This Week in College Viability (TWICV) for October 2, 2023

It's October 2nd, 2023, and this week in College Viability. Hi, my name is Gary Stocker. Today on our list of topics is a new business for the Higher Learning Commission, a lot of concerns about Kansas public colleges, and the list of colleges cutting back on stuff continues. These and much more on the October 2nd, 2023 This Week in College Viability podcast. And let's start off with a story by Goldie Blumenstich from the Chronicle of Higher Education. And she reports that the Higher Learning Commission, HLC, is looking at a new accreditation business. And it's kind of a different example of the market shifts I see taking place in higher education. The Higher Learning Commission is based in Chicago and is thinking about developing a service that will provide accreditation to educational providers that aren't, that are not colleges. Now let's step back and take a look at how this must be being received by the colleges that HLC already accredits. And it's not a large leap of logic for us to realize that HLC earns its revenue mostly from colleges who pay fees to the Higher Learning Commission to be accredited. Yeah, now talk about conflict of interest, I know, but that's, that's a story that's been discussed before, and you and I may visit that another day. But how many colleges, having heard this news from Ms. Blumenstick and the Chronicle, have started calling the Higher Learning Commission? And a conversation that goes something like this: if you start a new accreditation service That's not for colleges. We're going to find another accrediting agency. Now, until recently, colleges were stuck based on their geography, so the HLC was a Midwest kind of region, and the colleges in the Midwest, both private and public, had to be accredited by the HLC. That has changed, and now colleges can go accreditation agency shopping. And as I recall, there are 6 higher education accrediting agencies across the country. And now all of a sudden HLC is saying, well, that's okay, maybe you should take your business somewhere else. They're probably not saying that, but here is the introduction from the Higher Learning Commission document, and it's entitled 2023 Survey on Alternative Credential Offerings and Quality Assurance Needs. Giggle intended. And I'll quote, HLC is considering the development of a new member benefit called a Credential Lab Service to help members—these colleges that are already accredited—in their efforts to support students, the workforce, the workforce, and their communities. This service would provide programming and resources supporting members' innovative alternative credential offerings, plus provide quality assurance guidelines—dot the i's and cross the t's, my words, not theirs— for members in partnering with external content providers. For this purpose, HLC goes on, alternative credentials include short-term, non-degree certificates, industry certifications, digital badges, and microcredentials. That's gotta be scary stuff for colleges that are already panic-stricken about competition. They almost certainly have no interest in their accrediting bodies validating alternative education providers, validating competitors. Now I know this is in significant part, I think, for colleges that are already in existence, but it was even referenced in the introduction, it's also for entities providing alternative educations, alternative education routes that are not necessarily part of accredited colleges. Now keep in mind that the accreditation is important for all colleges because that's what gives them access to those federal Title IV funds that are used in large part for the loans that students take to pay college tuition. And as always, questions, comments, challenges, concerns, suggestions, email to me, gary@collegeviability— that's one word— gary@collegeviability.com. Brian Rosenberg released his book here in the last couple weeks, and I think I briefly mentioned this in a previous podcast. And just to recall, Dr.

Rosenberg was the college president at Macalester College in Minnesota for about 15 or 20 years.

I can't remember the exact amount of time. And his book is entitled Whatever It Is, Comma, I'm Against It. Whatever It Is, Comma, I'm Against It. Now again, not a large leap of logic to guess that he's talking about faculty. And is in the Inside Higher Education review of the book. It talks about how Dr. McAllister— excuse me, how Dr. Rosenberg takes issue with some of the thoughts, actions, and other approaches from faculty. Now I just started reading this book. It's got me, it's got my attention off the top. It's entertaining in large part as well. And it's likely that I'll reach out to Dr. Rosenberg and ask him to be on a future episode of This Week in College Liability. He's almost certain to get an invitation to the Stocker house for Thanksgiving. And here is his ticket to the Stocker house. He confirms Dr. Rosenberg confirms what I've already been saying for a long time, time. He just adds some numbers. Let's take this one question. So Inside Higher Education asks Dr. Rosenberg, why does higher ed require transformational change now? And his response, and I'll quote mostly, is the current financial trajectory of higher education is just not sustainable.

For a long time, Dr.

Rosenberg says, I resisted that idea, but I've come around to the belief that there's going to be a major disruption of the current market and the status quo, driven first of all, he says, by economics. Welcome to the club. I've been saying that for a long time. He goes on to add, to answer this question, the discount rate at private colleges has been going up about 3% a year for a long period of time. It's now over 60— excuse me, it's now over 56%, 5-6% on average. And you just can't keep cutting the price unless you also figure out a way to reduce the cost of actually providing the college service. If you keep adding 3% a year to the discount rate, you're eventually going to get to 100%, Dr. Rosenberg says. And you're giving it away for free. And of course, it's highly unlikely that faculty will be willing to work for free.

