This Week In College Viability (TWICV) Special with private college presidents Amy Novak and Tod...

Welcome back to another special podcast of This Week in College Viability. Hi, my name is Gary Stocker. Regular listeners know that I spend a lot of time poking the proverbial college bear, but not— we're not doing that today. Two Iowa private college presidents are joining me to talk about bringing their colleges together in what they call a strategic combination. We'll talk about that in detail and about what it means not only for their colleges but maybe the entire Iowa private college market. First, a warm welcome to Dr. Amy Novak, president of St. Ambrose University. Dr. Novak, welcome and thanks for making time for the podcast.

Thanks, Gary. Looking forward to having this conversation.

Excellent. And Dr. Todd Olson is the president of Mount Mercy University. Dr. Olson, a pleasure to have you on the program.

Glad to have the opportunity, Gary.

So Todd, let's go with the first question for you, and then just briefly, I've read the media reports, I've read the news reports. Briefly share the history of what brought your two universities together.

Sure, I'm happy to, Gary. And there are, there are six Catholic colleges in Iowa, four of us in the eastern part of the state. And the four of us in eastern Iowa had had some conversations about opportunities to collaborate, learned a bit about each other, and just gotten more connected. And that actually led Amy and myself to, to say, you know, maybe the two of us should have a conversation. It seems that we have both a lot of values and interests in common, and we have some sort of complementary strengths. And so that honestly led us to have breakfast at a Perkins restaurant in Iowa City. And that was a very good conversation. And it was a conversation that started with possibilities and where might we go from here? What might we think about? How might this work? And because we just, I think, both felt some traction and some potential there, we broadened the conversation to some of our key board leaders at first. We developed some ideas that led ultimately to developing sort of a shared vision for what combining our two universities might look like. And we realized there were a number of steps along the way that included first getting to some key partnerships about some pathways we could open up between undergrad and graduate programs, about how we could share courses, et cetera. So as we continued the conversation, that ultimately led us to seek and receive the enthusiastic support of both our boards. And then we announced in May that we were committed to these sort of shared ventures, and we were seriously exploring coming together in a strategic combination. And that— well, I don't want to cover everything in this first answer, Gary. I will tell you that has then led since early May to some wonderful conversations that have brought together more than 80 of our faculty and staff from both campuses to help us put some more depth and texture around how this all might work. And so that led us ultimately in the last few weeks to reach this decision that it really did make sense for us to move forward pursuing a strategic combination.

And so Amy, what can you add to that nice description from Todd?

I think that fundamentally at the start of our conversation, we both recognized that the current landscape in higher education demands innovation. If we're going to be honest about actually addressing access and affordability, creating new pathways for adult learners, being more responsive to the needs of our regions, we have to do it differently than we're doing it right now. And rather than engage in what I'd call really transactional change that may move the needle on 10 or 20 students, we believed that We wanted to be bolder than that. And so this conversation started in a place of saying, here are the critiques, we're hearing them. We're also entrepreneurial people, and we were started with entrepreneurial founders. And could that lens of thinking entrepreneurially about the future of higher ed invite a different sort of reaction and response to the work that we could do together? And so it has been from that space of wanting to address the critique. And while we aren't there entirely, I think we certainly have taken a bold step forward. And it has been that vision that has guided the work.

And Amy, kind of a follow-up to that, you've been careful throughout all of your media communications to categorize this as a strategic combination and not a merger. Why is that an important distinction for your two organizations?

Well, for a couple of things. One is that from a storytelling perspective, Gary, I always want to sort of be legally accurate, right? And so there's a variety of legal instruments to use in this sort of work, one of which is a merger, but there's a whole lot of other types of ways that a transaction of this nature might take place. And so we were sensitive to that reality. The second piece is if you open up Higher Ed Dive or Inside Higher Ed or the Chronicle of Higher Education, you'll note, and even to some degree in your own writings, right, you'll note that merger gets sidelined right by closure. And so if we want to think differently about higher ed, I don't need the word merger floating around next to closure because the goal of what we're creating here is frankly not about some sort of diminishment of one institution or the other. It's actually about lifting that up. I would say third is that we started the work with our boards by saying we did not want to create a model going forward in which 1 1 2. And when you think about what merger often means in the corporate world, I spent time in corporate America before sort of stepping into the role in, in the nonprofit sector and in higher ed. We weren't about creating just merged departments, merged curriculums. We wanted to say, can we actually build something better? And so our vision of this combination is that it's not just integrative, it's creative and new and different. And so we have a new core curriculum that will launch in this combination. We have new pathways. We're expanding new conversations with business partners about the adult market and how we best serve them in our regions. And so we've been careful even with our integration planning teams to, to talk about the fact that some of the work is integration, but a lot more of the work is creation. And so when we think about what is a combination, it's a combination to do something different and better. It's not a merger. Of what might be sort of the current state. And so for us, that distinction matters. It also, I would say, and the 4th point here is that it invites you to ask us different questions. And it invites everyone to say, what exactly is a combination? And it allows us to tell the story in a way that isn't already pre-narrated by a set of assumptions that narrate the current state of higher education and the current state of mergers.

