Mismatching and Undermatching:
Performance vs. Pedigree

Two pieces in the Sunday, March 17th New York Times – an article and an essay – were stimulating “bookends” to the ongoing conversation about social engineering, in college admissions or employment hiring practices. 

David Leonhardt’s “Better Colleges Failing to Lure Talented Poor” presents the findings of a study that “definitively” shows that many high school students miss out on elite college experiences, mostly by not applying but also by choosing to stay closer to home.  Some readers rejected the “prestige is better” inferred in the article’s title and others felt there was a paternalistic “prestige knows best” tone to the piece.

 

The implication that smart kids who miss out on "the best colleges" are somehow further disadvantaged is stretched too far. In his blog on March 18, 2013, Matt Reed writes:

In my observation, anyone who puts too much faith in a Great Chain of Being is missing the point.  Having attended one of the elite colleges myself, I can attest from personal observation that what makes them different from other places isn’t so much academic rigor as a sort of unconscious affluence.  Students there don’t work thirty or forty hours a week for pay while they take classes.  And the assumption that “exclusive” equates to “high quality” is both antithetical to public higher education, by definition, and a reversion to the bad old habit of mistaking inputs for outputs.

Referring to inputs and outs – what Bowen and Bok called “selection vs. treatment” effects – in his Times essay on Sunday, Dan Slater describes “mismatch theory”: 

It’s the idea that affirmative action can harm those it’s supposed to help by placing them at schools in which they fall below the median level of ability and therefore have a tough time. As a consequence, the argument goes, these students suffer learningwise and, later, careerwise. To be clear, mismatch theory does not allege that minority students should not attend elite universities. Far from it. But it does say that students — minority or otherwise — do not automatically benefit from attending a school that they enter with academic qualifications well below the median level of their classmates.

So often the focus in special treatment arguments is on who isn’t advantaged in the process.  Slater turns the tables in an important way, writing about those (not only minority students) for whom special treatment turns out to be the booby prize:

…some minority students who get into a top school with the help of affirmative action might actually be better served by attending a less elite institution to which they could gain admission with less of a boost or no boost at all.

As an undergraduate at an elite college I saw a variety of "special admits" – who were well aware of their status – be marginalized while the college, arguably, benefited by their presence:  athletes, sons of big donors, racial minorities, and even some women described feeling “ornamental.”

Most colleges seek talented and diverse student populations that will have a general educational impact on each other, in and out of class.  But there is a superficial and disingenuous quality to crafting a class (through selection) that fits an idealized view but which the college may not deserve.  Many colleges “talk the talk” about diversity but a much, much smaller number actually invest in the structure and resources to create a truly welcoming environment that is likely to support success for a wide variety of talented kids.

While seeking to enrich the educational experience they offer, it is incumbent upon a college community to anticipate and genuinely attempt to meet the needs of students who may be non-traditional or out of the mainstream of the predominant campus culture.

Many assert quality and desire greater diversity.  To earn it, colleges have to work for and deserve quality and diversity.  Authenticity is powerfully attractive.

We know from students, parents and counselors, that the ultimate college selection is based upon a student’s sense of the “fit” between their background, interests, and aspirations.  It is, after all, their choice.

 

Not to diminish the high potential of resource rich college experiences, it is well worth considering the notion that many students have wonderful educational experiences at the best college for them which very well might not be a marquee-name institution.  In fact, others may squander advantages that they stumble over-and-around at high-prestige colleges.  I've seen both happen.

 

Rather than urging the Amhersts and Bowdoins to do the recruitment equivalent of hydrofracking for undertapped talent, how about focusing upstream in the human capital development pipeline? 

 

Respect individual choice, support preparation for and education about the world of opportunity that exists, and invest in the vitality of the incredibly diverse education systems we have which, taken together, can be the best for all.

The Sage Price Promise

This past week the Sage Colleges Board of Trustees adopted the Sage Price Promise, which guarantees entering new students that undergraduate tuition will not increase for the next four years.

There were a number of reasons Sage did this, all of them worth highlighting in this period of great concern about higher education affordability. 

