Tag: Strategic

  • WEEKEND READING: The one strategic role almost every university underestimates – and why it matters now more than ever

    WEEKEND READING: The one strategic role almost every university underestimates – and why it matters now more than ever

    This blog was kindly authored by Caroline Dunne, Leadership Coach, Change Mentor and former Chief of Staff.  

    For many Vice-Chancellors, the challenge is one of bandwidth. Leading a university today is equivalent to running a major regional employer – complex multi-campus operations, often turning over hundreds of millions of pounds, under intensifying public and political scrutiny. In this environment, strategic support is not a luxury; it is a prerequisite for strong, steady leadership that can hold the line between urgent pressure and long-term ambition.

    Within this context, one critical role remains under-recognised in much of the sector: the Chief of Staff.

    Drawing on insights from interviews conducted in the first quarter of this academic year with Chiefs of Staff and senior Higher Education leaders across the UK, this piece explores the strategic value of the role and why, in a period of profound turbulence, now could be the right time to put more “Chief” into the Chief of Staff.

    An untapped strategic asset

    Outside higher education, the Chief of Staff is a well-understood part of modern executive infrastructure: a senior adviser who expands the horizon of the chief executive, drives alignment, absorbs complexity and enables organisational agility.

    Inside higher education, the role is far more variable. In some institutions, the role is positioned as a strategic partner to the Vice-Chancellor; in others, it is mistaken for an ‘executive assistant-plus’ or folded into a different portfolio. Reporting lines, authority and remit differ widely, sometimes limiting the role’s ability to deliver its full strategic value.

    What emerged consistently from my interviews is this: the absence of a portfolio is the Chief of Staff’s greatest strategic advantage. It enables the role to traverse boundaries, ‘keep things moving in the grey areas’ and view institutional issues through an enterprise lens rather than a single-portfolio perspective.

    As one interviewee described it, not having a portfolio makes you:

    A free agent with an aerial view.

    Greater understanding of this untapped role is overdue. Paradoxically – and perhaps counterintuitively in a resource-constrained sector – it is precisely in this context that a well-positioned Chief of Staff becomes most critical to institutional success.

    Five modes of strategic influence

    In a sector facing systemic pressures, where, as one respondent put it, “driving change and transformation… is like pushing a boulder uphill”, the Chief of Staff plays an important catalytic role – shaping thinking, absorbing complexity and helping the organisation respond with coherence rather than fragmentation.

    I conducted 11 interviews which revealed five modes of strategic influence that a Chief of Staff brings to university leadership:

    Sense-making: turning complexity into coherence.

    Not being tied to a portfolio gives the Chief of Staff a rare vantage point. They see the connections, gaps and risks that others – focused on their own areas – may miss.

    A seat at the top table, even without formal membership, brings influence through insight rather than authority. Chiefs of Staff challenge assumptions, sharpen strategic issues and help Vice-Chancellors translate vision into coordinated action.

    One interviewee captured the essence of the role well:

    “We help make things happen, but we belong in the background.”

    Alignment and flow: moving decisions through the system.

    Universities are structurally complex, often siloed and prone to initiatives moving at different speeds in different directions. Chiefs of Staff surface dependencies, shepherd decisions through the right governance bodies, and ensure that decisions, conversations and projects maintain momentum.

    As one Chief of Staff noted:

    We make sure everyone is rowing in the same direction – even if they’re in separate boats.

    Trusted connectivity: the organisational glue

    Nearly every interviewee emphasised the relational character of the role. Chiefs of Staff build trust across formal and informal networks, read the room, join dots, create spaces for candid conversations and offer a safe space to rehearse potentially difficult issues.

    Much of their impact is intentionally invisible. As one Chief of Staff reflected, the

    most significant unseen impact is behind-the-scenes relationship building.

    Another colleague added:

    Real mastery is knowing when to be visible and when to be invisible… knowing how to master ego.

    Influence in universities is exercised as much between meetings as it is within them.

    Strategic counsel:  second pair of eyes

    Vice-Chancellors face relentless external demands. Chiefs of Staff help maintain strategic momentum by offering:

    • operational realism
    • political insight
    • institutional memory
    • horizon scanning
    • a safe environment to test ideas

    Several described themselves as the “second pair of eyes” – seeing risks early and raising issues before they land.

    We clear barriers, trial new approaches, and give leaders the space to act confidently without being swamped by operational detail – enabling principled, well-understood risks.

    Steadying influence: calm in a volatile environment


    With no portfolio interests and a broad institutional view, Chiefs of Staff help manage tension within senior teams, support leadership transitions and create calm judgement in moments of pressure.

    As one interviewee said:

    A Chief of Staff can help calm the waters – up and down and sideways.

    Another added:

    When an institution is facing uncertainty, you need someone with no skin in the game – someone invested in the success of the collective.

    “A Chief of Staff takes it to the finish line – but you’re nowhere near the ribbon.”

    The point is clear: the role is not about visibility. It is about capacity, coherence, relationships, pace and judgement.

    In a sector where senior leaders are stretched, where decisions carry political and human consequences, and where the pace of change is only accelerating, the question for institutions is no longer whether to invest in a Chief of Staff – but how to position the role for maximum effect:

    • reporting lines that enable influence
    • clarity of remit
    • proximity to decision-making
    • and a mandate that embraces both people and strategy

    As the higher education sector faces continued uncertainty, one thing is clear: well-positioned Chief of Staffs are not a luxury. They are a source of resilience, coherence and leadership capacity – precisely when the sector needs it most.

    In developing this piece, I am deeply grateful to the colleagues who generously contributed their insights including:

    Dr Giles Carden, Chief Strategy Officer and Chief of Staff, University of Southampton

    Dr Clare Goudy, Chief of Staff, Office of the President and Provost, UCL

    Thomas Hay, Head of Vice-Chancellor’s Office, Cardiff University

    Jhumar Johnson, former Chief of Staff to the former Vice-Chancellor at the Open University

    Dr. Chris Marshall, Chief of Staff and Head of the Vice-Chancellor’s Office, University of Wales Trinity Saint David

    Mark Senior, Chief of Staff (Vice-Chancellor’s Office), University of Birmingham

    Rachel Stone, Head of Governance and Vice-Chancellor’s Office, University of Roehampton 

    Luke Taylor, Chief of Staff to the President & Vice-Chancellor, University of Manchester

    Becca Varley, Chief of Staff, Vice-Chancellor’s Office, Sheffield Hallam University

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  • 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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  • Building a Data-Informed Strategic Plan for 2026

    Building a Data-Informed Strategic Plan for 2026

    Using Data to Inform Your Institution’s Year-in-Review Process

    Strategic organizational development, when applied to higher education institutions, demands setting accountability standards across the student journey — from staffing and advising to course planning and graduation. In my previous post, I discussed the importance of performing an annual review to set the strategy for the coming year. Now, let’s take a look at the importance of using data to inform that strategy.

