TWICV - Special Edition with Laura De Veau October 25, 2024

Welcome back to yet another special episode of This Week in College Viability. Hi, I'm Gary Stocker. This week we have a visiting professor from the Lynch School of Education and Development at Boston College and a principal at Fortify Associates. I have to welcome Laura DeVoe to the podcast. Laura, thanks for joining us.

Thank you, Gary. It's wonderful to be here with you. I really appreciate it.

And you know, this is not the first time you and I have done this together. So we are repeat conquerors of the podcast domain and And for the listeners, this is the follow-up on this has, has some logic behind it. A couple of weeks, couple of months ago, Laura posted on social media a lead that I hadn't seen before. And that was that Vanderbilt University had moved into New York City. Now there are more details behind it than that. And so Laura, let's start off with why is Vandy moving into New York City and what else might be going on with other colleges like that?

Yeah, I think it's really interesting. I wrote it in my Substack. I have a Substack called What's Up in the Academy and I'll get you, make sure you have the link so you can put it up in the, in the in the show notes. But I think that when I look at this, and I see what Vanderbilt did, it immediately got me thinking about what Northeastern has been doing for quite some time, which is they've identified locations. They did this out in Oakland, California, taking, you know, property out there and developing that. And I think what it does is it provides institutions with a clear opportunity to recruit in a different way. And so when I saw Vanderbilt go into New York City, into what's basically existing, a very small theological seminary in New York, which, you know, is not going to be bringing in a lot of students. I would have to imagine just keeping the heat on at the place is incredibly expensive and overwhelming. But I, first thing I did is I did a Google Maps of where this campus was in, in, in comparison to where NYU is. And when you look at institutions and where institutions compete against, Vanderbilt and NYU have some common opportunities there. And a student who might be applying to NYU is very likely applying to Vanderbilt or institutions like it. Vanderbilt is not in New York City. Vanderbilt is as far from New York— well, I'm not gonna say as far from New York City as possible, but it is definitely not New York City. But you would have to also take a look at how many alums does Vanderbilt have in the New York metropolitan area, and how many companies might recruit Vanderbilt students. Or maybe they've heard from their career services folks like, hey, we've been trying to get into some of these businesses, but we just don't have a footprint close enough and our students just can't get there. So when I heard about this, I said, okay, so this is a very strategic decision as far as Vanderbilt is concerned. It allows them to provide their students with access to New York City, potentially give them some opportunity for actually having classes there, have internships or co-ops, something of that nature. And, and it changes the game and it allows them to expand into some environments that they're not currently in. I then tweaked up that side of my brain that's constantly thinking about mergers and closures and saying, okay, I'm the theological seminary. Why shouldn't I go to a place that has deep pockets and is not they themselves in a viability problem? Right? And say, hey, you know what? Let's think entrepreneurially here. What do you think of having a great Midtown Manhattan kind of location? Isn't that great? Don't we all want to be in Sex and the City and walk around? And this is awesome, right? And so, you know, I think that that's where you've got this. And I say kudos to the folks at the theological seminary to say, you know what, this— I'd rather, you know, sell ourselves to or land lease ourselves to a place like Vanderbilt and know that our institution is going to have a footprint remaining here in Manhattan and not be a, you know, a high, high cost co-op or condominium. So that's what was going through my head.

So, you know, I want to digress for a second. I was at the Chicago Marathon a couple of weeks ago. Our daughter ran in that. And right in the middle of prime time, prime real estate in downtown Chicago was Columbia College.

Yep.

And you and I follow Columbia College, and it's not in a good situation. No wonder how many other colleges not in that Chicago metro region are thinking Vandy-like and looking at a place like Columbia College. It's going to be very challenged to maintain a viable presence for a long time. How many other colleges are pondering that same kind of scenario?

If I was Syracuse University, I'd look at Columbia College.

Yeah, there you go.

