, which enrich university courses through co-design and joint delivery.

    This lends cautious support to the claims of tertiary advocates: that collaboration can widen access and enhance provision. Yet formal, longitudinal evidence of graduate outcomes remains rare. The value of such partnerships, their distinctiveness, public benefit, and contribution to regional prosperity need to be more readily championed.

    From expedient to strategic collaboration

    As an instrument, collaboration is worth understanding. The capacity to facilitate collaboration as a strategic good is an important policy lever where market mechanisms are unable to respond immediately or efficiently to the imperatives of national need and public finance. The study suggests four priorities for policymakers:

    Clarify national priorities and reform incentives

    Collaboration has greater utility than an institutional survival tool. With the bringing together of funding for further education and higher education, there is an opportunity to create stability. Together with the clear articulation of long-term educational goals, strategic cooperation in pursuit of these ends could be sustained.

    Strengthen regional governance

    Where regional stewardship exists, through articulation hubs or in Scotland’s Outcome Agreements, collaboration is more systematic. England’s existing fragmented oversight and policy churn undermine this. Regional coherence enables institutions to collectively make strategic planning decisions.

    Value colleges’ distinct niche

    Colleges’ localism, technical capacity, and pedagogical expertise are distinctive assets. Policy should promote these specialisms and encourage co-design and co-delivery rather than hierarchical franchising. Partnerships should foreground each institution’s unique contribution, not replicate the same provision in different guises.

    Improve data sharing and evaluation

    The absence of mechanisms to track students’ journeys and long-term outcomes, including ‘distance travelled’ evaluations, makes claims about distinctiveness and public benefit harder to substantiate.

    Tertiary turns in resource scarcity

    Policy discourse has tended to over-dichotomise competition and collaboration. The question is: to what extent each strategy is most helpful for achieving agreed social ends. Where partnership is an appropriate mechanism, it requires a policy architecture with clarity of purpose and stability. To what ends collaboration is put to must be settled through democratic means – a more complicated question altogether.

    The full report can be read here.

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  • Edu Alliance Group Launches the Center for College Partnerships and Alliances – Edu Alliance Journal

    Edu Alliance Group Launches the Center for College Partnerships and Alliances – Edu Alliance Journal

    October 27, 2025, By Dean Hoke—As many of you know, I am deeply committed to helping small and mid-sized colleges find sustainable paths forward. That’s why I’m proud to announce the launch of the Edu Alliance Group Center for College Partnerships and Alliances, dedicated to helping institutions explore partnerships, mergers, and strategic alliances that strengthen their mission and impact.

    The Center will be led by newly appointed partners Dr. Chet Haskell and Dr. Barry Ryan, two distinguished higher education leaders with deep experience in governance, accreditation, and institutional transformation. Together, they bring a wealth of expertise in guiding colleges and universities through complex transitions while preserving mission integrity and academic excellence.

    The Center’s framework draws on insights presented in “A Guide to College Partnerships, Mergers, and Strategic Alliances for Boards and Leadership: From Awareness to Implementation,” authored by Dr. Chet Haskell, Dr. Barry Ryan, and Edu Alliance Managing Partner Dean Hoke. The guide outlines a five-stage model: Recognize, Assess, Explore, Negotiate, and Implement. It emphasizes mission integrity, transparency, and trust as the foundation for success.

    “Our goal is to help college leaders and boards move from awareness to action with clarity, confidence, and compassion,” said Dr. Haskell. “Partnerships and alliances can preserve institutional identity while creating new opportunities for students and communities.”

    “Edu Alliance has long supported institutions navigating change,” added Dean Hoke, Co-Founder and Managing Partner. “With the launch of the Center, we’re expanding our ability to help presidents and boards design solutions that are both visionary and pragmatic.”

    About the Leadership

    Dr. Chester (Chet) Haskell recently completed six and a half years as Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and University Provost at Antioch University, where he played key roles in integrating the institution academically and structurally, as well as in creating the Coalition for the Common Good with Otterbein University, where he was Vice President for Graduate Programs. He previously held senior positions at Harvard University—including Associate Dean of the Kennedy School of Government—and later served as Dean of the College at Simmons College (Boston). Dr. Haskell went on to serve as President of both the Monterey Institute of International Studies (now part of Middlebury College) and Cogswell Polytechnical College, leading both institutions through successful mergers. He holds DPA and MPA degrees from the University of Southern California, an MA from the University of Virginia, and an AB cum laude from Harvard University.