    At the start of the annual review process, teams should look at all the available data, starting at the beginning of a prospective student’s journey. Institutions should ask questions such as:

    • How are leads coming in?
    • How are prospects converting to admitted students who are registering for class?
    • Are there peak enrollment seasons to plan for?
    • Are students receiving sufficient support during classes?

    Institutions need to evaluate their transparency in the reporting on and ownership of every touchpoint. By ensuring that all available metrics are digested to inform their strategy, rather than only using data points that paint a picture that is different from reality, institutions are better able to avoid confirmation bias. 

    For planning that bears fruit, teams must be truthful about what changes are necessary, and data should always be used to identify issues and inform an institution’s direction.

    Tools to Support Institutional Goal Setting

    When it comes to considering their goals for the next year, an essential principle that institutions need to remember is that the efforts of the team executing a process and the student experience must go hand in hand. Success and satisfaction must be considered not only for the students but also for the staff, the faculty, and the communities they serve. 

    Feedback Analysis

    Universities should gather feedback on the student experience early and often. Examining feedback loops throughout the student journey — including in lead nurturing, enrollment, and course surveys — offers clues into where to focus an institution’s energy and resources in future plans.

    Interviews with team members from all functional areas in the organization help leaders align the institution’s operations with its growth goals. Open communication also can reduce the effects of departments functioning independently, becoming a catalyst for more collaboration across teams and better consistency in the institution’s messaging. 

    Real-Time Data Dashboards

    Executive dashboards need to be used consistently to track progress across marketing, enrollment, and academics. Points to analyze include audits of marketing campaign performance and student enrollment trends. Using this real-time data to inform the decision-making at assessment checkpoints ensures teams stay aligned on the institution’s long-term goals. 

    Organizational Development Frameworks

    Leaders can use postmortem frameworks and planning worksheets to translate data-driven insights into manageable plans and timelines. Tools such as Archer’s Readiness Assessment and Good, Better, Best framework can help institutions gain a better understanding of where they are and where they want to be in the near future.

    Applying Learnings to Daily Operations

    Conducting an annual review will start an institution on the path toward creating smarter, evidence-based strategies. Once the past year’s operations have been analyzed, leadership teams must compare the institution’s progress against its vision and locate where adjustments are needed — such as in student enrollment support, resource planning, or program design processes — to support the institution’s growth.

    Employing effective change management processes can ensure an institution’s plans are actionable instead of theoretical. Establishing effective change management policies can help the institution navigate the operational shifts and cultural adjustments that are needed to maintain and scale its programs while maintaining collaboration and communication among its different departments.

    Leadership and teams must be held accountable with targeted checkpoints and milestones throughout the year. With agreed-upon dates for delivery, leaders can identify where additional support is needed and what adjustments to make, if necessary. 

    The task of analyzing large volumes of institutional data and turning it into actionable strategies can be overwhelming. When an institution decides to engage with a partner to help it conduct a thorough review, it should look for a vendor that offers flexible contracts that allow teams to adapt instead of restrictive long-term agreements. This also applies to any third-party partnerships that an institution enters to fill its capacity gaps, such as with partners that provide course planning, digital systems development, or marketing and enrollment management services.

    Key Takeaways

    • Institutions should connect lessons from 2025 to their 2026 priorities to create a strategic road map that fosters high-quality growth in the following year and beyond. 
    • By leveraging data, collaboration, and iterative improvement strategies, institutions use proven organizational development techniques to stay competitive.
    • Scheduling routine check-ins across departments helps institutions maintain forward momentum and ensure all contributors and stakeholders are engaged and have what they need to reach their goals.

    Let Archer Support Your Data-Informed Strategic Review Process

    At Archer Education, we understand that deep discovery, organizational development, sufficient investment, best-in-class technology, and a laser focus on the student experience are essential for institutional growth.

    Are you ready to expand your student enrollments, deepen your online program offerings, and future-proof your team? Archer’s team of higher education experts can help your institution establish an annual review process that will set you on the path toward scalable, sustainable growth. 

    If you’d like to learn more, contact our team and explore our technology-enabled strategy, marketing, enrollment, and retention services today. 

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  • Why Universities Need a Strategic Marketing Shift

    Why Universities Need a Strategic Marketing Shift

    This past week, presenting at the UPCEA MEMS conference in Boston, we explored a question that is becoming central to the future of higher education: What does it actually take to engage learners in lifelong learning with an institution?

    In a moment of rising enrollment volatility, shifting global dynamics and accelerating technological change, this question cuts to the heart of what universities must become. For decades, higher education has centered its marketing and enrollment strategy around discrete, program-level recruitment pipelines: find prospective students, convert them into a program and repeat the cycle for the next cohort.

    But today’s learners don’t behave in discrete cycles. Their lives aren’t structured around one big decision. They move fluidly across roles, industries and learning needs. They progress in fits and starts. They upskill to chase opportunity or reskill to navigate disruption. They return to learning not once, but many times over.

    And that means universities have a unique opportunity—if they choose to seize it.

    Rethinking Acquisition

    Rather than thinking transactionally—acquiring each enrollment anew—we can build relationships that honor a simple premise: If we provide value consistently, learners will keep choosing us.

    This is about rewriting the social contract. Not only with current students, but with alumni, midcareer professionals, online learners and the millions of individuals who may engage with us long before (or long after) a degree is on the table.

    Gone are the days when it is sufficient for a university to promise that earning a college degree is all that is needed for a long, successful career. Today’s learners and our broader society demand more.

    Instead, imagine a world where a learner begins with a short online experience or a noncredit course from an institution and immediately encounters a clear, welcoming pathway:

    Try something, learn something, earn a credential, return to learn more; stack the credentials and pursue a degree; return again for what’s next in their career and life.

    This is not an acquisition and retention strategy rooted in constraints. It is a relationship strategy rooted in community, trust and relevance.

    Lifetime learning becomes a shared journey and not simply a recruitment goal.

    Why Strategic Marketing Must Shift

    Much of higher ed’s traditional marketing infrastructure was built for a different era—one where programs were stable, pipelines were predictable and learners followed linear paths. Budgets are owned by program leaders, who allocate a portion to marketing “their” program. Central marketing functions may provide brand guidelines and a few templates. Marketing happens in silos across the institution.