I say with my tongue firmly embedded in my cheek, just like Dr. Rosenberg does in his book.

So moving on, what qualities do college leaders need to lead major institutional restructuring?

And this is from my friend Ricardo Aziz, who is one of the experts in college mergers and acquisitions. And really is an expert in corporate restructuring across the board in higher education. And to this story and all the stories in our podcast, I will provide the URL, the hyperlink to the stories.

But Dr. Aziz creates a term describing higher education as needing a big scary change. It's not even Halloween yet. He says successfully managing big scary change requires a particular type of leadership that is not usual in higher education.

Though some necessary skills may be learned, it's important that we recognize, Dr.

Ozee says, that the leadership skills that have gotten us here will not necessarily get us there, there being major restructuring success. Big scary change, he goes on, also tests the limits of institutional leaders' comfort.

They're just not good at it. My words, not his. And it places those leaders in job peril as we're starting to see regularly and have seen for a long time, faculty and students rebel when colleges try and change anything associated with the business model, small or large. And what we see this is a result, we've seen the result of no confidence votes, from both faculty and students rebel, and some officials who start these changes leave with the work undone because they're effectively chased out the door. Probably goes back to what Dr. Rosenberg was talking about in the previous section on whatever it is, I'm against it, that college faculty seem to have as their major guiding light. Now I said time and time again in podcasts that I do, in videos that I do, and social media posts, that protests from faculty and students and the community is to be expected every time a college announces any significant major or minor change, like I just said, to their business model.

It's just part of the landscape, and it's not going away. It's not going anywhere anytime soon. It has become what I will call a cultural expectation and a non-factor in the decision-making process of most or even many colleges looking to make changes to their business model. There will be protests, sit-ins, letters to the editors, cute sayings, expressions of disbelief, and the list goes on and on and on. Now, I know from experience that college leaders and boards of trustees at these colleges have no interest in giving up their decision-making responsibilities. They would probably— this is my opinion— they would probably rather have their college closed than to engage in a college saving, consolidation, or merger. Dr. Aziz suggests that the leadership of these colleges can't continue to be the academic route to the presidency Faculty, department chair, dean, provost, president, something along those lines. There needs to be a different skill set in these positions that, and I know this will get me some love mail, that makes colleges operate more like a business as they should be. And by the way, Ricardo Aziz will be on the podcast program with me later in October and we'll be discussing the recent Department of Education changes that might make mergers and acquisitions more difficult in higher education. So an interesting story comes out of St. Norbert College. I think this is in Wisconsin or Minnesota.

I don't see that in my notes. St.

Norbert College, the headline reads, St. Norbert College layoffs blamed on enrollment decline and budget issues.

So this was written by Rachel Charniak from WTAQ 1360 on your AM dial. If there were dials. I know they're not.

And here's how the story goes. St.

Norbert College President Laurie Joyner, J-O-Y-N-E-R, said, and I quote, you can be fundamentally solid both educationally and financially, but as demographics produce fewer 18 to 22 year olds— I didn't know demographics could produce 18 to 22 year olds, but we get the point— you have to sometimes adjust the size of your organization, and that's what we've done.

Referencing the layoffs that they are proposing at St.

Norbert College. So I spend a lot, probably too much time, reading the spin that colleges, both public and private, put out. And I know I bring a natural bias looking for that spin. That's what I do. And I'll be honest, President Joyner's comments have me a little confounded. I don't know how to separate the sentence that you can be fundamentally solid both educationally and financially, and yet you have to adjust the size of your organization. Now, maybe I'll grant her the educational piece. You can be solid, fundamentally solid educationally, and still not be successful financially. And maybe, maybe the financial adjustments or the financial fundamentals at St. Norbert that are now taking place in the form of layoffs are Dr. Joyner's— I don't know if she's a doctor or not— but Lori Joyner's efforts to become financially fundamentally solid as well. I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt. So I'm inclined to agree with President Joyner's perspective. If there's spin there, she's really good because I haven't found it. And suffice it to say, this is the week of October 2nd, that this is probably the week at St. Norbert College that student protests begin and maybe even the faculty protests start. I would certainly expect a faculty vote of no confidence to follow sometime later this month. Like I said before, it's just the nature of the process. When colleges are in trouble, protests begin. It's just gonna happen time and time again. And in my experience, rarely Do these protests have any impact on the final outcome? They do on occasion on the viability of a college.

