886: EdUp Mini Series, "The Currency of Change", Part 1: "But We've Always Done It This Way" - with ⁠Dr. Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon⁠ & ⁠Andy Benis⁠⁠

Andy Benis: Welcome everybody to this special edition of the EdUp Experience podcast. We're starting a little six-part mini-series called "The Currency of Change" as part of an ongoing exploration of the changing landscape in higher education. My name is Andy Benis and I am the associate VP of marketing and communication and currently the interim VP of enrollment at Los Angeles Pacific University. And my co-pilot for the mini-series is...

Dr. Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: I am Dr. Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon, and I am the vice provost of operations for graduate professional studies at Point Loma Nazarene University.

Andy Benis: See, I could have tried to handle your introduction as well, but I decided to not risk it. So I'm glad you said that because it was way more articulate. I would have butchered it. So like we said, this is episode one of six. And we're going to try to look at the situation from a number of angles. I think the first disclaimer is that every one of these topics could be a dissertation in and of itself. I mean, we could go on for a week's worth of conference talking on any one of these issues. But just as a way of broaching the conversation, some of you listening are kind of hot and heavy in the middle of these issues. Some of you are just beginning to really have open, honest discussions at your institutions about it. And so we're hoping the podcast is just a way to share in that conversation, maybe help you explore even more with your colleagues.

So this episode, we're basically calling this one, "Hey, but we've always done it this way." And by the way, "The Currency of Change" as the name of the mini-series, that plays on so many levels. Currency as in currently, currency as in money and financial implications, and change, of course, speaks for itself. And I think that's where we want to start with this, "Hey, but we've always done it this way." The landscape, the higher ed landscape is changing way too quickly for anybody to be able to just stand pat or stay stuck, which is really basically what it is at this point if you're not moving. So the sort of head-in-the-sand posture at this point, 2024, as we record this, that posture is probably a death sentence.

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: Yes, definitely. Or at least the beginning of it, right? It's a new day. Student demographics are new. Student behaviors are new. New prospective student behaviors are different. Engaging with prospective students is different. And I think every institution, whether it's an individual department, a college, the university as a whole, senior levels all the way down, they're just asking now more than ever, are we pivoting? Are we moving in the right direction? Are we moving at all? And are we moving in the right direction?

Andy Benis: And you and I were talking about this earlier, Jamie. I mean, I think we're at the point where the word crisis is appropriate, right? And now you've got a special connection to the word crisis. So tell us about that.

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: Yes. So my research for my doctoral program and my husband's as well is around crisis leadership. Mine specifically focuses on a leader's ability to identify and avert crisis. So imagine how that is relevant in the changing landscape of higher education. And there are five stages of crisis. This is actually what's fascinating to me. Five stages of crisis. Signal detection is the first phase. I think we're past that. We know with the enrollment cliff coming, well, it's here. Let's just say it. It's here. And just the question on whether or not there's value in higher education, we're past the signal detection. We're in phase two, which is prevent and prepare. So the question is, what are institutions doing to prevent and prepare? And prevent, a lot of that is saying, how are we diversifying? If we know that the traditional market is declining and that's where people are really questioning education, what are institutions doing?

Andy Benis: And I know we'll get into specific reasons and specific kind of war fronts on each of those. But I think it can't be overstated that higher ed, and I know some will not appreciate this analogy, but you looked at the automotive industry, right? The American automotive industry back in the day when GM owned the world, right? Ford, Chrysler, Chevy, I mean, it was just, they could do no wrong. And then the market started to change, technology started to change, the Japanese figured out a new way to do things. And all of a sudden this whole, "Hey, it's the way we've always done it." They stayed stuck. And I think there are some parallels.

Again, if you're not a gear head and you don't appreciate the automotive analogy, the issue is these old assumptions, these old mindsets. I mean, I was just scrolling through some competitive social media posts from multiple institutions and it still feels like every other picture is of that clock tower, right? That covered, you know, marquee building on campus, the figures in all of the literature and all of the promotional materials. And it's still, "Hey, if we build it, they will come." And I think a lot of folks have been writing that. And I say folks, really institutions and the people who run those institutions have been writing on that. We have a rich tradition. We have a beautiful campus. We have a, as if today, that's enough to just keep folks coming. And yet we still keep doing it. I mean, these are posts from this week. They're like, look at that beautiful bell tower. And people are just in love with it because they live on Planet School. And this is their corner of Planet School. And they assume that everybody thinks their baby is as pretty as they think it is.

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: Well, so going off of that, and we think about crisis, we are in a simmering crisis. So gone are the days that we should be doing that because it isn't just about, is this program going to make it or is this institution going to make it? Higher education as a whole is being challenged in society. And we have, we can't ignore that. And I think as people, I mean, our, my whole professional experience has been in higher education. And I know the bulk of yours has been as well. Like we want this industry to stay around. So what are we doing? Not just to save our academic major or our institution, but the value of higher education as a whole. If you can raise it to that level and think about it at that level, I think we have to, because we just can't be looking at the bell tower.

Andy Benis: No, there's no choices anymore. And I think the hardest part, because you get so used to doing things a certain way, and this goes for any industry, and it goes for people, families, relationships. I'm not going to touch how much crisis management for both you and your husband must help at home, but that's a whole different podcast. Two people whose specialties are crisis management. Either you're creating them just to solve them and prove that you can, or you're avoiding them really well, but that's a different...

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: Identify and avert. Identify and avert.

Andy Benis: That's code for happy hour, isn't it?

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: That's right, a whole different podcast.