·  Rising cost:  the National Center for Education Statistics has shown that in today’s dollars the price of a college education has tripled in one generation.

·  Consumer confusion:  a recent study by the College Board showed that most families don’t understand the difference between “sticker price” and their actual cost, after financial aid.  The mood seems to be “confused at best.”  Last year colleges launched an educational tool called the Net Price Calculator but less than 10% have used it.  More needs to be done. 

·  Making sacrifices:  delivering quality education is expensive and labor-intensive but all colleges have room to trim costs that have driven their overhead expenses up which has led to the price-tripling families experienced.

 

·  Social good:  college is not for everyone, but access to college for those who wish it should be attainable for the personal and community benefits higher education can bring.  Seen as an investment, everyone has a stake and everyone – from students to parents to government – plays a part.  Within reason, student debt is not a bad thing; it is “skin in the game.”

We at Sage believe this will be good for our families and for our college.  Having held tuition and fees flat for the past four years and realized a 25% enrollment growth – with corresponding increases in revenue that support qualitative improvements to students’ experience – we see little risk and much reward.

As educators and parents ourselves, we look beyond our campus and share the concerns that seemingly dominate the media and political dialogue: a college education has never been more important, yet concerns about paying for a college education have never been more strident.  An acquaintance from Chicago wrote me yesterday and said “Dan - saw your news today about the tuition freeze.  I and many other parents applaud your effort.” 

 

This will be good for Sage and, we hope, be a challenge and inspiration for other colleges.

 

In this post Lundquist discusses the “increasing divergence between college price and family ability and willingness to pay,” and he presents a potential conflict of interest that may be hindering change.

“Why not have committed, knowledgeable stakeholders – cut loose from self-interest – at the helm?  A more proactive stance by college leaders is in the best interest of good business and good education.”

 

“Colleges on the Fiscal Cliff: Students Bearing the Burden”

This week we have seen college leaders take what has been tabbed “baby steps” by some and “cop out” and “proxy for meaningful change” by others regarding financial aid reform.  This was followed by the Moodys’ report on the continuing divergence between college price and families’ ability (and willingness) to pay.  Some themes are becoming familiar….

When I was asked to speak to groups twenty to thirty years ago it was almost all about admissions.  Recently the focus has taken a sharp turn away from the getting in part to the paying part.  Affordability IS becoming the “hot new college amenity.”

A guidance counselor group just invited me to present on a topic they have titled “Colleges on the Fiscal Cliff: Students Bearing the Burden” which gives me good insight into what they are seeing of highered economics in the high schools, and it confirms every conversation I had in my travels around the country recently.

This fall I had the opportunity to speak at a number of national and regional professional conferences where issues of college access and affordability were addressed.  Besides the fact that I did not hear one single bit of news that made me feel sanguine about the continuing divergence of college price and families’ ability (and willingness) to pay, I only heard increasingly shrill negatives… incredulity and skepticism about “runaway” college price increases.

No one needs Moodys Investor Services to get that message.  Ask and listen to any financial aid or admissions director: it really is later than we acknowledge.

Right Pricing: Good Business and Good Policy

If I only cared about colleges maximizing revenue I would still advise college leaders to fix their price structure… so they can stay in business.  But it is of course more than that, and finding ways of structuring the various models so they are affordable (and have value, not mutually-exclusive propositions) is an imperative for good education reasons in addition to smart business reasons.

Here is a letter from the mother of a student just admitted to a “top 1%” private college.  In addition to underscoring the financial stress increasing prices create – even for colleges with liberal financial aid policies like this school – it also is tinged with the heartbreak we set up by so successfully promoting the highered dream.  (Highlight at the end and “anonymizing” the college added by me.)

Case Study: a family in the “skid zone”

Private College is contributing a total of $24,000 but that includes 3K loan and 2K work study on top of the 18,900 grant.  My daughter is expected to contribute 2K, and we are expected to contribute 32K.  Additionally – any scholarship she gets will decrease her contribution – not the parent’s, so they’re using her contribution through work study and loan as part of their contribution – not ours. 