Interesting. Todd, strategic combination. Can you top what Amy just said?

So, you covered it very well. I'll just add a couple points. One of— I have an Albert Einstein quote I love, which is, "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." And I think this is not— what we're trying to do here doesn't lend itself to a two-word phrase that everyone has heard before. I think there is a level of creativity and a level of commitment here that's distinctive. The other thing I want to add, it's about the foundation for all of this, is both of us care very much about the fact that we are Catholic universities. There's a particular way of looking at each of our students, at the needs of our community that flows from that. And as both of us, I think, would agree, that Catholic identity is not some garnish we have on the side of the plate. It's the ground we stand on. And so to be able to come together and strengthen Catholic higher education is particularly meaningful for us. That's something we've talked about in recent days with our communities, with our alumni, et cetera. So that's another element that I think makes it strategic. We want to see small private higher education flourish. We also, in a particular way, want to see Catholic higher education flourish as we go forward. We believe this model has great promise to help make that happen.

Interesting. Interesting. Todd, let me stay with you with the next question that I have. And Brian Rosenberg, who was a college president just north of you up at Macalester College for many, many years, I don't know if you've seen his book or not, but it was published last year. One of the best book titles I've ever seen. And the title of the book is Whatever It Is, I'm Against It.

All right.

So I had Brian on the program right as he was releasing that book. And my question is kind of in that same context. Typically, in my experience, and I'm guessing in both of yours, students' and faculty reaction to really any type of business model change is not often positive. Todd, you even quoted a saying when people were invited to participate, some, you said, backed away and scowled. All right, I can believe that. What's been the reaction, both positive and negative? Todd, I'll let you start on this one.

Sure, and I wanna give a little more context to that quote, Gary, 'cause I did say something very much like that. I also said some people ran toward the opportunity, some people took a wait-and-see approach, and some people backed away and scowled. So to be clear, I did say more than just the scowling. But I think that certainly there are questions from our faculty, our alumni, stakeholders, et cetera. But they're also, given some of the forces and the factors that Amy talked about, there is an eagerness to find a sustainable, positive, exciting path forward. And I will tell you, among my faculty and staff, as we've worked with some challenging budget cuts over the last couple of years, we've been through times of constraint, and certainly we've tried to be creative on our own. But the fact is, and this is something that's very clear to many of the colleagues on both our campuses, is this is an opportunity to move past Talking about constraint and some of the, you know, the austerity that we've, you know, we faced in different ways. It's not that the road is all easy from here, but the road forward in our combination provides much more stability, many more opportunities than I know we would see. And I think in some ways than St. Ambrose would see on its own as well. And so I think for many of the thoughtful faculty and staff who've really been engaged in this, Certainly they have questions, they may have hesitation at times, but there's also a great deal of excitement and readiness to jump in and collaborate and add their good ideas to the mix.

So Amy, kind of same question but slightly different context. And again, I have written and talked many times that any kind of business model change in the colleges and the protests are inevitable. Do you think there's any connection between your Catholic identity that Todd talked about a minute, and maybe the level of overall cooperation that you're seeing as opposed to folks storming the president's office and, you know, sharing your coffee with you and all that kind of stuff?