    Challenges to this model today abound: from surging paid media costs and the rise of nontraditional learners to how AI is reshaping both labor markets and learner preferences. In this landscape, marketing single programs in isolation is not only inefficient—it’s misaligned with how learners actually behave.

    The more effective and learner-centered approach is clear.

    Market On-Ramps and Pathways, Not Just Destinations

    Instead of funding dozens of disconnected campaigns across schools and units, universities can invest centrally in marketing strategic portfolios of programs, composed of not just degrees but noncredit courses, certificates and more. This aligns messaging, reduces duplication, supports brand coherence, expands reach and—most importantly—mirrors the way different learner segments make decisions.

    People don’t all jump straight into an undergraduate degree or master’s program. They explore. They try something small and low-risk. They re-engage when life or work creates new urgency. They seek clarity, not complexity.

    Portfolio-based marketing meets them where they are.

    Building for Lifelong Value

    At the University of Michigan, we have been reorganizing our approach to online learning and marketing through this lens. Michigan Online, stewarded by the Center for Academic Innovation, serves as our unified destination for online, noncredit and for-credit learning opportunities.

    When a learner enters Michigan Online, our goal is not simply to direct them to a single offering; we welcome them into a coherent ecosystem.

    1. Pathways That Make Progression Clear

    We’ve aligned noncredit courses and certificates with for-credit opportunities, creating intentional pathways that help learners move from exploration to deeper engagement. When learners earn value early, the transition to degrees becomes more natural and more meaningful.

    1. CRM and Automation as Relationship Infrastructure

    We invested in CRM and marketing automation, bringing together noncredit and for-credit learner records into a single enterprise system. Just as importantly, we invested in the people and processes to use the tools well. This allows us to nurture learners over time, personalize recommendations, track cross-program engagement and create communications that feel relevant rather than transactional.

    1. A Shared Experience, Not a Siloed One

    By unifying messaging, branding and learner pathways, Michigan Online makes it easier for individuals to see themselves across programs, schools and stages of life. Instead of navigating institutional boundaries, they navigate opportunities.

    1. Reduced Reliance on Expensive Paid Media

    When the value is built into the learning itself—and when pathways clearly connect noncredit to for-credit—universities can rely less on costly late-funnel advertising. The relationship, not the ad spend, becomes the engine of enrollment.

    The Future Belongs to Institutions That Build Relationships, Not Funnels

    A lifetime-value approach to learners is not simply a marketing strategy. It is an institutional strategy. It asks universities to:

    • Design portfolios—not just degree programs
    • Welcome learners early—with value, not pressure
    • Create seamless transitions between credential types
    • Embrace personalization at scale
    • Invest in shared infrastructure instead of parallel campaigns
    • Build trust by offering meaningful learning at every stage

    Learners are telling us, through their behavior and their choices, that the old model no longer fits. They want ecosystems, guidance and clarity. They still want courses and content but they also want coaching and community. They want to return again and again, not because they’re targeted—but because they’re well served.

    The question for universities is not whether this shift is coming. It’s whether they will lead it. Leading means protecting a direct relationship with learners—so access, quality, privacy and long-term benefit remain anchored in educational values, not solely in market logic

    We believe that if institutions embrace this more holistic, value-centered approach—one rooted in lifelong relationship-building—they will not only strengthen enrollment resilience. They will also deepen their impact, broaden their reach and fulfill the promise at the heart of higher education: to support learners not just once, but throughout their lives.

    James DeVaney is associate vice provost for academic innovation and the founding executive director of the Center for Academic Innovation at the University of Michigan.

    James Cleaver is chief marketing officer for the Center for Academic Innovation at the University of Michigan.

    Carol Podschwadt is associate director of marketing for the Center for Academic Innovation at the University of Michigan.

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  • Strategic Planning for Legacy Programs: Rejuvenating Degrees

    Strategic Planning for Legacy Programs: Rejuvenating Degrees

    Don’t Let Legacy Programs Stall Your Growth

    In higher education today, generating buzz around new program launches is often viewed as the key to growth and market relevance. While there’s nothing wrong with investing in new programs when it makes sense, institutions tend to do so at the expense of existing offerings — including those that built their reputation. Yet legacy programs, when strategically audited and repositioned, can become some of the strongest assets in an institution’s portfolio.

    The challenge is that these programs often don’t receive the same level of attention or investment as new launches. Over time, many become overshadowed — not necessarily because they’ve lost relevance, but because the institution’s focus has shifted. Without consistent evaluation and modernization, the programs may begin to stagnate — enrollments flatten, marketing efforts diminish — while they continue to drain resources and faculty energy.  

    At the same time, legacy programs often hold unique advantages that newer offerings lack: established reputations, loyal alumni networks, and faculty with deep expertise. When they’re reexamined and repositioned through a strategic lens — leveraging internal data, market insight, and refreshed messaging — legacy programs can drive renewed growth in an increasingly competitive marketplace. 

    Auditing Programs for Their Growth Potential 

    A deliberate, data-informed audit of an institution’s programs can be the first step toward revitalizing those that are underperforming. A well-designed audit doesn’t just identify weaknesses — it also can uncover opportunities for renewal and growth. 

    A program life cycle audit assesses the current health of existing programs and tracks their performance over time. Key metrics in an audit might include:

    • Enrollment and retention trends, to gauge the program’s long-term viability
    • Course completion and graduation rates, as indicators of students’ satisfaction and support
    • Employment outcomes, to measure the program’s industry relevance and career alignment
    • Faculty-learner ratio, to ensure efficient use of instructional resources
    • Program search demand trends, to gauge the market’s interest in the program

    This process helps institutions identify whether their legacy programs are declining, stable, or experiencing renewed interest. These insights enable academic leadership teams to direct resources toward the programs that are most likely to drive growth — or sunset programs that no longer advance the institution’s goals.

    Audits shouldn’t rely solely on internal data. Comparing a program’s performance results with market demand data — such as regional job growth projections and competitors’ offerings — can clarify what the program’s challenges are and whether they stem from internal execution or broader shifts in the field. 

    Measuring Program-Market Fit 

    Analyzing a program’s market fit is just as important as evaluating its internal performance. It can help institutions decide which legacy programs need retooling, which ones are suitable for scale, and which ones should be phased out.   