I think our expected family contribution is around 32K according to FASFA because our income is right around 140,000.  I think my husband is actually making about 95K this year, and I make about 42K.  BUT the reason my husband’s income is so high is because he has worked a ton of overtime.  I don’t feel comfortable getting into a situation where we have to depend on him working overtime in order to make ends meet. 

You would think that on paper, we have enough to cover the 32,000 - but when balancing our bare bones monthly expenses and income and we barely break even.  What do people do in our situation?  What options are there?  I asked Private College this, and they say that she can get a Stafford loan for $5,500.  But that was about it unless we want to take out a loan ourselves. 

I’m really so upset by this because we would never have dreamed this opportunity for our daughter and here it seemed like it was placed in her lap – and I would hate to have to turn it down being this close, but the tuition is more than my yearly salary -- and not just here, but college in general!

 

A conflict of interest?

Hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits go to faculty and staff who work in higher education.  Many of the same people who set policy and determine budget priorities at colleges are immune from major worries that beset most families: tuition costs.

A common benefit private college employees enjoy is subsidized tuition; for themselves, their partners, and their children.  And this benefit has the peculiar effect of giving the greatest benefit to those who least need it.  The more affluent faculty and administrators who do not qualify for need-based financial aid still are eligible to receive free or reduced tuition.

I think these policies deserve serious review and discussion.  I know there were good reasons to implement them decades ago and there may be good reasons to keep them – or keep parts of them – today.  But I also have to believe that if college policy-makers had to face college financing the way “civilians” do, we would have seen different price trajectories over the past twenty years.

This fall a TIME Magazine poll highlighted disparities in perceptions of highered price and value.  As TIME reported, “members of the general population were twice as likely as college leaders to say that college isn’t worth the price: 80% of U.S. adults agreed that at many colleges, the education students receive is not worth what they pay for it. Only 41% of college leaders agreed with them.”  But that 41% figure is spurious, in my opinion, because “college leaders” are disconnected from a significant part of the value equation: paying.

The TIME story went on underscoring public distrust and implying the wisdom of a more proactive stance by those college leaders: “more Americans support federal price caps or controls on tuition (73%) than college leaders (16%), largely because the public doesn’t seem to think colleges can control them on their own. More than 90% of Americans said colleges aren’t doing enough to improve affordability. Only 56% of educators agreed even as roughly the same percentage (58%) said they don’t think the cost of a college degree will ever stop rising.”

More and more Americans like the family in the case study above are having trouble dealing with college costs now.  If the pundits are right that the next generation will be the first cohort to be less-well-off than their parents, we will witness college-bound families going from stretched to priced-out in a generation even if price increases slow. Under-capacity campuses, with eroded academic quality, and an under-educated populace are in no one's vision of a desirable future. Let's act soon to minimize cost barriers to higher education.

Why wait and let market forces (family choice) or regulation (government funds) drive change?  Why not have committed, knowledgeable stakeholders – cut loose from self-interest – at the helm?  A more proactive stance by college leaders is in the best interest of good business and good education.  Maybe if we had to stand in the checkout line change would come more quickly.

Dustbowl Thinking

Ken Burns' new documentary tells the story of the Dust Bowl blow after body-blow: the brutally unrelenting natural challenges, the grim perseverance and astonishingly unfailing hope of Depression-era farm families, and the glimmers of actual relief that are quickly followed by even worse calamities.

Staring straight at the camera, one stoic survivor states the prevailing frame of mind with blunt candor. "We figured if we failed, we didn't try hard enough. We didn't do anything different the next year, we just tried harder."

When you only know one way – when you can only envision one way – then failure (or success) must be simply a matter of effort.  If innovation is any measure, until recently much of higher education seemed stuck in Dustbowl Thinking.  The good news is that seems to be changing.

In late September, President Raynard Kington wrote Grinnell College alumni saying “I think everybody realizes that something has to change or that we'll have to face even tougher choices down the road.”

Swarthmore’s President Rebecca Chopp, in a speech on her campus last October, acknowledged the changing landscape and the challenges to liberal arts colleges and suggested fresh approaches to engaging what appears to be a dwindling audience.