    Dr. Barry Ryan has served as President of five universities and as Provost and Chief of Staff at three others, spanning state, private nonprofit, and private for-profit institutions. A Supreme Court Fellow in the chambers of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Dr. Ryan is a member of several federal and state bars and has held two terms as Commissioner for WASC (WSCUC). He has led institutions through mergers, acquisitions, and affiliations that preserved academic quality, expanded access, and strengthened long-term viability. His leadership is characterized by transparency, shared governance, and a deep commitment to stakeholder engagement. Dr. Ryan earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Dipl.GB in international business from the University of Oxford.

    Upcoming Webinar

    As part of the launch, Edu Alliance will host a free national webinar on December 3, 2025, at 1 PM Eastern time titled “Navigating Higher Education’s Existential Challenges: From Partnerships and Mergers to Reinvention.” To register, go to https://admissions.augustana.edu/register/?id=838202a3-c7a7-4ce0-8dc1-11c7979fe27c

    The session will feature a distinguished panel of experts discussing practical strategies for independent colleges and universities.
    Panelists include

    • Dr. Chet Haskell and Dr. Barry Ryan, Partners and Co-Directors of Edu Alliance’s Center for College Partnerships and Alliances;
    • A.J. Prager, Managing Director at Hilltop Securities, specializing in Higher Education Mergers & Acquisitions and Strategic Partnerships;
    • Stephanie Gold, Partner and Head of the Higher Education Practice at Hogan Lovells.

    The program will be moderated by Dean Hoke and Kent Barnds, co-hosts of Small College America.

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  • 10 ways to strengthen family-school partnerships and support learning

    10 ways to strengthen family-school partnerships and support learning

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    Clear family-school communications and robust supports for students with learning differences are just a few ways education systems can improve family-school connections to support student outcomes, nonprofit Learning Heroes said in a report released Tuesday.

    One of the biggest barriers to family-school partnerships is what the report calls a “perception gap,” or when families believe their child is performing at higher academic levels than what’s really occurring. 

    In fact, about 88% of parents in a 2023 survey said they thought their child was at or above grade level in math and reading. In reality, the actual share of children performing at this level is closer to 30%, as shown by 8th grade performance on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

    Although parents carry significant influence over their child’s education, they can’t help fix a problem they don’t know exists, the report said.

    “Parents today have unprecedented voice and choice in their children’s education, yet, too often, lack the information to make confident, informed decisions,” said Bibb Hubbard, founder and CEO of Learning Heroes, in a Tuesday statement. 

    The organization used 10 years of research on family-school partnerships to inform best practices that improve these relationships with the aim of driving student success.

    “With a decade of insights from parents, students, teachers, and principals, we have a clearer roadmap for creating schools and communities that work in true partnership with families and help every child thrive,” Hubbard said.

    The Learning Heroes report offered these 10 suggestions for strengthening family-school partnerships.  

    Give parents accurate information on student performance

    When parents know their child needs support, they are more likely to seek academic supports, such as tutoring and summer math or reading programs. They are also more likely to prioritize school attendance. 

    The report highlights state-level efforts in Texas, Arkansas and Virginia to provide parents videos, tools, and guides to bolster understanding of student grades and test scores. This also allows for comparisons with students across the state to help parents gauge their child’s college or career readiness.

    Share multiple points of learning data

    Results from annual state tests and other standardized or formative assessments can give families a fuller picture of their child’s strengths and needs.

    Some 79% of parents said their children earn Bs and better, the report said, leading most parents to think their child is performing on grade level. However, report cards can include factors other than academic achievement, such as classroom participation, effort and completion of assignments, that don’t necessarily comport with grade-level performance. 

    “As it stands, too many report cards are still sending false signals, and many families, trusting the information they’ve been given, simply aren’t aware that their students may be behind,” the report said.

    Provide parents access to information

    Ensuring parents are aware of their child’s progress — not just through a quarterly report card, but through conversations with teachers and other means — can help parents take action to help their child improve.

    Allow teachers time to connect with parents

    Schools should prioritize parent-teacher teams by safeguarding the time teachers need to communicate with parents, as well as needed preparation time. One example is to allow one-to-one conversations between parents and teachers at back to school nights.

    For instance, Prodeo Academy, a charter network in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, serving about 1,000 students, prioritized candid conversations, data-sharing and family-teacher conferences during the 2023-24 school year. These activities resulted in a notable increase among parents who recognized their child wasn’t working at grade level, the report said.

    Avoid family engagement as a standalone goal

    Integrating family engagement into overall school strategies for attendance, literacy and math achievement and other priorities will help educators and parents connect this effort to overall school outcomes. 