    A program’s market fit analysis doesn’t have to be overly complex. It can begin with three fundamental questions:

    • Is there still demand?
      The analysis should start with a review of labor market data, industry trends, search trends, and alumni outcomes to determine whether a particular field remains robust or if demand is shifting toward other subjects or credentials.
    • How does our program compare?
      The next step is to assess what other institutions are offering in terms of delivery format (such as in-person versus online learning), curriculum, and pricing for similar programs. Understanding the competitive landscape helps identify areas where an institution’s program overlaps with others and where there may be opportunities to differentiate.
    • Does the program align with our institutional strengths?
      Legacy programs often reflect areas where the institution already has deep expertise or established credibility. If those strengths still align with current market demand, they can serve as a solid foundation for a program’s revitalization rather than a reason for its retirement. 

    Evaluating these three dimensions helps determine whether a program needs a full-blown relaunch or a more subtle refresh. The goal isn’t to reinvent for the sake of reinvention. It’s to make sure that each offering continues to serve students while also supporting the institution’s objectives. 

    Relaunching Programs With Purpose: Marketing Strategies 

    When a legacy program still holds value but needs renewed visibility, a structured relaunch can help ensure its continued relevance. Effective relaunches align academic updates, marketing strategy, and admissions communication so that all teams are working toward the same goal: positioning the program for growth. 

    A comprehensive relaunch checklist can help guide this process. Elements to consider include:

    • Program curriculum and delivery updates that reflect today’s learning preferences — such as hybrid or online models to accommodate adult learners — and industry expectations
    • Consistent messaging across marketing and admissions, ensuring that both internal and external audiences understand what’s new
    • Refreshed and tested marketing materials, including program pages and collateral materials that articulate outcomes, flexibility, and value to prospective students

    Refreshing a program’s branding and positioning is a crucial step. Students’ needs evolve, so the program’s story should evolve too. Simple adjustments — such as updating program names for clarity, refining messaging to align with search trends, or highlighting regional workforce connections — can make legacy programs more discoverable and relevant.

    Faculty also play a vital role in rebranding. Leveraging their expertise lends authenticity and authority to program relaunches. Featuring their research and industry partnerships in marketing materials reinforces the program’s real-world impact and signals that it’s grounded in experience, not just theory. 

    Key Takeaways

    • New program launches aren’t the only pathway to growth. Sustainable success also stems from repositioning existing programs.
    • Strategic audits of legacy offerings that assess their long-term performance and market fit enable your institution to relaunch them with intention.
    • Institutions that regularly review and refresh their degree portfolios are better positioned to achieve scalable, market-responsive growth while honoring the programs that built their foundation. 

    Reinvigorate Your Programs — and Your Growth Strategy

    Archer Education partners with dozens of institutions to help them launch new programs and revitalize existing ones to amplify their visibility and drive real growth. In a competitive market, data-driven program strategies enable greater institutional alignment and better market fit. 

    Contact our team today and let us help you rejuvenate your degree portfolio.

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  • Advice on Building a Strategic Digital Presence (opinion)

    Advice on Building a Strategic Digital Presence (opinion)

    For early-career researchers (ECRs), building a digital research space can feel like another burden piled onto an already demanding schedule. The idea of online professional networking often evokes images of overwhelming social media feeds and self-promoting influencers.

    Yet ECRs face a significant risk by solely relying on institutional platforms for their digital footprint: information portability. While university websites offer high visibility as trusted sources, most ECRs on short-term contracts lose web and email access as soon as their contracts expire. This often forces a hasty rebuild of their online presence precisely when they need to navigate critical career transitions.

    Having worked with doctoral and postdoctoral candidates across Europe, common initial hesitations to establishing a digital research space include: uncertainty about how and where to start, discouragement from senior researchers who dismiss digital networks as not “real” work, fears of appearing boastful and/or the paralyzing grip of impostor syndrome. Understanding these hesitations, I emphasize in my coaching the ways that building a digital research space is a natural extension of ECRs’ professional growth.

    Why a Strategic Digital Research Space Matters

    A proactive, professional digital strategy offers several key advantages.

    • Enhancing visibility and discoverability: A well-curated, current, consistent and coherent digital presence significantly improves discoverability for peers, potential collaborators, future employers, funders, journal editors and the media.
    • Networking: Strategically using digital platforms transcends institutional and geographical boundaries, enabling connections with specific individuals, research groups and relevant industry contacts globally.
    • Showcasing expertise and impact: Your digital space allows you to present a holistic view of your contributions beyond publications, including skills, ongoing projects, presentations, teaching, outreach and broader impacts.
    • Meeting communication expectations: As research advances, particularly with public funding, the demand to communicate findings beyond academic circles increases. Funders, institutions and the public expect researchers to demonstrate broader impact and societal relevance and a strategic digital presence provides effective channels for these crucial communications.
    • Controlling your narrative: Actively shape your professional identity and how your expertise is perceived, rather than relying on fragmented institutional profiles or database entries.
    • Ensuring information portability and longevity: Platforms like LinkedIn, ORCID, Google Scholar or a personal website ensure your professional identity, network and achievements remain consistent, accessible and under your control throughout your career.

    Getting Started: Choosing Your Digital Network Combination

    The goal isn’t to be online everywhere, but to be online strategically. Select a platform combination and engagement style aligned with your specific objectives and target audience, considering the time you have available.

    Different platforms serve distinct strategic aims and audiences at various research stages. Categorizing digital platforms into three subspaces helps map the landscape and can help you develop a more balanced presence across the research cycle.

    First, identify the primary strategic goal(s): public dissemination, professional networking expansion or deeper engagement within your academic niche? Your answer will guide your platform selection, as you aim for eventual presence in each space.

    Figure 1: Align your digital platform choices with your strategic goals and target audience.

    Next, consider your audience spectrum. Effective research communication depends on understanding your target audience and their needs.

    • Scholarly discourse: At the outset of your career, specialized academic platforms like ResearchGate, Academia.edu, institutional repositories and reference managers with social features (e.g., Mendeley) are key for engaging directly with peers. Foundational permanent identifiers like ORCID are crucial for tracking outputs across systems.
    • Professional network: As you seek to develop your career, LinkedIn, Google (including Google Scholar) and X (formerly Twitter) are vital hubs across academia, industry and related sectors.
    • Share for impact: TikTok, Facebook and Instagram excel for broader dissemination. Do adjust style and tone: While academics can process jargon and complex concepts, a broader audience will engage more in plain English.

    A strong, time-efficient and pragmatic starting point is to create a free and unique researcher identifier number like an ORCID, develop a professional LinkedIn profile and engage with a relevant academic platform (this would be in addition to your presence on a university or lab website). Because the ORCID requires no upkeep and a LinkedIn profile can leverage existing institutional and biographical information, with this combination ECRs can quickly establish a solid foundation for gradual digital expansion over the medium term.

    Make It Manageable: Time, Engagement and Content

    Once the platform combination is in place, effective digital management requires balancing three core elements: time, engagement and content.