A worry that lingers is whether reframing the liberal arts’ value proposition is dangerous… or insufficient. Adherents long for the indemnification of the liberal arts but some push back with ambivalent cynicism, happy to see the effort but skeptical whether deep appreciation and commitment can be sparked by mere marketing communication campaigns. “Have You Driven the Classics…lately?” may receive (muffled) applause but will it reverse troubling trends?

Paying serious attention to change and looking outward are good starts, but the prevailing consumer culture has shifted over time.  New audiences in new markets invited to college are pragmatic and hugely practical, and arrive with an under-appreciation of classical academic values.  And the words “liberal arts” probably create confusion, assuming they receive attention at all.

I haven't polled any but I think it is safe to assume that few students select a liberal arts college for the liberal arts.

I do know many select college for prestige, perceived value, cost (tuition freezes and no-loan policies help), and campus facilities. And I believe most of those who attend liberal arts colleges develop an appreciation for this education during and especially after their time as students. 

Recently Cappy Hill, Vassar's president and an expert of the economics of highered, shared her worry that the liberal arts were heading back to their elite roots. My "back to the future" reply was that, perhaps, the liberal arts model might become more like European monasteries, with devotees attending to illuminated manuscripts and deliberately-paced contemplation inside the drawbridge surrounded by a brutal and chaotic world outside....

Having had the good fortune to be immersed in the higher education environment for most of my life – I grew up on the Haverford College campus and then did my undergraduate and graduate studies at Amherst and Harvard – I, well, I think I “get it.”

Also having the great good fortune to spend the past thirty-five years working in an usually wide range of types of colleges and universities, and being privileged to counsel families that represent that diversity, I think Presidents Hill and Chopp are both right. I believe the liberal arts' shrinkage will continue and I hope its champions will begin to rethink its value – "compelling narrative" – in a modern context that takes into account the lack of awareness, understanding, and appreciation in the market.

It won't do to either dismiss public disinterest or pine for the recent good old days. The future of the liberal arts and highered is important and unknown. It will be significantly affected by environmental factors beyond the control of academe but influenced by leadership from within academe.

• I know a college that introduced an honors program named the “Renaissance Baccalaureate.”  Despite decent promotion, it drew little attention… and lots of misspellings.  It was re-launched as the “Discovery Degree” – with the exact same features – and was an immediate hit.
• In response to public concern over price, a number of colleges have adjusted family expense through combinations of freezing top-line price (in some cases even cutting it) and reducing family cost through financial aid discounting. 
• Similarly, acknowledging the mounting worry about ROI and jobs, colleges have beefed up career services, alumni networks, and internships.

Proactive, market-sensitive tactics like these have yielded positive results, making their institutions stronger with no sacrifice to integrity or dignity. Prosperity and – outside of monasteries – currency are good brands in highered!

Taking an audience-eye-view is fundamental to successful communication.  Instead of sticking with words we know and are comfortable with, how about deconstructing the constituent elements of what makes a liberal arts education so compelling?  Let’s see what emerges and use those discoveries to try and find ways to break down the language and values divide.   

Whether through price, product, or name, a part of our challenge is to make a fresh case for the liberal arts, in-and-of-themselves and as a means to a fulfilling end.  If I’m right, and deep appreciation of the liberal arts comes during or after the partaking, we better define, articulate, and deliver in methods that will be received and appreciated compelling new “now-reasons” to consider our institutions.

Dangerous Band-Aids, Part I:

The Legerdemain of Modern “Enrollment Management”

 

Q: “When can apparently good news be bad?”  

A: “When it provides a false sense of security.”

 

A growing number of college presidents are acknowledging the higher education operating model has to change (though if TIME magazine’s reporting is to be believed, a startling number are not of that opinion, in direct contrast with their customer base).

One hopes these presidents are listening to their in-house market experts, the admissions and financial aid staff whose work bridges the gap between important on- and off-campus constituents.

Modern admissions marketing communication wizardry, global-reach recruiting campaigns, and sophisticated cost leveraging schemes continue to salve fears that change needs to come soon.  Recruiting and financial aid packing tactics at many colleges seem to be masking an “it’s later than we think” reality, making practitioners in those fields increasingly concerned.