Absolutely. I think a couple of things that I would point to there. First of all, we started the work from a place, as Todd mentioned, from a place of shared vision, and we co-created that shared vision. So none of this work started by analyzing finances or looking at real estate or any of that. It started from, could we co-create a shared vision for something stronger? We also both started that, and within that lies the foundation of our work, which is our Catholic identity. The Mercy Sisters were highly entrepreneurial in the work that they engaged in over 100 years ago to start Mount Mercy College and the Mount Mercy Health System, or the Mercy Health Systems that are in our region. And they did so with a commitment to serving the common good and to doing that better than they were being currently served. And St. Ambrose as a diocesan university has a deep commitment going back, you know, well over 100 years as well of serving the community that it's in and doing so through an entrepreneurial lens. We started adult learning programs, arguably some of the first in the state of Iowa, way back technically in the '50s and '60s. And notably, our two universities also, between the Mercy Sisters and the diocesan priests in Davenport, did some partnering around nursing education as far back as 1917. And we drew upon that history, but upon our shared values of serving community, serving the common good, and making sure that we were aligned around our Catholic intellectual tradition and our Catholic social teaching, which invites us to serve those on the margin, those who are first-generation, those who are low-income. And we can't help but look at the data, whether it's at our own institutions or nationally, and say, can't we do better than this? And so, you know, as we look at that, that sort of provided that founding, I would say, energy. The second thing I would just say, Gary, is that as part of St. Ambrose's strategic plan, And certainly, the reason we were in conversations with the Iowa Catholic Colleges of Eastern Iowa was because we're all looking at ways to think differently about strategic partnerships and strategic alliances. And so, our faculty at both institutions came into this knowing that we were already engaging in conversations to think differently about shared shared infrastructure, shared curriculum. And so I think it maybe didn't come as much as a surprise to them, but we also were very intentional about saying we wanted to honor them in the process and hence their significant involvement. I would add one last thing here is throughout this process, we have invited grace into the conversation. There's no playbook for how to bring two private Catholic institutions together to do something radically different, or at least substantively different than what we're currently doing. There's not a book that Todd or I can go to and say, here's step 1, 2, 3, and 4. And so we began these conversations with our faculty, with our boards, with our staff members, with students by saying, we're going to make some mistakes. We're not exactly sure how this is going to turn out. And we're going to give you permission to make mistake in the process here too. And so if we can all extend one another a grace in this space of innovation and reinvention, we're going to be much stronger in the end. And so that's been a guiding principle of our work from the beginning. And we reinforce those principles every time we bring all these folks together to say, how are we making progress? Where are we getting stuck? And what might or might not work?

So, Amy, in the context of what you just said, bringing folks together, Higher Learning Commission, I presume that's your accrediting agency.

Yeah, it is.

The HLC, and this I think was from the Inside Higher Ed story, they were quoted saying it would take up to 2 years to approve the business model change. Now, it's the higher ed market, the higher education market will almost certainly undergo massive changes and even consolidations in that timeframe. Do you, first of all, do you anticipate any issues with regulatory approvals? And do you anticipate that those changes in the industry may be one of those things you can't predict that will really mess things up? My words, not yours.

So I would say this. I think I want to be clear. The Higher Learning Commission piece of this is probably about a year, Gary, and the remaining part is actually Department of Education. So we're running two parallel tracks, one through Higher Learning Commission and other regulatory bodies, Iowa State Board of Education, you know, all sorts of other regulatory bodies. And then we're running a parallel track right alongside this with the Department of Education. As you know, they adopted this two-step process about a year and a half ago. It certainly isn't as expeditious as we would like, but we also appreciate the fact that, um, we're going to have to work through that. And I think to have consolidations happening in higher education, what I appreciate about the work we've been doing with Mount Mercy is we're actually out in front rather than being on the precipice of needing to close or precipice of some sort of failed state of an institution. Our partnerships here recognize we don't want to be in that place. So how can we be out in front of that place? And so I would just say that I think certainly that's a possibility. We've rooted this work in faith and we're going to continue to move forward and we're going to figure our way around it as we probably do here in Iowa and the Upper Great Plains. And that is we duct tape and baling, you know, use duct tape and baling wire or whatever it is to solve the problem. We'll figure our way through that. We're confident it'll go.

Yeah.

Tom, before I go to you with the same question and, and this too late model, so many private colleges are waiting too long. And the, the, the about one per week, not quite one per week, private college closures in 2024, almost, almost without exception, they're waiting too long. And to your credit, you, like you just said, Amy, that's a dangerous business model is let's wait and maybe things will get better. And yet I fear that because of that, there will be many, many other private colleges that decide maybe even to try and do what you're trying to do, but it's going to be too late. Todd, what about the regulatory process?