    This figure displays different opportunities for digital engagement depending on factors including time engagement (with options including daily engagement, platform-specific and project-based campaigns, and regular content creation); engagement (e.g. active participation by commenting, sharing and asking questions or building relationships); and content type (including written, visual and multimedia forms of content).

    Figure 2. Key considerations for a sustainable digital networking strategy: balancing realistic time investment, meaningful engagement and appropriate content types.

    Time Investment

    Key message: Prioritize consistency over quantity.

    • Focused engagement: Allocate short, regular blocks (e.g., 15 to 30 minutes weekly) for specific activities like checking discussions, sharing updates or thoughtful commenting between periods of focused research.
    • Platform nuance: Invest strategically, recognizing that platforms have different tempos and life spans (e.g., a LinkedIn post typically has a longer life span than an X post).
    • Campaign bursts: Plan ahead to strategically increase activity around key events like publications or conferences, utilizing scheduling tools for automated posting.
    • Content cadence: Consistency beats constant noise, so plan a realistic posting schedule such as once a month.

    Engagement

    Key message: Focus on short but regular efforts.

    • Active participation: Move beyond passive consumption by commenting, sharing relevant work and asking insightful questions.
    • Build relationships: Genuine interaction fosters trust and meaningful connections.
    • Monitor your impact (optional): Use platform analytics to understand what resonates and refine your strategy.

    Content Type

    Key message: Your hard work should work hard online.

    • Written: Summaries, insights, blog posts, threads, articles.
    • Visual: Infographics, diagrams, cleared research images, presentation slides.
    • Multimedia: Short explanatory videos, audio clips, recorded talks.
    • Cross-post: Share content across all relevant platforms (e.g., post your YouTube video on LinkedIn and ResearchGate).

    Overcoming Reluctance

    If you’re hesitant, consider these starting points:

    • Start small, stay focused: Choose one or two platforms aligned with your top priority. Master these before expanding.
    • Embrace learning: Your initial digital content may not be perfect, but consistent practice leads to significant improvement. Give yourself permission to progress.
    • Integrate, don’t isolate: Weave digital engagement into your research workflow. Share insights from webinars or interesting papers with your network.
    • Give and take: Focus on offering value by sharing insights, asking stimulating questions and amplifying others’ work. Reciprocity fuels networking.
    • Set boundaries: Protect your deep work time. Schedule dedicated slots for digital engagement during lower-energy periods and manage notifications wisely.
    • Be patient: Recognize that building meaningful networks and visibility is a long-term career investment.

    Your Digital Research Space: A Career Asset

    A strategic digital research space is essential for navigating and succeeding in a modern research career. A thoughtful approach empowers you to control your professional narrative, build lasting networks, meet communication expectations and ensure your valuable contributions are both visible and portable.

    Maura Hannon is based in Switzerland and has more than two decades of expertise in strategic communication and thought leadership positioning. She has worked extensively for the last 10 years with doctoral and postdoctoral candidates across Europe to help them build strategies that harness digital networks to enhance their research visibility and impact.

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  • Strategic Approach to Mobility, Transfer, Academic Partnership

    Strategic Approach to Mobility, Transfer, Academic Partnership

    Serving approximately 100,000 students each year, Maricopa County Community College District is one of the nation’s largest community college districts. Many bachelor’s-granting institutions seek to recruit Maricopa students, but these institutions often fall short in serving them effectively by not applying previously earned coursework, overlooking their specific needs or failing to accept credit for prior learning in transfer. After years of requesting changes from transfer partners without seeing adequate response, Maricopa Community Colleges determined it was time to take action by establishing clear criteria and an evaluation process.

    A Legacy of Transfer

    Since its establishment, university transfer has remained a central pillar of the mission of the MCCCD. Transfer preparation is a chief reason students enroll across the district’s 10 colleges. In fact, 38 percent of students districtwide indicate upon admission that their goal is to transfer to a university.

    A significant portion of these students transition to Arizona’s three public universities under the framework of the Arizona Transfer System. Beyond that, Maricopa maintains formal articulation agreements with over 35 colleges and universities, both in state and across the nation, including private and public institutions.

    Developing Strategic Transfer Partnerships

    Each university partnership is formalized through a memorandum of understanding that outlines the roles, expectations and mutual responsibilities of Maricopa and the partner institution. Recognizing the need for a more strategic and data-informed approach, MCCCD developed a model years ago to ensure that both potential and existing transfer partnerships align with the district’s evolving strategic priorities. The model provides a structured framework for assessing new and continuing partnerships based on institutional relevance, resource capacity and student need.

    A Point of Evolution

    In 2022, the district overhauled its partnership model to better meet the needs of today’s learners, who increasingly seek flexible pathways to a degree. Many students now arrive with a mix of traditional coursework, transfer credit and prior learning assessment, including military service, industry certifications and on-the-job training, creating greater demand for clear, consistent and student-centered transfer pathways. The updated model ensures partner institutions complement, rather than counter, MCCCD’s efforts, particularly in recognizing learning that occurs outside the traditional classroom.

    The new model sets out the following criteria as minimum requirements:

    • Accepts and applies credits earned through prior learning assessment: The integration of PLA and alternative credit was a central focus of the redesign, recognizing the unique advantages these offer transfer students. Many students move between institutions, accumulate credits in segments and work toward credential completion. While some follow the traditional route from a two-year college to a four-year university, others take different paths, transferring from one two-year institution to another, or returning from a four-year institution to a two-year college through reverse-transfer agreements. These varied journeys highlight the need to embed PLA fully into the transfer agenda so that all learning, regardless of where or how it was acquired, is recognized and applied toward students’ goals. By making PLA a built-in component of the revamped model, MCCCD and its university partners can better meet learners where they are in their educational journey.
    • Provides annual enrollment and achievement data: To support this renewed focus, MCCCD asked all university partners to update their MOUs through a new university partnership application. This process gathered key institutional data and ensured alignment with updated partnership criteria and made it mandatory.
    • Accredited with no adverse actions or existing sanctions against the institution: Partner institutions must hold accreditation in good standing, accept both nationally and regionally accredited coursework, and recognize Maricopa-awarded PLA credit.
    • Aims to accept and apply a minimum of 60 credits: They are expected to apply at least 60 applicable Maricopa credits, academic and occupational, and accept Maricopa’s general education core.
    • Has a minimum of 50 students who have transferred at least 12 Maricopa earned credits in the last three years: This requirement is intended to demonstrate need and gauge student interest.
    • Surveys Maricopa transfer students annually: Partners must commit to administering annual transfer surveys and tracking student outcomes using jointly defined metrics.