I hosted or was part of three standing-room-only sessions at NACAC and at the New York State financial aid association meeting the following week.  In every setting I sensed an odd mixture of pride-of-accomplishment, guilt, and concern about the future.  The pride comes from making an increasingly difficult (juggling mutually-exclusive imperatives) job look too easy.  The guilt and concern come from making a tough job look too easy, thus blunting effectiveness of delivering messages many on campus don’t want to hear.

Reporting from The College Board Forum, The Chronicle’s Eric Hoover cites Pomona’s Seth Allen’s concern:  “It’s a prevalent notion in academe that recruiting more students from faraway shores can fix a college’s revenue problems. Foreign students, Mr. Allen said, are the latest incarnation of the ‘next great thing’ that promises to solve enrollment challenges. He warned his audience, however, that such thinking could distract college officials from frank discussions about their rising costs.

“’When are we actually going to have this conversation?’ Mr. Allen asked. ‘Because I don’t think the next great thing is around the corner for us.’”

Seth’s is one of a growing number of voices from the admissions and financial aid world whose embedded “market readings” urge intelligent action, sooner rather than later, as they see their tactics’n’tricks diminishing.

Across the country from Pomona, Pennsylvania’s Albright College is doing away with one such tactic, the practice of financial aid gapping.

Kevin Kiley of Inside Highered shined a bright light on the all-too-often overlooked flip side of college cost, financial aid gapping in a story this summer and recently followed-up with a report on Albright College’s eyes-wide-open, pragmatic approach to weaning itself away from gapping.  Albright’s Greg Eichhorn has succeeded in helping his college take a longer view: by “managing down” the gap, Eichhorn figures, Albright will be able to grow headcount (through improved admissions yield and subsequent retention) and increase the lifetime value of a customer, with financial and student satisfaction benefits that will more than offset the anticipated increase in discount rate (arguably one of the most dangerously misused metrics in higher education).

Professionals in the enrollment field – admissions and financial aid staff – are in an increasingly difficult position.  Trained to serve both their college and their families, many are finding what was once a normal complimentary practice is becoming untenable.  As committed, intelligent highered stakeholders, one hopes campus leaders recognize their credibility and seek their insights, soon.

ELEPHANTS CAN DANCE

In the "lessons from other worlds" department, we have seen the near-bankrupt Dayton ballet, opera, and orchestra do the unthinkable and merge and survive. With more foresight, an Albany, NY healthcare "behemoth" decided not to wait til the 11th hour and three separate (and disparate) entities are successfully merging.

An acquaintance who works in the premium spirits (that's expensive alcoholic beverages) business tantalized me with a thumbnail of part of his job: because it takes 20+ years for Scotch to mature-to-market, he tries to envision the market -- economy and demand, pricing and quantity -- twenty five years in the future, today, so production can begin.

As they famously learned at IBM, ELEPHANTS CAN DANCE. And Professor Sternberg’s excellent article will reremind us, and urge us on. He tells us waiting to see does not work, and reminds us that highered must look outward rather than exclusively inward: though we are experts, value is "in the eye of the beholder." 

Highered, the music has already begun!

Dan Lundquist

 

Lessons From Swiss Watch-Makers  by Robert J. Sternberg

Today, nonprofit higher education is under threat like never before. Costs for higher education are rising at a rate that simply may not be sustainable over the long term. For-profit universities have provided platforms that enable individuals, especially those in the work force, to obtain degrees with an ease and convenience formerly not possible. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are looking for ways to provide quality online education at a fraction of the current cost. Some of them even question the value of a college education: One entrepreneur (Peter Thiel) is actually paying students not to go to college and to start businesses instead.

As costs to colleges and universities rise, state legislatures have been cutting allocations in the public sector in a way never seen before, while at the same time constraining the rate at which tuition may rise; low interest rates reduce returns on endowments; newly limited funding of grant proposals reduces income through indirect costs; and philanthropy is constrained in many cases by flat or even falling personal incomes. What’s to be done?