You know why? Because we lose students to Northwestern all the time. Students want to go to— students want to go to Chicago. Students want to be out of that space. I would— if I was Mizzou, okay, I would look at it. Okay. It may not be that far, you know, because this is my, my Northeast vision of the world. Right. But it's more— it's, it's got that step up urban opportunity for my Mizzou students who may want to go back there. Okay. There are places that that absolutely makes sense. Years ago, decades ago, Emerson College opened a satellite campus in Los Angeles and people were like, well, that's because they are an entertainment school and students go out there and they get jobs in LA and all that stuff. Now, if you go out— when I'm going to date myself, I'm 57 years old. When they first did this, I was I was still just out of college myself, and it was this dumpy little spot in LA. Now you go out there and you're like, wow, this place is nice. And students see this and they go, okay, this is viable. Like, schools have been doing this in some version for decades, but now what we're able to say is it's not just a satellite, it is a specific part of what we have to offer. If you take it to another level like Northeastern is doing, which is you can start your education in Oakland, California, or London, England, or Toronto, Canada, and then come into Boston and continue your education. Okay, that's a whole other way of thinking about this. So, and, and to be frank, sometimes it also eases some of the issues that the campus is feeling. I don't know if this is what's happening at Northeastern, But they only have so much housing. They only have so much space on college campus. So if they're able to say, all right, first-year students, you're going to live somewhere else and then you're going to come to Northeastern either second semester, your, your first year or your sophomore year, that allows for them to kind of ease in a little bit on the housing crunch. So there's a lot of strategy that goes into this.

So, you know, the first two examples we've talked about are the biggies, the big colleges that have the resources to do this. And really the, I believe the most significant action in terms of mergers, and I don't use acquisitions because that's not going to happen much in higher education. Yeah, there will, there will be, you've heard me say this and others have heard me say this as well. There will be more consolidation in the form of both closures and the form of mergers. And you and I now need to kind of address this conversation to those colleges who've already heard this stuff before, but maybe the folks working at those colleges or students and their families, faculty and staff, what are the top 2, maybe 3 reasons a private middle-of-the-road non-selective college needs to consider a merger today?

Yeah. Well, when you, you know, you, you were kind enough to provide me with these questions in advance. So it gave me some time to kind of mull it over and all that. And, you know, this is something that, you know, someone will complain about because I'm not running for president. So I'm not, you know, getting questions in advance. I cheated.

I cheated. I'm okay.

That's fine. That's fine. And then edit it out to make me look more, more cogent. But anyway, there is this— when you gave me this question, one of the things I go back to is the question I always get asked about the closure at Mount Ida College, where I was vice president for student affairs. So I was there when the college closed in 2018. And I always get the question, Why did it close? And so I say there's like a three-legged stool of closure. If you've got too much deferred maintenance, we had $40 million of deferred maintenance. No one's going to give you $40 million in one year to fix roofs and your infrastructure and your, your IT stuff. Okay. Second thing is discount rate. The year after we closed, we had been discounting at 62%. So anything over 50% is a gigantic warning sign. Yep. And then the third reason is leadership, and that's personalities and all of that. And the, and the leadership of the president, the CFO, trustees. Yeah. If a school— to your question— if a school has two of those three legs, because by the way, they're never going to admit they've got a leadership problem. Right. Right. If they got 2 of those 3 legs, they need to start thinking about a merger.

Interesting. And one of the things I have written about and talked about for a long time is when we get to this merger stage, and feel free to say, Gary, you're nuts. You wouldn't be the first one and almost certainly not going to be the last. I've always espoused that mom-and-pop mergers, mom-and-pop mergers, 1Zs and 2Zs, 3Zs is not going to be enough. I've always espoused that those mergers should at least grow to 10-ish or more colleges. What do you think? To get the scale needed on the academic side.

I think you broke up a little bit there, Gary. Can you just repeat the question again?

Yeah, let me ask that again. So I've always said that colleges, when they look at mergers, it shouldn't be the onesies and twosies and threesies. It should be something along the lines of 10 or more, or at least building toward 10 or more colleges to get the academic and non-academic scale needed to be able to compete. Am I right or wrong?