    Institutions that do not meet this standard are not advanced in the partnership process but are welcome to reapply once they meet the baseline criteria. As a result, more partners are actively engaging and strengthening their policies and processes to gain or maintain eligibility.

    Key Findings

    Several themes emerged from the first year of implementation:

    Since the revamp, MCCCD is seeing promising results. Current and prospective partners have demonstrated strong commitment to the revised partnership model by elevating transfer and PLA practices, expanding pathways that accept 75 to 90 credits and participating in on-campus student support initiatives through goal-oriented action plans. They are using the model to facilitate conversations within their institutions to further advance internal policies and practices.

    Post-COVID, demand for online learning and support services remains strong, particularly among working students and those needing flexible schedules, as reflected in survey results. While participation in past transfer experience surveys was low, the district has made this requirement mandatory and introduced multiple survey options to better capture the student voice and experience. These insights enable MCCCD to collaborate with partners on targeted improvement plans.

    New criteria MCCCD is considering, several of which some partners have already implemented, include reserving course seats for Maricopa transfer students, creating Maricopa-specific scholarships, offering internships and other work opportunities and waiving application fees.

    MCCCD is currently assessing the impact of its revamped partnership model to measure the success of these efforts. Preliminary findings from the three-year review indicate that most, if not all, partner institutions are meeting or exceeding established metrics. These early results reflect a strong commitment to the agreements and reaffirm the value of the updated criteria in fostering more meaningful and impactful partnerships.

    A Model for Intentional Partnerships

    The Maricopa Community College District’s revamped university transfer partnership model is a strategic effort to keep partnerships active, student-centered and aligned with key institutional priorities. Through intentional collaboration, transparent policies and practices and shared responsibility, Maricopa and its university partners are building more effective, forward-thinking transfer pathways.

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  • Cost-smart campuses: Building financial resilience through strategic buying

    Cost-smart campuses: Building financial resilience through strategic buying

    Across higher ed, the financial squeeze is tightening. Between shrinking enrollment and uncertain funding, colleges and universities are scrambling to deliver value with far less cash. Every purchase, from lab beakers to toner cartridges, now faces intense scrutiny. After all, one way to uncover excess spending is to identify blind spots and inefficiencies in how organizations buy.

    That drive for savings puts procurement teams squarely in the hot seat. Seven in ten procurement leaders rank cost management as their most critical capability today and for the years ahead, according to Economist Impact. Yet decentralized purchasing, patchwork systems, and limited spend visibility continue to drain institutional resources.

    Savvy institutions are flipping that script, moving from reactive penny-pinching to proactive value creation by consolidating spend, leveraging supplier partnerships, and centralizing purchasing oversight.

    From reactive buying to proactive value creation

    Financial uncertainty now dominates the higher ed landscape. To navigate it successfully, universities must shift from tactical price checks to total-value management, leveraging lessons from other industries that have successfully implemented AI-powered automations to boost efficiencies and cut costs, University Business reports. It’s the difference between playing defense and offense—both matter, but one drives wins.

    This strategic transformation requires three foundational moves: gaining real-time visibility into campuswide spending patterns, establishing centralized oversight without bureaucratic friction, and building supplier relationships that deliver value beyond the initial purchase price.

    “Reducing spend is important, but increasing value matters more,” shares Rosie Grigsby, senior sales manager for higher education at Amazon Business. “When you’re looking at things only from a price perspective, you’re missing out on other value aspects like quality, lifecycle, support, training, and more,” she explains. “When thinking about total value, I’m thinking about how a supplier is enhancing student experiences while giving university employees time back through efficiencies.”

    To make that possible, procurement leaders would be wise to prioritize the visibility problem: You can’t optimize what you can’t see. Gaining visibility into campuswide spending starts with breaking down the silos that keep procurement teams in the dark.

    Visibility and control: Centralizing spend without adding bureaucracy

    Imagine navigating unfamiliar terrain with a GPS that only shows you one street at a time. When departments buy in silos, institutions lose their ability to see the bigger picture, eroding spend leverage, killing negotiating power, and complicating compliance. Each isolated purchase decision chips away at potential savings and strategic control.

    Consider the cascading impact: With fragmented purchasing, universities could be paying different prices for the same product across departments, missing significant volume discounts, and discovering duplicate software licenses only during audits. Worse yet, audits could reveal policy violations that were invisible until it was too late. 

    Unsurprisingly, research by the IBM Center for the Business of Government shows that centralized procurement correlates with higher savings, efficiencies, and compliance. Even so, many procurement leaders struggle with organization-wide visibility. 

    The solution isn’t building a bureaucratic fortress around every purchase decision. Rather, modern procurement solutions maintain centralized control while giving end users the flexibility they need, eliminating the process bottlenecks that drive departments to work around procurement entirely.

    Solutions could be lying dormant in tools you already own. “Universities often underutilize e-procurement systems and automations they already have licenses for,” Grigsby notes. “Electronic catalogs, automated approval workflows, single sign-ons (SSOs), analytics—tools like these cut time from sourcing to receiving while enhancing compliance and reducing errors.” What once took days of spreadsheet analysis can now happen automatically, freeing teams to focus on strategy, not data entry.

    Building strategic supplier relationships

    Too many institutions treat suppliers as vendors, not partners. Transactional supplier relationships are short-term and price-focused: you buy something, and you’re done. Strategic supplier relationships, on the other hand, are ongoing partnerships built on trust and alignment with the university’s mission.

    “Without strong supplier relationships, you’re missing out on partners who help you anticipate needs, drive innovation, and uncover creative solutions,” Grigsby explains. “True partners embrace your university’s mission as their own and work to maintain or increase service levels through collaborative, strategic sourcing.”

    These partnerships prove especially valuable during budget crunches, Grigsby adds, citing the ongoing collaboration between procurement teams and Amazon Business account executives as an example. “Our higher ed clients often leverage the know-how, experience, and ideas we’ve gleaned from working with their peers across the nation,” she explains. “Whether they’re pursuing sustainability goals or 100% automation in procurement, we help them identify ideal partners or find solutions that have worked well for other institutions facing similar challenges.”

    Real results at Emory University

    Emory University faced the classic procurement challenge: fragmented purchasing and spend visibility. By adopting a centralized purchasing approach through Amazon Business, procurement leaders reclaimed oversight, optimized workflows for users across the organization, and uncovered dramatic savings.

    Guided buying and integrated search features brought the intuitive Amazon Business shopping experience right into Emory’s purchasing system. These integrations drove adherence to procurement policies while giving users flexibility to conduct price comparisons and complete purchases directly within Emory’s existing system. Plus, buyers enjoyed savings through Business Prime shipping and tax exemption on eligible purchases. 