    For example, home visits can improve attendance, and student action plans created jointly by teachers and parents could help boost achievement.

    Provide pathways to postsecondary success

    Whether students attend college or go right into the workplace after high school graduation, schools should guide parents and students about the opportunities available. Access to Advanced Placement courses, dual enrollment, career awareness experiences and career and technical education can all help students discover their passions and start planning for their futures.

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  • From Partnerships and Mergers to Reinvention – Edu Alliance Journal

    From Partnerships and Mergers to Reinvention – Edu Alliance Journal

    Webinar December 3, 2025 | 1:00 PM (Eastern) Presented by Small College America with support from Edu Alliance and the American Association of University Administrators

    We Need Your Questions: To make this conversation meaningful, we need your perspective. We’re asking higher education leaders to take five minutes to complete a short, confidential survey before the event. WEBINAR SURVEY LINK

    By Dean Hoke, October 6, 2025: Mergers and closures are not new to higher education. In the 1970s alone, nearly 225 institutions either closed or merged—roughly 7% of all degree-granting institutions at the time. I experienced this personally when my alma mater permanently closed in 2020. Like thousands of alumni, I grieved the loss of a place that had shaped my life. But I also understood something many did not: this wasn’t an isolated tragedy—it was part of a larger historical cycle of growth, contraction, and reinvention.

    In the early 1990s, I was directly involved as President of a public television station that merged with a local public radio station. The process was emotional and complex, requiring open communication, transparency, and leadership from every level. As of today, both of these stations exist within one organization and are doing well. Those lessons stayed with me throughout my career in higher education.

    During my tenure as President/CEO of the American Association of University Administrators (AAUA), it became evident that higher education was entering a new era of financial strain and demographic pressure. Colleges were being forced to explore collaboration and consolidation not as strategic options—but as survival imperatives.

    At the AAUA national conference, we hosted two candid conversations about this reality:

    • A four-hour off-the-record roundtable session titled “Mergers and Acquisitions: Navigating Higher Ed’s Complex Landscape,” which included two leading higher education attorneys, the head of an acquisition firm specializing in higher education, and the Provost of a university that was being merged.
    • A public session featuring Dr. Chet Haskell (Antioch University) and Dr. Wendy Heckler (Otterbein University), who shared their groundbreaking work on the Coalition for the Common Good.

    Why This Webinar Matters

    According to Inside Higher Education’s 2025 Survey of College and University Presidents, one in three presidents at private nonprofit institutions report that their boards and senior leadership teams have had serious discussions about merging or consolidating. Even more telling:

    • 17% believe a merger or acquisition involving their institution is somewhat or very likely in the next five years.
    • 33% expect they may acquire another institution during that same period.

    These numbers underscore a critical truth: every institution should be preparing for the possibility of structural change—even those that appear stable today.

    That’s why this conversation matters now. It’s not about predicting which colleges will survive. It’s about helping leaders understand how to respond when the discussion moves from theoretical to real—when preservation of mission and identity must be balanced with financial reality.

    The Upcoming Webinar

    Against this backdrop, Small College America, with the support of Edu Alliance and AAUA, will host a live 90-minute webinar:

    “Navigating Higher Education’s Existential Challenges: From Partnerships and Mergers to Reinvention” Tuesday, December 3, 2025 | 1:00 PM Eastern

    This will not be another PowerPoint presentation filled with charts and trends. Instead, a panel of leaders who have lived through mergers, partnerships, and reinvention will share what they learned from the inside.

    Panelists include:

    • Dr. Chet Haskell, Former Provost, Antioch University, and key architect of the Coalition for the Common Good
    • Dr. Barry Ryan, Retired President, Woodbury University, who recently led his institution through a merger with University of Redlands
    • AJ Prager, Managing Director at Hilltop Securities, specializing in Higher Education Mergers & Acquisitions and Strategic Partnerships
    • Higher education legal expert to be announced

    Dean Hoke and Kent Barnds, co-hosts of Small College America, will moderate the conversation. Our focus is on the human side of institutional transformation—the conversations that happen behind closed doors, the decisions that test leadership resolve, and the strategies that allow communities to emerge stronger.

    Registration for this free webinar will begin on November 3rd.

    Who Should Attend

    This webinar is designed for:

    • Presidents, provosts, and trustees facing questions of sustainability or succession.
    • CFOs and senior administrators managing budget pressures or enrollment cliffs.
    • Board members and advisors preparing for strategic decision-making.