And to Kansas we go, and public colleges for a change. And the story reads from the Wichita Eagle by Dion Lefler: Welcome to Kendom— K-E-N-D-O-M, I'll explain that in a second— 13% of students escape from the public college Emporia State University after ex-Koch executive takeover. This is an opinion piece by Don Leffler in the Wichita Eagle, and I, I did a YouTube video on the, on the numbers using the College Viability app just earlier today. I posted that, and it shows a variety of reports for Kansas public colleges, and the headline of my post I think read something along the lines of 'What's Going On in Kansas?' And I, I, that— so as I posted that YouTube analysis of those 7 public colleges in Kansas. I'll make sure to include a link to that video. While the regional spin in news media stories throughout Kansas points out only limited time frame for normal growth—

it's going on, it's only gone up recently—

as we go to the data from the National Center for Education Statistics and the College Viability App, there are really negative enrollment trends, I think, at all the public colleges in Kansas. Because remember, on the College Viability App, we're looking at 8 years of data. 2014 to 2021 is the most recent set of data. We'll be updating that to 2022 when the, when the data, when that data comes out from the National Center for Education Statistics later this year. So in the opinion piece for the Wichita Eagle, Dion Leffler takes serious issue with the president of Emporia State, a Mr. Ken Hush. I know he's not a doctor. And the Kansas Board of Regents— Regents, excuse me, Kansas Board of Regents. Regent is a chemistry term I'm familiar with. He makes a good case that the 13% decrease from 2022 to 2023, that's about 512 students, that is 512 students at Emporia State, is directly associated with Mr. Hush's Hush's blunt trauma to leading Emporia State College. In 2022, Mr. Hush used the Kansas Board of Regents policy to lay off 33 of 230 faculty members, so around 15%, give or take. So Mr. Leffler is quoted in his opinion piece saying, what's been going on at Emporia State University this past year is a mockery of what a state university should be. All right, he's entitled to his opinion. He goes on, why would students go to a university where their major can be canceled at any time and their favorite professor sacked, and done so at the whim of a university president who thinks he, or maybe she, has all the answers because she was a big— he was a big success in a different business? I'm paraphrasing there. Now let me add the Gary Stocker corollary to this thought process. It's not just Emporia State University in Kansas where universities can cancel or are canceling majors and programs or favorite professors. We only need to go most recently halfway across the country to the east to see West Virginia, and that's all being done there as well. So the guidance that I would give, should anybody ask me, to parents or students when looking at public colleges in particular, a little bit less so than privates.

Private colleges are more susceptible to closing.

Public colleges more susceptible just to closing stuff. Ask about specific majors. If you're looking at public relations, if you're looking at journalism, if you're looking at marketing, if you're looking at biology, ask your admissions rep to show you the enrollment trends for that specific major for the last 5 to 10 years, if you can get it.

If you see that trend is downward, you gotta be a little concerned because public colleges aren't going to close, or if they do, it's going to be such a small number as not to be noteworthy. There's just too much political hassle to do that. But they almost certainly are and will continue to close stuff in the coming years. And then let's wrap up with a story from Forbes and Michael Nietzel, who's a senior contributor. And again, nobody's going to fall out of their chair as they listen to this. The headline reads, more colleges, universities announce budget cuts amid financial woes. And Mr. Nietzel— I presume I'm pronouncing that correctly— references Christian Brothers University, St. Norbert's, that we already talked about, San Francisco State University, and Dickinson State University. All recently announced they were cutting budgets to regain fiscal stability and, in some cases, to remain open. So what we're looking at is a combination of 2 private and 2 public colleges in just the last week or 2 making announcements about their financial future. Now I'm gonna say that the details aren't important— trash me if you must— because they're all similar. It is the continuing trend that I have talked about endlessly that should concern students and families and faculty and staff and stakeholders and college leaders. And that is revenue is down, expenses are up. And, and there are two ways to look at this. If you have a student either looking at a private college or currently enrolled in a private college, get access to our College Viability App, and I'll make sure to provide links in the show notes, and use it to make sure that the college or colleges you are using or considering using is showing, are showing a positive financial enrollment, a positive enrollment and positive finances and positive outcomes, graduation rates. If it is a public college, it's again, like I've said, unlikely that many, if any, will close. Just look at the enrollment for those majors like I just talked about in the previous story. In both cases, both public and private colleges, we continue to see that the trend overall in higher education is not positive. And while I know I dwell on the financially challenged, the outcome challenge graduation rates, and the enrollment challenge colleges, I know for a fact because I look at all the numbers all the time, there are many, many colleges financially healthy enough both public and private, to provide a high-quality college education.

It's incumbent, I would offer, upon those of us who kind of label ourselves as higher ed data entrepreneurs to continue to push that message that there are financially weak, for sure, lots of them, too many, but there are also financially strong colleges that will continue to grow and serve college students as they should. And I guess it's our role to kind of be the caveat emptor, buyer beware force in American higher education. It's certain that college leaders will never fill that role, and there are reasons for that that I've discussed previously and we can discuss again on another day. But we're trying to fill the role of fiduciary. I know I'm trying to do that at College Viability, trying to provide that big picture perspective to students and their families, to faculty, staff, and other stakeholders in the community, because colleges aren't and won't do that. Hey, that's a wrap for October 2nd, 2023. This has been the College— This Week in College Viability. My name is Gary Stocker. We'll talk next time.