    The payoff was significant, averaging thousands of dollars in savings each month. “Pretty hefty savings,” as one administrator put it.

    Roadmap to resilience

    As institutions rework purchasing strategies to boost value and savings, how can procurement teams position themselves as problem solvers instead of gatekeepers? Grigsby recommends three essential practices:

    • Proactive collaboration: Low collaboration with non-procurement buyers increases rogue buying risk, yet leaders currently rate collaboration as the least essential skill in procurement, according to Economist Impact. “When procurement reaches out to departments early to understand their pain points, especially in times of budget stress, they can engage, identify alternatives, and help internal customers reach their goals without being a blocker,” Grigsby advises.
    • Streamlined processes: Efficient procurement automates mundane tasks like recurring orders, approval workflows, and spend analysis while centralizing oversight. “Customers want to source, reconcile, and receive products easily so they can focus on mission-critical tasks,” Grigsby points out.
    • Broadcast successes: Procurement wins often go unnoticed despite their organizational impact. Share those wins—whether through newsletters, internal communications channels, or dashboards showing how much departments saved—to foster trust and collaboration.

    Looking ahead, the financial pressures facing higher education make procurement transformation a necessity, not a luxury. Modern, cost-conscious procurement isn’t about saying no; it’s about finding better ways to say yes.

    ▷ Learn how Amazon Business can help accelerate your procurement goals: business.amazon.com/education

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  • A Strategic Blueprint for University Administrators

    A Strategic Blueprint for University Administrators

    The higher education sector is navigating an era of rapid change. Shifting demographics, declining traditional enrollment and evolving workforce needs are redefining the value proposition for universities. Coupled with budget and staffing pressures, it can seem daunting to university leaders to understand how to begin the transformation that universities are being asked to undertake.

    Workforce-relevant credentials, such as microcredentials, certificates and industry-aligned badges, are emerging as strategic tools to expand institutional reach, respond to employer demand and deliver measurable career impact for learners. These can be delivered separately from your degree curriculum, embedded within the degree pathway or both.

    Universities face stagnant enrollments, skepticism about ROI and mounting pressure to innovate. Traditional degree pathways alone are no longer enough to address these headwinds. This blueprint provides university leaders with a road map to implement credentialing initiatives that align with market demand, institutional mission and long-term sustainability.

    The Why: Building the Case Internally

    Building the internal case to expend the time and energy to realign curricular offerings can be daunting at times of resource scarcity. But the reality is that from an enrollment perspective, it’s simply good planning to be looking ahead and identifying new markets for your institution. And the population that holds the most promise of growth for higher education today is the adult learner—a segment that is growing fast.

    These students are often midcareer professionals, job changers or individuals seeking rapid upskilling. They may already have a bachelor’s degree or a workforce credential, or they may be a part of the 43.1 million learners with some credit but no degree. Of those, 37.6 million represent working-age adults under the age of 65. These learners will value short, targeted, career-aligned learning experiences that fit into busy lives. How are you identifying and connecting with these learners and who are the employer partners that you can engage with?

    By integrating stackable, workforce-relevant credentials into academic offerings, institutions can diversify revenue, attract new learners and showcase agility in meeting labor market needs. Graduates gain targeted skills, boosting employability and alumni engagement. Their success positions the university as a trusted partner for every career stage.

    How to Start

    Exploring innovative credentialing is a great tool in your strategic enrollment management planning toolbox. Such initiatives can be supportive of your enrollment goals and also provide some answers to the public questions around the ROI for their tuition dollars. You might be well on your way on the journey to strengthening the connection between learning and the workforce, or you might be just beginning. The reality is that educational institutions may already have some of the building blocks in place, and a slight shift in how you package and document your educational programs could put you on the right path.

    While any credential could be industry-aligned, it might be easiest to begin with smaller, incremental credentials, either independently or aligned to current degree programs. For adult learners, short, skill-based and industry-aligned programs offer an immediate career payoff while potentially stacking toward degrees.

    A well-designed workforce offering needs to be aligned with industry-trusted credentials and certifications and should ultimately layer with your traditional academic programs and offer a clear connection to employment-relevant skills. Investing in this work today will create short-term enrollment gains and help you to build long-term relationships with learners and employers who will turn to you again and again to meet their upskilling needs. These will also speak to your undergraduate degree learners (and their parents) by creating a direct link to return on investment.

    Defining Workforce-Relevant Credentials

    • Degree: Academic credential or qualifications awarded to a learner who has successfully completed a specified course of study in a particular field or discipline.
    • Certificate: Official documentation indicating completion of purposefully collected coursework to signify understanding of a narrow subject or topic. May also confirm acquisition of specific skills.
    • Microcredential: Competency or skills-based recognition that allows a learner to demonstrate mastery and learning in a particular area. Less than a full degree or certificate; it is a segment of learning achievement or outcome. Should be certified by a recognized authority.
    • Badge: Digital visual representation that recognizes skills, achievements, membership affiliation and participation.

    Build a Cross-Campus Team

    To successfully build new innovative credentials requires a collaborative approach, the creation of a planning team that aligns academic, enrollment, tech, marketing and employer-engagement strategies holistically. At a minimum, this includes faculty, the registrar’s office, enrollment management, your continuing-education division, education technology and your finance officer.

    A second layer to support learner success should also include advising, student services and career services. Chosen well, this team will be key to help ensure that you maintain compliance with accreditation or governance requirements in addition to designing an attractive and relevant program. Building the internal case across the campus with these leaders will help you to create the buy-in required to balance innovation and agility with compliance.

    Aligning Credentials With Institutional Mission

    Any workforce credentials offered by an institution should support and complement, not compete with, existing degree pathways. To ensure this alignment, consider embedding programs within academic departments and continuing education units. Be sure to involve faculty early to ensure rigor, buy-in and shared governance.

    And don’t forget to map credentials to degree pathways for seamless learner progression. Make it easy for an adult learner to become a lifelong learner. Innovative credentials can serve as entry ramps to degree programs, be embedded into degrees or stand alone. Start with pilots and focus on high-demand, high-return fields.

    Consider Technology

    Ultimately, when making learning and credential platform decisions, you should seek to prioritize interoperable, learner-centered technologies that enhance the portability of records and improve coordination across institutions. Digital solutions that prioritize transparency, accuracy and accessibility help to create a more connected and responsive learning ecosystem, ensuring that learners can move seamlessly through their educational and career pathways, with their achievements recognized and understood wherever they go.