We in the higher-education sector can learn a lot from the Swiss watch-making industry. In the 1980s, the Swiss watch industry was in serious trouble. The Swiss watch-makers — who had dominated the industry for decades and, in some cases, for centuries — were being routed by Japanese watch-makers who were producing watches that could do much more than the Swiss ones, and at a fraction of the cost. Why pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a Swiss watch that told the time and possibly the date when you could get the time, day, and date from a Japanese product, not to mention additional features such as stopwatch, alarm, and multiple-time-zone features, and sometimes more? Even worse, the Japanese quartz (battery-operated) watches often were more accurate in telling the time than were the Swiss hand-wound or self-winding models.

The Swiss watch-making industry might have gone bust — in much the way some of us fear for the newspaper or magazine industries today — except for their creative redefinition of what it means to own a Swiss watch. Recognizing that the Japanese were out to capture their market, the Swiss watch-makers set out to redefine what it meant to own a Swiss watch. The Swiss watch was to become what a classical stringed instrument had become — the symbol of quality. Research suggests that it is difficult if not impossible to distinguish the sound of a Stradivarius from that of a well-made modern instrument, but musicians are willing to pay a huge premium for the perception of quality in the classical instrument. Swiss watch-makers similarly capitalized on their brand equity, knowing that they had only a limited amount of time effectively to do so before becoming irrelevant. They needed users of their products personally to identify with their products — to see their Swiss watches as extensions of themselves.

Different watch-makers emphasized different images. For example, Rolex Oyster watches present a bold image of luxury and privilege. Patek Philippe watches, generally even more expensive than Rolexes, tend to present an image of the highest quality accompanied by understated elegance and durability of a single watch over generations. Blancpain watches typically are even more understated, with an emphasis on each being handmade by a single maker. Tag Heuer has become a symbol of the young achiever on the way up. Longines offers quality at a more modest price, while Swatch watches are funky and relatively inexpensive.

What are the lessons in brand equity to be learned for higher education?

1. Waiting to see what happens does not work. The Swiss watch-makers could not tarry or their market would have been gone for good. Neither can higher education today wait around and hope for the best. Some newspaper and magazine publishers waited; you can see how well it worked out for them! There are too many threats to nonprofit higher education to adopt a stance of wait and see. You can’t wait to change while your market share steadily evaporates.

2. Quality institutions will survive only if they effectively market their brand. The Swiss watch brands had (and still have) a worldwide reputation for superiority. The watch-makers, however, needed to persuade their customers that quality matters. This was no easy task. Many products today, such as personal computers, have become largely mass-marketed products of generic quality. Some manufacturers, such as IBM, left the business, recognizing that relatively few PC customers would pay a premium for quality. With a cheap watch, you can buy hundreds of them before you reach the cost of a good Swiss watch. Moreover, all the watches tell time. The Swiss watch-makers, therefore, needed to persuade customers that their product was a statement about the wearer — much like a piece of jewelry. (Indeed, some non-Swiss brands, such as Cartier and Bulgari, are known primarily for their association with jewelry.)

You may be thinking that you would never seek to purchase a premium watch. But how about some other product that is more luxurious than you really need — a premium car, bicycle, house, home appliance, television, cell phone, garment, or even branded rather than generic food or drugs? Most of us seek a premium product for something because for, whatever that thing is, we want better quality, or at least, our perception of it. With higher education, students often feel their choices are limited, relative to their resources, when it comes to price.

When students pay the high and, in some institutions, astronomical costs of a college education today, they understandably feel like they are paying a premium price, whether they want to or not, and they expect to get their money’s worth. You might think that the premium branding strategy applies only to elite institutions. But today, because students perceive almost all of higher education as commanding premium prices, they want a product that delivers. Having a strong value proposition applies to all institutions, not just elite ones. Thus, institutions of higher education need to market their brand to bring pride of ownership and belonging to their students. They need to develop personal identification with the brand. Generic institutions without a clear and differentiated value proposition are the ones most likely to be hurt.

