Alena Selezneva
“Another One Bites the Dust” is great clickbait. We’ve all seen plenty of headlines about colleges that are closing and merging and tend to read with the implicit sense that, like most bad news, it couldn’t happen to us.
We are all special and unique institutions. We wear our swag, cheer for our teams and sing the alma mater, hand to heart. Or, at least, students, alumni, donors and presidents do this. All good, during the grow-grow-grow era. We built and they came. Everyone needed a college degree.
Now, not so much. We’ve exceeded the carrying capacity of the higher ed landscape. Or, to move from the ecological to the language of capitalism, supply has far surpassed demand. Too many empty seats in college classrooms, the same number of faculty and outrageous and increasing expenses all add up to one thing: Something’s gotta give. This should be news to no one.
And so, the articles about closure and mergers. But something about the way the stories are framed seems off to me and, well, kind of old-school, including the fact that two very different events are lumped together with a kind of shaming, blaming tone.
Closures are, to be sure, awful. Having talked to presidents who have had to shut the doors of long-standing institutions, they are painful and can be done well or poorly. Often the problems were a long time in the making. If leaders haven’t been able to acknowledge and prepare for what’s coming, they create a ton of unnecessary suffering for students, faculty and staff.
Mergers are often framed in terms of a Pac-Man–like gobbling up of the weak by the strong and hungry. No one ever wants to be seen as a loser, so, for a long time, even mentioning the word to boards and faculty was taboo.
The smartest move in business, at least according to what I’ve learned from watching hours of Shark Tank, is to meet real and current needs and prepare for the future. Higher ed, unlike the corporate world, tends to prize individualism and has never really had to learn to play well together because, well, we didn’t have to (except in athletics, and don’t get me started on that).
Now, even in this profoundly divided time, some leaders are realizing their institutions can be better together. What’s changed? The world is more accessible (thank you, technology), enrollment pressures have made the status quo untenable and a new generation of presidents is willing to try what was once unthinkable. Where I see hope for our collective future is in partnerships and collaborations.
When I heard about the recent engagement of two friends, institutions I know that seemed an obvious and perfect match, I wanted to throw them a shower. I can imagine idealistic liberal arts college Willamette, embracing its progressive commitments to service and sustainability, saying to Pacific University, “We live in a cynical world. A cynical world. And we work in a business of tough competitors.” Followed by the kicker line: “You complete me.” And Pacific, smart, grounded in the real world, where people need eye doctors and physical therapists, saying back, “You had me at hello.”
This joining of institutions with complementary strengths can in no way be framed as a bailout or a Pac-Man gobble. It’s a visionary way forward because it’s not an alliance of failing schools. If you take two poorly run, debt-ridden institutions and put them together, you have a big, poorly run, debt-ridden institution. Instead, collaborations like this good marriage will allow scale efficiencies and offer greater, more innovative offerings, all while doubling down on the mission to serve students.
I’m also much taken with the polycule approach (I’m continuing with the relationship metaphors, forgive me) of CHARISM: Catholic Higher Education Alliance of Rising Institutions in Service and Mission, an alliance of the University of the Incarnate Word (San Antonio), Dominican University (Chicago), University of Mount Saint Vincent (Riverdale, N.Y.) and Universidad del Sagrado Corazón (San Juan, P.R.), all HSIs, all in major urban areas with lots of Hispanics and all founded by badass nuns.
You know who else approves of this kind of thing? The pope. He’s been talking about Catholic education as a “constellation,” where each star retains its own brightness, and “Where in the past there was rivalry, now we ask the institutions to converge: Unity is our most prophetic strength.” When the pope is literally telling Catholic institutions to stop competing and start collaborating and these four schools actually do it, I shout amen.
There’s money and, even more important, advice coming from other places. The Transformational Partnerships Fund at SeaChange Capital is set up for those in higher ed not too scared to utter “merger” and who want help exploring collaborations. John MacIntosh, the managing partner and big honkin’ brain behind the philanthropic (yes!) operation, is there to talk to anyone brave enough to give him a call. It costs nothing more than a half hour of time, and yet, he says that even if I were to write his number in the bathroom stalls, people still get so twitchy about even whispering the M-word, his phone wouldn’t ring. If you’re a president or board chair who is willing to think about the future in a Vegas-rules way and want an introduction, get in touch with me and I’ll give you John’s deets.
Most of us have been at weddings where we secretly place bets on how long before things go sideways or end in conflagration. And just as we are living in a time when the traditional marriage of one man plus one woman is no longer the only way to be in a relationship, so too we might start to think about retiring the word “merger” and replace it with something better. Maybe “transformation.” Or “reimagining.” And while we’re at it, even if Clay Christensen was off in terms of numbers, maybe we should stop thinking about closures as failures and consider how well (or how badly) they serve their communities when they shutter their gates.
To be sure, mergers are not always the way to go. Putting two failing institutions together is an equation for catastrophe. As my friend Dan Greenstein, someone who has been around a few shrinking blocks, points out, bigger is not always better, and if institutions wait until it’s too late to think ahead, well, good luck to them.
But the institutions that hold on to their belief that they are beautiful and unique snowflakes may get plowed aside by those that are focused on building lasting structures in financially sustainable ways.