    If you’ve heard phrases like “structural deficit,” “strategic alternatives,” or “path to viability” in your recent meetings, this discussion is for you.

    Why We Need Your Voice

    To make this conversation meaningful, we need your perspective. We’re asking higher education leaders to take five minutes to complete a short, confidential survey before the event. Your input will directly shape the webinar by:

    • Identifying the most urgent questions institutions are facing.
    • Prioritizing real-world concerns rather than theoretical discussions.
    • Allowing panelists to address the issues keeping leaders awake at night.

    This is your opportunity to ensure that the session reflects the realities of your campus—not assumptions from the outside. Your identity will remain anonymous; our goal is to understand the questions, not who’s asking them.

    Survey closes November 29 to allow time for integration into the program.

    Take the survey today: WEBINAR SURVEY LINK

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  • First-Year Survey Data Prompts New Partnerships, Coms Strategy

    First-Year Survey Data Prompts New Partnerships, Coms Strategy

    Participation in extracurricular activities and campus events is tied to student retention, but a significant number of students don’t get plugged in. A 2024 survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found that 26 percent of respondents had never attended a campus event and 35 percent weren’t involved in activities outside the classroom.

    About three in 10 college students said they’d be more involved on campus if they were more aware of the available extracurricular opportunities. Staff at the University of Arizona recognized this awareness gap and, for the past decade, have surveyed incoming students to identify their interests and provide them with tailored resources.

    The New Student Information Form provides campus leaders with actionable data and information about the students joining the Wildcat community.

    Survey Says

    According to a 2024 survey of student success leaders by Inside Higher Ed and Hanover Research, 44 percent of respondents said their institution is highly effective at collecting data for student success and 40 percent said their college effectively uses student success data to inform decisions and initiatives. One-third of respondents said their institution has built a culture of data around student success.

    How it works: The University of Arizona first launched the NSIF in 2012 to understand student interests and their previous experiences with extracurricular activities in high school, said Jenny Nirh, director of collaboration, communications and outreach of student success at Arizona. In 2021, the form was revamped by the student success office with a focus on anticipated student resource needs and other personal information that could be relevant to academic success, such as caregiver status.

    In a typical year, between 85 and 90 percent of incoming first-year and transfer students complete the form, representing as many as 8,000 students, said senior analyst Laura Andrews, who is responsible for NSIF. In 2024, 6,500 first-year students responded to the NSIF, an 88 percent response rate.

    When asked where they wanted to get plugged in during their first year, two-thirds of respondents indicated they were interested in internships, while 58 percent selected student employment and the same share chose academic clubs.

    Over the past five years, staff have seen students report the same anticipated needs. In 2024, the greatest share of students said they expect to need at least some help accessing and managing financial aid (63 percent) and academic supports (56 percent).

    In addition to focusing on their interests, the survey asked students about their perceptions of college and the campus community. While a majority of respondents expressed excitement about being a student at Arizona, one in five indicated they were unsure about their ability to fit in and a similar number said they were uncertain whether their peers would assist them if they needed help.

    A question about caretaking responsibilities was added in 2023 to identify those students and connect them with childcare or caregiving resources available on campus, Nirh said.

    Data in action: Using NSIF data, staff have been able to respond to individuals’ needs and create strategic initiatives within various departments and offices that ensure no student is left behind. Now, the student success department tailors communications to students based on responses and promotes relevant support services.

    Each college at the university is given a breakdown of survey results for their incoming students, including their interests and expectations. The report is often distributed to department heads and faculty or used for student outreach purposes.

    Using data, staff found that Pell Grant recipients were more likely than the general campus population to say they wanted help navigating financial aid (19 percentage points higher) and student employment (12 percentage points higher). In addition, first-generation students were 10 percentage points more likely than the average student to say they needed support asking for help. The Thrive Center within the student success division uses this data in their first-generation support initiative, First Cats, and in their efforts to boost financial wellness.

    The Housing and Residence Life Division conducts an end-of-year survey of residents about their support needs and whether students sought help; staff received similar responses to those articulated by incoming students in the NSIF months earlier. However, students said they were less likely to seek help for their personal development—including mental health, time management and socialization—than for navigating campus life.

    If your student success program has a unique feature or twist, we’d like to know about it. Click here to submit.

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  • Industry partnerships with Microsoft – Campus Review

    Industry partnerships with Microsoft – Campus Review

    University of the Sunshine Coast pro-vice-chancellor (global and engagement) Alex Elibank-Murray and technology lead Associate Professor Rania Shibl share their experiences of partnerships with industry to enhance student experience in fast-changing fields.

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