    Building the Adult Learner Pipeline

    As in any new program, you must do your research. Review your institution’s most recent environmental scan to support prioritization of your best opportunities. If that scan is not current or doesn’t include market intelligence that leverages labor market analytics and employer feedback, you will need to collect that information to ensure offerings are demand-driven.

    • Outreach and messaging. Frequently, the effectiveness of the institution’s communications with prospective and current students comes under scrutiny: the quality of technology, the delivery modes, timing, the content and the coordination. Prepare for these concerns by outlining what the college is currently doing and who the stakeholders are. Messaging for innovative credentials will be inherently different than messaging for a degree. Promote credentials as high-value, low-barrier entry points for upskilling or career change.
    • Leveraging partnerships. Consider your service area and inventory your partnerships. Collaborate with employers, workforce boards and government agencies to co-design, fund or endorse programs. Convene regional advisory councils to keep offerings aligned with workforce trends. It is important that these relationships are current and agile so that credentials can respond to shifting workforce needs in real time. Explore grants, workforce investment funds and employer cost-sharing opportunities that may help defray your costs and those of your learners.
    • Developing support structures. All learners need support, which might need to look somewhat different for adult learners than your traditional degree support. Offer advising, prior learning assessment and flexible credit pathways to maximize learner success.
    • Considering assessment and data collection. Nationally, there is a call for more transparency and more data that proves ROI. This means that more data collection from learners up front and better tracking of outcomes will be required. Data collection in the workforce credential space will give you valuable experience that you can apply to your degree programs as federal student aid requirements shift toward proving workforce outcomes.

    A Call to Action for Institutional Leaders

    Universities that strategically embrace workforce-relevant credentials will not only meet the needs of today’s learners but also strengthen employer partnerships and stand out in a crowded market. It’s more than launching new programs. It’s about reimagining the university as a future-facing institution that delivers lifelong value. The time to act is now: Start small, scale smart and lead with vision.

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  • Humanizing Higher Ed Data: The Strategic Power of Student Digital Twins

    Humanizing Higher Ed Data: The Strategic Power of Student Digital Twins

    Higher education institutions are overflowing with data, yet many still struggle to turn that information into actionable insight. With systems siloed across admissions, academics, student support, and alumni relations, it’s hard to get a clear picture of the student journey — let alone use that data to enhance engagement or predict outcomes.

    Enter the “digital twin”: a transformative framework that helps institutions centralize, contextualize, and humanize student data. More than a dashboard or data warehouse, a student digital twin creates a living, dynamic model that reflects how students interact with your institution in real time. It’s the difference between looking at data and understanding a student.

    The data disconnect holding higher ed back

    Disconnected data is one of the most persistent obstacles facing colleges and universities. Key information is often trapped in different systems — student information systems (SIS), learning management systems (LMS), customer relationship management (CRM) tools, financial aid platforms, and more.

    This fragmentation makes it difficult to:

    • Personalize student communications
    • Identify at-risk students in time to intervene
    • Support seamless transfers or cross-departmental collaboration
    • Harness emerging technologies like generative AI

    The result? Missed opportunities, inefficient outreach, and limited visibility into student experiences.

    Demystifying the student digital twin

    A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical entity. In higher education, that entity is the student. The student digital twin brings together behavioral, academic, and operational data to create a comprehensive, contextual profile of each learner.

    Unlike a static dashboard or data warehouse, a digital twin captures relationships, sequences, and interactions. It enables institutions to:

    • Visualize student journeys across systems
    • Model future scenarios
    • Generate predictive insights
    • Power real-time personalization

    Most importantly, a digital twin humanizes data by shifting the focus from systems to students.

    What makes it work: The Connected Core® architecture

    At Collegis, the digital twin is powered by Connected Core — a composable, cloud-native platform built specifically for higher education. The architecture includes:

    • Integrated data fabric: A higher ed-specific data layer that unifies SIS, LMS, CRM, and more.
    • Packaged business capabilities: Modular features like lead scoring, advising nudges, and financial aid workflows.
    • Composable platform: A low-code development environment that allows institutions to customize workflows and experiences.

    Together, these elements create an agile foundation for digital transformation and continuous improvement.

    Ready for a Smarter Way Forward?

    Higher ed is hard — but you don’t have to figure it out alone. We can help you transform challenges into opportunities.

    Use cases that drive institutional impact

    Digital twins aren’t theoretical. They’re already delivering measurable value across the student lifecycle. With real implementations across enrollment, student success, and digital engagement, Collegis partners are proving just how powerful a connected data foundation can be.

    These examples show how the digital twin moves from concept to impact:

    • AI lead prioritization: By integrating digital journey signals with CRM intelligence, one partner increased inquiry-to-appointment conversion by 38%.
    • Transfer credit evaluation: AI-driven transcript assessments delivered >85% accuracy in early evaluations, reducing friction for prospective students.
    • AI-powered website search: Semantic search functionality improved engagement by 250% during pilot testing, enhancing conversion potential.

    These outcomes demonstrate how digital twins don’t just aggregate data — they activate it.

    Implementation, integration, and ROI

    One common question we encounter about this concept is, “Can’t we do this with our own data warehouse?” The answer is not really.

    Data warehouses are optimized for reporting, not real-time personalization. The digital twin’s networked model is designed for operational use, enabling advisors, marketers, and faculty to act in the moment.

    Collegis typically helps institutions realize value within three to six months. Whether starting with a marketing use case or building a full student model, we work with partners to:

    • Identify quick wins
    • Integrate priority data sources
    • Build a data model tailored to their institution

    Why Collegis — and why now?

    Unlike generic analytics platforms, Connected Core is purpose-built for higher education. It’s not a retrofitted enterprise tool. The following features make it unique from other offerings:

    • AI-native and human-centered: It’s designed to deliver explainable, actionable insights.
    • Composed, not constrained: It’s flexible enough to integrate with legacy systems and custom-built tools.
    • A strategic partnership: Collegis provides not just the technology, but the advisory services and data talent to ensure sustained success.

    Start humanizing your student data

    The digital twin helps institutions shift from reactive reporting to proactive engagement. It empowers colleges and universities to not only understand their students better, but to serve them more effectively.

    Ready to explore how a student digital twin could transform your data strategy? Contact us to request a demo!

    Innovation Starts Here

    Higher ed is evolving — don’t get left behind. Explore how Collegis can help your institution thrive.

    Bryan Chitwood is Director of Data Enablement at Collegis Education, where he helps lead data strategy, product development, and advisory services. With a Ph.D. in English and advanced certifications in data leadership and cloud architecture, he helps institutions harness data to drive results.

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