3. Quality is, in part, in the eye of the beholder. How does one actually know that, say, a Rolex or a Patek Philippe is a superior watch? For the large majority of buyers, that knowledge is gotten through the superior functioning and durability of the watch and through the watch-maker’s reputation. It is not enough to be good: The customer must be persuaded, as Detroit automakers are learning today after many lean years in which they saw their brand equity decimated. You not only need to excel, you have to be recognized for your excellence. Good marketing and good public relations are necessary but generally not sufficient to persuade stakeholders of quality. Thus colleges and universities need transparent systems of accountability that will persuade stakeholders of the quality the institutions claim.

 4. Institutions will succeed to the extent that they identify, pursue, and market their unique niche. Institutions at the top of the reputational heap — the Yales and the Stanfords, say — have marked out their niche, trying to be the best possible in a wide variety of disciplines. Most institutions of higher learning, however, have neither the financial resources nor even the will to become the best across the board. Instead, they need to do what the Swiss watch-makers did — find a niche in which they excel and then sell themselves as powerfully as they can to those who identify with what they have to offer.

At Oklahoma State University, for example, our brand derives from our land-grant mission — that we seek to educate ethical citizens and leaders who will make a positive, meaningful, and enduring difference to the world. As part of our value proposition, we have a Center for Ethical Leadership, leadership-related courses and student activities in all colleges, a popular leadership minor, and an ethos of developing servant leaders. We are in the early stages of planning to start an "ethical leadership track," to be administered jointly by academic and student affairs, to be readily and freely available to all students — undergraduate and graduate. It will combine the study of ethical leadership in the academic sphere with activities developed by student affairs that immediately apply what one learns in the classroom to one’s activities on campus.

In this way, we hope better to integrate the academic and student-affairs sides of our university, a task that is not always easily accomplished. In particular, certain courses will be identified as participating in the track, and will include within them principles and case studies in ethical leadership as applied to the particular discipline being studied. Thus, students will not have to take additional courses, but rather will elect courses and course sections relevant to the track. They will see directly how ethical leadership cross-cuts academic disciplines. And through their student-affairs activities, such as community service, student government, athletics, journalism, or whatever, they will apply what they learn. They then will be accountable in the academic work for showing how they applied what they learned on the academic side to the student-affairs side.

Other institutions might brand themselves differently. What is important is that the brand identification accurately and excitingly reflects both the mission of the institution and the graduates it produces.

5. You need consistency in quality and in messaging. For the best watch-makers, every watch is of superb quality. There are few or no duds, and if there is a dud, it is quickly replaced, no questions asked. Moreover, the watch-makers deliver on quality: There is an active market for quality Swiss watches dating back to the early 1900s. If the old watches are serviced, they still work and keep accurate time. And they bring high prices, even a century later. Similarly, colleges and universities need to produce graduates who show to employers and other stakeholders in the higher education system that they have the skills and work ethic they need to cope effectively with the work demands of the present and the future.

Similarly, messaging has to be strong and consistent. In earlier times, it was relatively simple to make different pitches to different audiences — to try to be everything to everybody. But with the advent of the Internet, information spreads around the globe literally at the speed of light. As some political candidates have discovered, whatever you say anywhere to anybody is fair game. You can’t afford to be indecisive about what you stand for. Some institutions cannot decide who or what they are: They have too many messages, too many logos, too many moving parts working at cross-purposes to each other. The Swiss watch-makers that have succeeded have been consistent in producing high-quality products and have carried a distinctive and unified brand message, sometimes offering diverse options (models) within the context of that overall message.

To some readers, it may seem offensive to think of a college or university in terms of a construct of brand equity. But in an age of rapid advances and intense competition, institutions of higher learning can no longer afford to be quixotic or otherwise naïve. Enhancement and effective communication of brand equity is what saved Swiss watch companies. It is what will save quality institutions of higher education.

 

Bio: Robert J. Sternberg is provost, senior vice president, Regents Professor of Psychology and Education, and Kaiser Family Foundation Chair in Ethical Leadership at Oklahoma State University. He is on the board of the Association of American Colleges and Universities as treasurer and is president of the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences as well as past president of the American Psychological Association. The opinions in this article, however, are exclusively his own.

 

The March to the Elephants' Graveyeard?