So I think that one of the things we're very much aware of, Gary, is that both the Higher Learning Commission and the U.S. Department of Education ultimately have the best interest of students and families at heart, whether we enjoy all parts of the process or not. And I think one of the things that's in our favor is we are very much putting students at the center of our thinking. And I believe along the way, the things we'll need to document for HLC and the DOE are things we're very comfortable documenting because we do take students seriously. We care about academic quality. We care about getting our students into and through their academic programs in a timely and supportive way. And so that's something that gives me sort of additional optimism here is we have, I believe, a very good and compelling story to tell. About both what it is both of us are doing now and where it is we intend to go together. So with that said, we know there's some hard work to do, but I'm very optimistic for those reasons. And I think we're prepared, as Amy said before, to— there'll be some potholes along the way and we'll feel the bump and then we'll move forward and keep going.

So Amy, in— I think it was in, again, the Higher Education— Inside Higher Ed article, You were quoted as saying, here at St. Ambrose, if we run the course as is, the 10-year projection gets kind of dire fairly quickly. The article also says, I think this is from you, I'm paraphrasing, what does it look like if we think radically differently about what Catholic higher education looks like in the future? And you mentioned it a minute ago, Amy, but expand on what radically different might look like in the context of your combination in the next 3 to 5 years?

Well, I think a couple of things there. One is that we're getting very focused in the general education or the core curriculum area of really being clear about the skills and dispositions that our graduates will have as they leave Saint Ambrose and Mount Mercy in this process. And so that's been informed by business leaders, that's been informed by others who are saying, here are specifically the skills and dispositions future graduates need to have. In the Catholic higher ed space in particular, there are some institutions that live, you know, in a space where the majority of their populations are Catholic. There are other institutions that may arguably be hard to identify as being Catholic, right? And as we sit here in the landscape we're in today, we feel really strongly that there's a place for strong Catholic higher education that is about formation, strong ethics, and frankly, the application of Catholic social teaching to strengthen our communities and our world. And so as we've built and our faculty are building this core curriculum, those experiences and what's in that curriculum will look different in response to both the need for relevancy in the development of skills and dispositions and the honing of very specific content that students experience as part of our Catholic tradition. It's not sufficient to sort of have a cafeteria-style approach to our curriculum any longer, and nor is it efficient, but nor is it really optimal for what our students are going to need in the complex world we're in today. So that's an area. The second area I would add is that we've recognized The, the issue around cost and affordability is one that many students are concerned about and parents are concerned about. Between our two institutions, I believe we have 18 graduate programs. Most of those are distinct. By opening up these pathways where students can, in some cases, have expedited entry into the program, and it trims a year off without sacrificing quality, the cost of their completion. We now open up pathways into a significant number, particularly in the healthcare sector, but also in education and business that otherwise might not be able to be completed in that same timeframe at one of our public institutions near us. And so there's an answer in response to access and affordability here that really opens up, we believe, a very strong set of opportunities. And then finally, I would say, at the end is we know between the I-380 corridor, which is Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Waterloo, and the Quad Cities, which is Davenport, Moline, Bettendorf, Rock Island, we have the second and third largest markets in Iowa. And we have a number of people and economic development organizations clamoring for upskilling, reskilling to meet the demands of the workforce of the future. Between our two institutions now, we will open up over 12 different degree completion pathways, as well as upwards of 35 different certificate programs easily accessible for learners across their lifespan and done in an online format where we're looking at learning pedagogies. How are we more learner-centric in the work we're doing both with traditional students but also adult learners? To, we think, be much more responsive than what we've been able to be individually in our respective markets.

So, Todd, let's, let's you and I, if you want to follow up, that's fine. But the question I have for you specifically is we haven't talked about the virtual elephant in the room. And of course, that's the faceted buckle. And in your quiet moments when you're watching the sunrise, you know, in those Iowa cornfields or looking at the sunset, What's your best case and worst case scenarios, not just for your respective colleges, but for the, really for the higher education market in general in Iowa?