Yeah, yeah. No, I think we need to think more entrepreneurially. I agree with you. I think two schools is, is not going to happen anymore. I think two small institutions that are, they themselves difficult to compete. We know institutions with 3,000 students or less are more likely to close than others. They're not state, you know, sustainable in terms of enrollment. So you want to get yourself to a point where you've got at least, in my mind, 10,000 students. And in order to get there, you need to have at least 3 schools, probably closer to 5 and plus. And I think we have to get entrepreneurial here. We have to think about, you know, what kinds— what do we do well? Okay. And we have to stop thinking about the institutions trying to become something that they'll never— that even with the merger, they may not be able to be there quite immediately. So let me give an example. Like, you know, when you're looking at college campuses for your child, there will be some, some non-negotiables. Okay. A student may say, I want a co-op, or I want to do study abroad, or I want you know, on-campus housing guaranteed for 4 years, or I want big-time athletics. Okay. The merger of 5 schools that are Division III or NAIA schools is not going to get you big-time athletics. The merger of 5 schools that don't currently have a tradition of co-op is not the time to say, and we're going to add a co-op. Don't, don't add things. Yeah. Okay. But if you had 5 schools and out of those 5 schools, 2 currently had strong co-op and internship programs, 2 had some kind of, you know, public-facing programs that are well known in terms of, you know, recently here in Massachusetts, 2 schools have merged, Bay Path University and then Lesley University. Okay. And oh no, Cambridge College. Cambridge College. Okay. So Cambridge College and Bay Path. Okay. Leslie wishes they were in on that. Okay. But Cambridge College has been known for decades as being a place that people who are teachers, K-12 educators, are getting their various recertifications through Cambridge College. They run like summer programs so that teachers can get recertified and they get their, their, their all their recertification items and all of that. Then Baypath is well known for their online learning, and they have a very large online learning. So these two made sense even though they're nowhere near each other. They're, they're both in Massachusetts, but they're a good hour and a half away from each other, and it allows for you to kind of build something out. And I think that that merger is one to watch. But if we're actually looking at something, I want to see Okay, for giggles, I want to see us take a lot of these smaller Catholic private universities that are scattered all over the country, and maybe they're all of the same type of tradition, Catholic tradition. Maybe they're all Franciscan or they're all, you know, the group that all like the same nuns founded them, you know, whatever. Okay. And that is going to be something where they could say All right, we're all a similar mission. We all align with this one part of the Catholic Church. We all have, you know, a tradition of this. What can we do to say we are now a national university? We have 4 campuses and we're scaling out on some of this other stuff that frankly is not actually bringing us students that are retaining. And that's where I'm going to, I'm going to actually say Do you need athletics? Do you need some of these other add-ons that people say, oh, but my kid's going to do athletics? I'm like, you know, we got to be more intentional about things that, you know, Champlain College did years ago. They decided up in Vermont, we're going to get rid of our athletic program and we're going to really lean into wellness and intramural sports. And they've got hiking and skiing and all kinds of stuff. And students really make that part of their lifestyle. Losing intercollegiate athletics didn't do anything to hurt them. It actually enhanced the experience. So I think that, you know, to your, to your question, I would like to see groups of schools that have similar missions, that have complementary academic programs, not all the same, complementary programs and be able to say we are a national university system and this is what we do.

And yet you and I are engaged in a serious and realistic, I think, conversation about mergers. And yet we read and we hear regularly— I'm speaking generically— that the people that should be having this conversation, the college leaders, the college trustees in these exact kind of small, non-selective colleges we're talking about, tend to say what? Well, no, we're okay. We'll survive.

We're okay.

And it's silly, but can we speculate on what it would take, Laura, to get them to recognize before it's too late? Because that's what's happening now. They're recognizing it's too late to act yesterday on this stuff, not next week.