"Fresh" from two professional conferences -- admissions in Colorado and financial aid in New York -- where I had many opportunities to be re-reminded that there is unanimous agreement that highered will change and, in fact that it IS changing (by drift and reaction rather than intentional leadership, now).

When queried about this presidents, provosts, and pundits cite cognitive dissonance, collegiality, and many of the other situational and "cultural culprits" Professor Kilbourne mentions in his excellent article (below, reader comments are very good too at http://chronicle.com/article/Moving-at-the-Speed-of-Academe/134890/).

We all know leading change is difficult and that failure to lead is a demurral of responsibility that will only put highered in a more constrained, reactionary position.

 
Dan Lundquist

Moving at the Speed of Academe

by John Kilbourne, professor of movement science at Grand Valley State University

Last year I met with a former student whom I had mentored during his early years in college. Today he is the founder and chief executive of one of the largest and most successful fitness-and-wellness programs for children in the world. As many children practice his programs as watch the popular television program SpongeBob SquarePants.

During our meeting he shared with me the speed at which his company acts and responds to ever-changing trends in technology, business markets, and health and fitness. He said, "John, if I have an idea on Friday, we implement it on Monday." Sadly, I shared my frustration at being, in higher education, on the opposite end of that continuum. I replied to him by saying, "If I have an idea on Friday, I consider myself lucky to have it approved by the first of what might be three separate committees during the first year."

The importance of my friend's comments came into clearer focus shortly afterward with the attention given to the death of the Apple co-founder, visionary, and entrepreneur, Steve Jobs. It seems that much of Mr. Jobs's success was a result of what co-workers at Apple called his "reality distortion field," or RDF.

The RDF was Jobs's intense enthusiasm for convincing others that the task at hand was doable, often within very short periods of time. What's more, much of the current literature on the best ways to prepare college students for careers shows that taking risks, thinking creatively, and moving swiftly are key, affirming Mr. Jobs's formula.

It is unfortunate that many colleges, which are charged with preparing the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators, embrace a culture of time-consuming, unhurried progress when it comes to curriculum, personnel, and governance. Nowhere is this more evident than in their committee structures.

For example, at my university, to make any changes to existing courses, propose new courses, or make program changes, faculty must navigate through three separate curriculum committees. Too often the members of such committees have zero connection to the subject area or content of the proposals under consideration, yet they are free to voice their concerns, objections, disapproval, or approval.

A few years ago, I proposed content changes in a course I teach that is required of all majors in my department, to reflect current trends and practices in the field. The changes I proposed were the result of my consulting with several department faculty members over an entire semester.

After my home department's curriculum committee approved the changes, and after I received the support of the department faculty, the proposal went to the college curriculum committee. It took nearly a year for that committee to approve it. It then moved to the university curriculum committee, where it was approved and sent on to the provost for final approval.

The entire process took nearly three years of time and effort¬—time I feel would have been much better spent on what I and others do best: teaching, providing meaningful service, and contributing to our fields of study. By the time the course received final approval and was ready to appear in the university catalog, I had to revise it again to keep up with recent changes in research and scholarship.

As a professor, I often feel that I live a divided life. On one side of the divide I am engaged with students in and out of class, sharing with them information from a rapidly changing world, hoping to keep them up to date and informed so that they might somehow use this information to follow and achieve their dreams. On the other side of the divide, I face a world consumed with sluggishness, personified by committees and committee structures at the department, college, and university levels.

At my university there have been several actions in my department—curriculum proposals, sabbatical applications, contract renewals, tenure and promotion decisions—that were unanimously approved by the department faculty only to be denied or rejected by a college committee. One rejection letter said, "While your current proposal has not been approved, we do encourage you to revise, strengthen, and resubmit a proposal for the following academic year."

The following year! One entire year gone, and the efforts of the department faculty wasted.

What's to be done? Colleges can bridge the divide and promote more efficient use of people and resources by putting greater trust in faculty at the department or unit level. After all, these are the people who know the subjects and content best. Let's work to remove the unreality distortion field of higher education. If faculty have an idea on Friday, let them put it into effect on Monday.