Sure. That is, it's obviously a very serious matter. I just was in a meeting talking about that about 2 hours ago, Gary. And I think the best case for both of us and for a lot of our colleagues around the country is that The Department of Education takes seriously its responsibility to deliver something by mid to late fall that is generally workable. And every college needs to be thoughtful and nimble and student-focused in how it communicates, how it responds, et cetera. We've seen lots of evidence of, of our colleagues on our campuses and others doing that. The worst case, I think, and what we are really concerned about is that many students, particularly low-income, first-generation students and their families, are so alienated by this significant debacle, and I'm being polite when I, when I describe it that way, that they just will walk away from the opportunity to attend college. That is a tragedy. That is a lost opportunity of tremendous magnitude. And I know what Amy and I share in common is a commitment to see that we do everything we can to keep the doors open. For those students who benefit most in many ways from an education like the one we offer. So while we'll work hard to, you know, to moderate those impacts, the impacts are very real. We know that the latest statistic I saw is overall FAFSA completion still down 11.6% this year. Hundreds of thousands of young people will not be going to college because the door was repeatedly slammed shut on them. So again, what we can do for our part at our two institutions and at others is do our best to take students and families seriously, to reach out to them, to inform them, to give them the information we can. But it does make for stormy weather for many of us to navigate during this time.

So, Amy, I've got the last question for you. And actually, it's a quote from a faculty member at Mount Mercy. I think it was, yeah, it's a political science faculty at Todd's College, University at Mount Mercy. And he's quoted as saying, I don't have the name in front of me, the higher ed headlines, Amy, are filled with stories of schools waiting until it's too late. We've talked about that. This political science faculty member at Mount Mercy goes on to say, it's great to be part of an institution that's looking 10 to 15 years ahead instead of just one. That's what I'm most thrilled about, that we have leaders who would do this far enough in advance. For the student perspective, though, that's, that's a nice perspective to have, and certainly kudos to both of you and your organizations. But what, what will this, what will this combination arrangement change in terms of ability to draw new students? But maybe even more importantly, Amy, is drive materially significant net new revenue?

So that's a great question, Gary. We have had conversations with our current students and with prospective students. And when we talk about a strategic combination with them, we highlight the assets of this combination and what coming together means for them. And we've actually seen an uptick in interest because of the kind of collaboration we're describing for students and the meaningful engagement and relevancy of the curriculums that are being developed. In the plans going forward, this was again never about massive amounts of cutting in the plans going forward are expansion initiatives, right? So expansion of specific graduate programs, new offerings, expanded co-curricular opportunities. And so that's what we're highlighting. And I think people are saying this makes sense. I mean, Iowa is reasonably practical. And if we can do something that combines some of our back office operations in such a way that reduces costs. And believe me, when you start to do the math and the modeling, while there may be some cost at the front end, long-term, those costs are much more, much more manageable. And we gain economies of scale that allow us to reinvest in new initiatives, new program offerings, expanded efforts to really put students at the center of education, a coherent core that is clearly formative in its Catholic nature. Those are things that we've actually heard just the opposite of the kinds of comments you're making. People excited, energized. We think this is better than what we could get at some of our other, perhaps other institutions. So we're optimistic.

Excuse me. So Todd, final call. What's going to be good for students about this?

What's going to be good for students is new doors are opened, new relationships are available to them. I'll tell you, after we made our May announcement, Amy and I sat down with a good-sized room full of students on both of our campuses. The enthusiasm, the readiness to reach in new directions and to see new pathways opened up, you know, academic ways. We, we talked, for example, about shared service and immersion trips through our campus ministry program. Students were immediately excited about that. So I think the students see a combination of we will still be small colleges that are immersive and that provide a real community for them to be part of, but we will have more doors they can open. And that I think is seen as a value added to them and to their parents. And we believe that's a real asset for us going forward.

Well, with that, let's wrap up this special This Week in College Viability podcast. Dr. Novak, thank you.

Thanks so much, Gary. Appreciated the opportunity.

Dr. Olson, thank you as well.

Good talking with you, Gary.

Higher education is a tough market, as you've heard described this afternoon. You have just listened to two college presidents who are not sitting still and letting the market pass them by. Undoubtedly, both of my guests will face substantial challenges, and they talked about some of those as they execute this, this college strategic combination. On the other hand, you have heard me say many times that the die is cast for many, many private colleges. There are, I believe, there are no programmatic changes or marketing genius that will materially impact their financial health. Yet in the end, many private colleges will continue to survive and thrive, and you have just listened to the leaders of two of those colleges share their vision and their passion for their missions. For College Viability, I'm Gary Stocker. Thanks again for listening.