Yeah, I, I think that this is where the leadership comes in, right? This is where someone has to come in and say, all right, what are we trying to do here? Are we trying to educate people? Are we trying to be like everybody else? And, you know, I think that there have been some examples of some presidents who've said, and they've looked at the books and they said, okay, maybe we do need to get rid of athletics. Maybe we do need to get rid of, you know, a particular academic program, even if it's well enrolled. Yeah. Okay. So like, I'm going to use, you know, where I'm currently located in the Boston metropolitan area. You know, there are fantastic business programs all over the place around here, whether it be at the large universities like Boston University, Boston College, Harvard, et cetera, or you go over to Babson College, which is the number one business school for decades in America, in the world, excuse me. I'm gonna have some of my friends and colleagues from Babson, it's like, it's a world thing, Laura, it's a world thing. You know, but literally it's right down the street, or Bentley University or Bryant University. Like you've got all three of those B-schools all there. And then if you're a kid who's like, maybe I'm not at that academic level, maybe I need to be at a state school, I could go to Framingham State or Bridgewater State and get a good business degree. So now you're a small private, like my previous institution that closed, and you're like, I'm going to have a business department. Why? Why? Why? Just so you can like keep people on the football team? That, that's to me not— it doesn't make sense. So I think what has to happen to your question about why don't people kind of make these decisions, they are also not making other decisions. They need to start making decisions about how— what is our mission? We need to get back to the mission. What is the mission of the institution? What are the majors and programs and offerings that we have to provide to be mission-driven, to reach and attain that doctrine that drives us as an institution. And then does it matter that we have a Starbucks or not? Does it matter that we have a climbing wall? Does it matter that we have one of these things? Because if it doesn't, why are we trying to aspire to that? We don't need to get into that arms race. What we need to do is focus on what we got to do. And so I think there's another piece of this is that when the president wants to say we're going to scale back, that's a leadership thing. You need to have a strong leader to say, in order for us to keep this institution viable, we're going to scale back. This is what it means for us. This is why we're doing it. And hopefully be able to move us in a good direction. When it comes to that idea of merger, I think the other thing that's there that we haven't talked about is how clumsy, cumbersome, and overwhelming it is to get it done through each state. Each state is different. The states don't like it. They don't like to play along. They don't know what to do with higher education when it comes to these things. Okay. And then the accreditors. The accreditors, they, you know, as a, as higher education is the only industry that accredits itself. If hospitals accredited themselves, if the airline industry accredited itself, if the car manufacturers accredit, I would literally stay in my room in a padded space and never leave. Because why would I get on a plane? Why would I get in a car? Why would I go to a hospital? I wouldn't trust it. So the accreditors don't help either. So yeah, so I have no answer to your question other than to rant. Okay. And I think that that's really overwhelming when it comes to being a president and a board of trustees to say, all right, why, why should we do this? Because there's no— there is not a mechanism that helps the institution come up with something in a way that is, you know, other than hiring a consultant, which is important, but the consultants are not an intermediary with the state. The state does not have that kind of connection. They're also not an intermediary with the accreditors. And so if there was an intermediary, like if the Department of Education or something like that said, look, we know this is our reality, we're gonna put together an intermediary and this is how it's gonna work. And we're going to be here to help you with this, like almost like a souped up federal consultant, that might help. But right now you're on your own. Yeah. Yeah.

I just, a couple hours ago, I was talking to a college president just about that. He's engaged in some merger activity and he was lamenting the fact that the accrediting agencies would make it not impossible, but as close to impossible as it can be without being that. But when we have these mergers, you know, there's always a whiff of what's in it for me. And I often share what I believe when college makes any change, they can change the font size on the business card. And inevitably, I'm trying to be Laura DeVoe here and come up with a funny, and inevitably faculty will have a protest. And shortly after the faculty have a protest, the students will have a protest. What's in it for faculty initially, maybe students also, what's in it for faculty if a college were to engage in a merger of some sort?

Yeah, I think it's interesting, because I think back to my own experience, my lived experience with Mount Ida. Prior to our closing, if people go back and look at the history of everything that happened over the course of their life, of our last semester around, we had announced that we were pursuing a merger with Lasell College, which is located literally, you know, 4 miles from where Mount Ida was. And that had to become public because when you do a merger, it has to become public. And so there was a public piece of that. And we had this, we did, I almost, and this is me being absolutely biased, but also you have to remember I was traumatized through this whole thing. So I have to look back at it through a specific lens. I think we did a pretty effective job in explaining to the students and the faculty and the staff that in order for us to be sustainable, we have to think differently and a merger made sense. And it was interesting to watch the two campuses. The campus response at La Salle was very negative. The campus response at Mount Ida was actually quite positive. There was anxiety, but you have to be clear with folks when you're making these announcements to say, this is what it's going to look like for each group. Okay, this is how it's going to impact the faculty, this kind of impact the staff, and this is the students. And when it came to the, the faculty, you have to be honest about which programs are going to remain, which programs are being taught out, which programs are going to be combined, because maybe there are two similar programs. And what will that mean in your total FTE? Are we going to— you should be sitting here going, as part of the conversation, we have this many faculty who are in arrange for retirement. We will have a buyout. We will do all those kind of things. But you need to be intentional with the faculty, with the staff. That was a bigger heightened area for, for anxiety, at least on our campus, because you don't need two soccer coaches. You don't need two vice presidents for student affairs. You don't need two registrars. You needed one. Okay. And, you know, I was saying to my team, It is highly likely I will not survive this merger because of the politics of it.

