Who impedes change in higher education?

A spring running through stones, Steamboat Springs, CO

The news about University of Findlay and Bluffton University calling off their merger raises with more urgency this question: Who impedes change in higher education?  

Administrators might say, “the faculty” particularly if they think of faculty the way they are described in Brain Rosenberg’s book Whatever it is, I am against it.  Faculty might say “administrators,” at least in the sense that the explosion in the number of administrators has raised costs without (usually) raising revenue, and in the sense that managerialism shapes the assumptions of administrators, turning even the simplest colleges into thickets of policies, processes, assessments, and reports.

Now faculty and administrators undoubtedly do, in some instances, slow radical change. Boards do as well.  But I’ve worked with over 20 colleges and universities in the past five years to find cost savings in academic and administrative operations.  And in every one of these instances, faculty and administrators, though perhaps dubious of the process, have worked with good will and institutional devotion to find changes which will bring about savings and sustain the institution. Boards have supported and encouraged this work, without overstepping their roles. They have done this because, whatever their own narrow interests, they want to see their institution survive, and know their lives would be worse off without it.

The story of Findlay and Bluffton, and my conversations with dozens of leaders trying to remake higher education, points to other entities who impede change.  If we are interested in sustaining colleges and universities and making them better for students and communities, we should be honest about the impediments raised by other entities, and work to remove them.

Regulators. The Findlay/Bluffton merger relied on preserving the school’s athletics programs while finding efficiencies between the financial aid operations at the institutions.  They found this to be harder than expected.  Why?  We can expect that it was because of rules governing the allocation of financial aid, particularly to student athletes, some set by the Department of Education and some by the NCAA. Similar regulatory impediments exist throughout the system–some intentional, like the Department of Education’s byzantine rules on mergers, others unintentional, like the endless reports to be filed with national, state, and quasi-state (i.e. the NCAA) regulators.  I’m not sanguine about the changes the Trump administration is currently pushing through the DoE, but if they result in fewer, more stable regulations, we will be better off.  

Accreditors. The former regional accreditors are lumbering organizations, making decisions on an outdated review cycle (only two times a year for substantive changes, for instance) and with a set of policies that is skeptical about significant changes in operations, like the mergers of two institutions. A president I know who is leading a merger has found that they have had to guide the accreditor through the process if they hope to complete the merger in time to meet the expectations of regulators (see above) and funders (see below).  And a special note here about specialized accreditors (in fields like music, social work, and business, for instance) whose expectations on curriculum, staffing levels, and faculty roles tie the hands of schools who wish to improve program quality and efficiency and remain accredited.  Radical reform to accreditation, of the sort now possible, is essential if colleges and universities are to reform themselves.

Lenders. Few independent colleges are debt-free.  Many who need change most have significant debt levels and restrictive debt covenants. Lenders, having offered those terms with an eye toward the well-being of the campus, wield them now in ways that make real change almost impossible. Another presidential friend told me recently of his institution’s move to refinance its debt and move from a global bank to a local lender as the holder of the debt. The global bank both moved at the pace of a global institution and imposed its rules with a narrowness that nearly scuppered the deal several times, in spite of the fact that it was in the bank’s interest to have the loan paid off and the debt held by the other entity.
Vendors. Most colleges and universities have large vendor contracts, particularly in enrollment, IT, and other technology-intensive areas.  These vendor systems are built to scale, and in fact work better for large institutions than for small ones. They are also built to realize maximum revenue for the vendor (as is, of course, the natural incentive in a free market system) and offer maximal tools to the institution.  But when institutions seek to merge, in part to find efficiencies in their systems and take advantage of software scalability, vendors are impediments, because greater efficiencies are not in their financial interests, and because their systems are designed to be incompatible with the systems of their competitors.

As colleges and universities seek ever more radical ways to change, they will need changed regulators, accreditors, lenders, and vendors as well. In an ideal world, those entities would change themselves, or alternatives would arise to challenge them. In the actual world, I suspect college and university leaders will have to devote themselves as intently to change in these external entities as they are to changes inside their institutions.