Yeah.

And the— my counterpart at the other institution was longer in the game than I was. And LaSalle, in the merger, because it's never a merger of equals, they would have been the ones with more money on the table. They get to make some decisions that we don't get to make. Okay. And so that was anxiety-producing. But even there, the staff was like, but It makes sense because it makes sense. The students ultimately just wanted to know, were they going to have a space within that community where they were seen as equal partners, not as, oh, we saved your ass, okay, if it wasn't for us, right? And they definitely were in this mindset of, I just don't want to be seen as the poor redheaded stepchild cousin that nobody wanted in all of this, but can I still have my major and that sort of thing? So, so there's all these pieces. We did have some scrutiny about finances at that point. And then especially when the merger didn't go through, there was a heightened sense of anxiety. And then obviously we had what we had, which was our closure and the purchase of the property by the University of Massachusetts. So, yeah.

Let me follow up with a tougher question on that. And you mentioned kind of indirectly that had LaSalle and MIT emerged, there would've been layoffs, right? Oh, yeah. And so that's an inevitability. And we read in the newspapers, well, not newspapers, but on our TV, on our screens these days, when there's any kind of industry consolidation in any industry, let alone higher education. Yes, I lose jobs, you lose jobs, others lose jobs. That's going to— it's a reality that's going to happen in higher education. Here's the tough part of the question. Are those layoffs a good thing, Laura, or are they a bad thing?

I— you can do layoffs in a humane way. And so there's my non-answer. There is going to be a good— you have to not just say, oh, and no one's going to lose their job. That's a lie. That's shenanigans. That's baloney. It's not going to happen that way. You have to know what the cost of doing business is. So in the case of a merger, let's say you have two— because I was in student affairs, so I'm going to have a student affairs answer. Okay. Disability Services and the Counseling Center, two separate offices, always were overtaxed for students on both of the campuses. So if it actually went through, I was going to be pounding the door down saying these people all should be keeping their jobs because we need them, because Everybody needs these services. We need these services. Okay. Do you need all of this? No. So it's like the cost of doing business is not just about, well, how many people do you have? It's how many students are you serving and what's best practice? And if you have to scale back, you have to scale back. This is where the, the traditions and how institutions just literally just, they get their fee. Embedded in the cement and say, but this is the way we've always done it. We need to keep these people around. This is what we have to do. And that is just bad business. It's bad business on institutions. And we should be looking at that when institutions are like, well, we're in a, we're in a tough spot. We already know that salaries and, and all of that is the human resource costs are the things that are the highest. Okay. And so you're like, why is this position still around? Well, just the way we've always done it. And I'm like, that's not an answer. I worked at a university at one point, Gary, where there was a woman who had been working at the university for 25 years and she had worked in a copy room. And the copy room was at that point, everyone had a copier in their office. Everyone had a, a laser printer in their office. They didn't need to go to the copy room anymore. But the institution, in this desire to keep her and a couple of her colleagues still employed, they changed the rules that you couldn't have a copy machine in your office. So they came around and took all the copy machines away and we had to then use the copy room. I'm like, this is bananas. This is absolutely bananas. And, you know, so that's an extreme example of, like, you know, total tunnel vision decision-making. But I've seen versions of that of all sorts of sizes at the 5 institutions I've worked at. And like, are we going to keep doing it this way? Oh, yeah. Well, we've moved Clarice around to 5 different offices because no one wants the ID card operation, but we're going to keep doing this. But you can outsource this. You don't have to produce the ID cards on your campus. You can actually use your people that your company— the company you're working with, and they'll make them. Yeah, no, but we have to keep Clarice around. Okay, I'm not saying can Clarice. I'm saying find something else for Clarice to do. But why are you doing this yourself? Like, we have to stop that.

And we've talked the business aspect of mergers. We've talked the faculty a little bit. And let's, let's wrap this up with a final question, Lauren, and that's the student piece. So let's look ahead to, you know, the closures are a given. I'm not about to guess at a number, but there will be significant closures. And just to the merge, the consolidate, I don't even like mergers, consolidations. Let's talk about the consolidation piece and its impact on students. Will this impact their access to academic advisors, to career services, to other student support resources? You mentioned a minute ago, maybe not, but what do you think about If a student is listening to this, what should they look forward to if their college merges?

I have always made the recommendation when I have been talking to institutions that are merging or closing and they're doing intentional teach-outs with other campuses. So in many of the cases when I've talked to people, it's we've closed and we do— we have arranged teach-outs at these two institutions and the students are going out or whatever the case may be. I've always said that there should be a maintaining of a couple of people that should be able to be reached and provide service to those students. One is someone who has a skill in the registrar's area because some people make decisions later in the game like, oh, I've now decided to go XYZ, can I have some help getting my records there, etc.? So someone who has that ability to manage student records and that sort of thing. The second person is someone in the student affairs area, someone who could speak to, you know, look, I'm going to cut through some of the issues with— you don't have to have them employed on the campus, maybe that they're being acquired. Some places that might work, some places it doesn't. But now in the world of remote work, someone could be located anywhere and say, yep, I know Bobby. I remember that. I can look up his student record. I can tell you a little bit about him. And Bobby could call the student service person from their closed college and be able to say, hey, you know, hey, you know, Laura, I'm having a really tough time. I'm trying to navigate this and I'm not getting an answer. Like, okay, well, let me help you. And I know that sounds like handholding, but I think one of the things that I've experienced through the closure of Mount Ida We had that. We didn't mean to have that, but we had that. So either people called me directly— I wasn't getting paid for it. The students got to me who needed help, and I was able to navigate wherever they were. The registrar was employed on a contract basis by UMass, and they were able to help the students with the records. She was basically on contract for about 18 months. And as time went farther and farther from the closure, the less and less things she had to do. But she was there to help navigate it and she was really good at it. And I think that when you look at the completion rate of the students who were part of our closed institution, we had the highest completion rate. Sadly, we had the highest completion rate post our closure than we had, you know, years when we were open. And it's because we had people around to help. And, you know, I made sure during the closure that I was connecting with all the deans of students and the vice presidents for student affairs at places where a significant number of students were going. Like, if one or two kids was going somewhere, I didn't necessarily get involved. But in those cases, I had at least a handful of students who reached out to me and said, hey, you know, I'm doing really well at XYZ place, but I do have a question. Okay, tell me what your question is. Can you help me navigate this? Sure. And I think that if we can be more humane when it comes to these closures and say, hey, you know what, you— we're going to put you on contract for a year. You know, maybe it's not a full-time job, but we'll, we'll have you on contract to help with these specific scenarios. I actually think that's going to end up in a better situation for the students. Than even, you know, trying to put on some kind of, you know, big fall welcome just for the students that came from the closed college. They don't— that doesn't resonate with them. My dissertation was about this. And when I talked to the students, they're like, these big events made us feel like everyone's looking at us like we're like these weirdos that just kind of got dropped onto the campus. This wasn't fun. We didn't want that. We just wanted someone to help us. And, and that's what they wanted.

Interesting. Well, I'm, I'm, I'm going to have to describe you, Laura, as I've been pondering this, as a fountain, a fountain of information and guidance. Go ahead and put that on your business card if you like. A fountain of information and guidance. It's always fascinating to get your perspective and even help me think through the big picture items that are in this industry. Because you, as you and I've talked off camera and off, off the recording before, We're, we're in the middle of a change. We're in the middle of a massive change. And you and I will chat again a few years down the road and we'll look back and say, oh my gosh, I had no idea that what we were talking about then would really in some form or fashion become a reality. So Laura, I'm grateful for your time, for your expertise, for your guidance. We should probably talk about doing this again someday.

We should. It's always a pleasure, Gary.

All right.

We'll talk soon. Take care.