Andy Benis: But listen, this issue of, we're talking about how much education has changed, how much learning has changed, this issue of needing to unlearn and relearn. And I think this to me at least still feels, with all the conferences you and I go to, we hear from folks from a variety of institutions, different profiles, right? I mean, we're a fully online institution, no physical footprint to campuses that are only traditional, still haven't gone online. And I emphasize still as in holy smokes, it's 2024 and you're still not finding a way to go online. You're going to be a case study at some point on whether you pulled it off or not. But you got to, we have to unlearn the assumptions, the behaviors, the processes, the patterns were all in a cyclical no matter how many start dates a year you have, whether you're just fall or you're fall and spring or you're every month on some of the more aggressive online institutions. Before they got there, they called the timeout and said, we cannot keep doing what we've been doing no matter how many hundreds of people on our staff and faculty, in some cases thousands, no matter how comfortable they are with it, how used to it they are, we're going to have to begin to turn the Titanic.

So the first piece of this is just mental, right? It's a little bit of the awareness, but we also talk to some people who are overwhelmed by what they perceive are the number of things that would have to change.

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: Yes.

Andy Benis: Right? They're like institution-wide. Okay, so it's one thing that the student demographic, the student population is changing. Okay, it's another thing that technology and AI are changing how we deliver that education. It's a whole other thing that society as a whole is viewing us differently. So the headwinds feel like they're coming from multiple directions. And I think some people, and again, I keep saying people, but they're individuals, but institutional leadership, you just freeze. Because you're afraid. I mean, you've seen that, have you not?

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: Yeah, I think what I'm seeing is a number of institutions saying, well, let's do layoffs. There I said it. I said the word no one wants to hear about, but it's happening. And they're doing these significant cuts, but nothing else, not addressing the other issues that you just said. It's like, no, no, no, it's not just, hey, reduction in force is gonna solve our problems. There's still that mindset that you're talking about that has to change.

Andy Benis: Yeah, and I think that's among them. And by the way, the list of faulty assumptions or old thinking, we could do a long list of those quotes, but I mean, among them are things like, hey, they need us more than we need them. It was a little bit like that higher education elitism. We are the keepers of knowledge and the packaged up in degree programs. You up-and-coming young people or the folks who don't yet have degrees, you need this knowledge. We will bless you by imparting that if you come to us. And I'm exaggerating it obviously, but there is a little bit of that built-in elitism that says we have what you need. You have to come to us for it. So we're gonna sit here and wait and then decide whether we'll be the ones to give it to you. If you build it, they will come or, hey, they need us more than we need them.

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: I want to add on to that, though. It is definitely, they need us more than we need them. And we know how you need it. So if you are 21, you know what? I don't know if you can do online learning. I'm not sure if you have the experience to be able to engage in that. It's like, we're telling them, not only you need us more than we need you, but we're also telling you what you need and how you need it delivered to you because we know you better than you know yourself, that's all you need.

Andy Benis: Shocking off from the audience.

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: Absolutely, but do you see that? I mean, I hear that when I'm interacting with others and it's like they get to choose.

Andy Benis: Well, and it does go back to the, hey, I'm the expert in this area. I wrote this book that we're gonna be learning from this semester. And so I'm going to be in control of what you learn, but I'm also going to be in control of how you learn it. And right now I'm speaking more to the traditional classroom lecture model, right? Read, absorb, take tests, regurgitate. And no matter how much you teach folks to think, that's still the model. I'm going to impart what I know. You choose however you want to capture it digitally. Bring your laptop to class. Type it up. Narrate your notes to yourself. That's up to you. And it's sort of the difference between teaching versus learning. Teaching is just, I'm focusing on the curriculum, the content, my knowledge, and I'm going to just toss that out to you. You absorb it any way you want. But technology is starting to turn that around, where curriculum design, information delivery, learning itself is now so personalized and catered that some of those lectures are literally falling on deaf ears, where it's just, you're not saying this in a way that's relatable to me, so I'm going to go get it from somewhere else.

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: So let me ask you a question, Andy. I have little birdies that tell me things that are happening at your school, LAPU. I can either confirm nor deny. But I hear that you are actually embedding AI into your LMS to help students with research. And I think that that's innovative. That's that change of mindset. You're doing it. Can you expand on that?

Andy Benis: As much as I'm able. OK. And able not as in I'm not allowed to as in I'm not technical enough to know every nuance. However, I can tell you it's an AI course assistant that basically has the ability, much like the large language models, scrape the internet for all knowledge available. There is a technology out there for multiple now, but providers of this. It's a course assistant that scrapes all the content from that course. So that's texts, supplementary documents, videos, whatnot. It's scraped that content and students can ask clarifying questions in that interactive format, like with a chat bot. Matter of fact, we just had a little in-house, I don't wanna say competition, but it was kind of a community brainstorm on what to call it. And the winner is Spark. So Spark is our AI course assistant. And eventually it's rolling out to all courses where students will simply say, hey, help me understand this or explain this concept to me in a different way. Or this is what I understand, what am I missing? Whatever your normal chat GPT or Gemini interface is, the way you have those conversations, but they're happening inside specific courses.

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: But that's excellent. I'm changing the mindset. We're not doing things the way we've always done it.

Andy Benis: No, you're meeting the students where they are. You're meeting the students where you are, where there's plenty of institutions that are still very anti-AI anything.

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: Right.

Andy Benis: What can I say except you're welcome? Yes, you are. Look, that is, and all kidding aside, that is a, it's the epitome of being student-focused, right? I think so often, unfortunately, those who have the microphone at our institutions love to say, we are a student-centered, and then there's no real explanation or in some cases, no living out of what that actually means. Really, what are you doing to become more student-centered? And it's more than just campus safety and, you know, resources and fun stuff, social stuff, athletic stuff, because that's all a piece of it. But you can't just offer those things and then call yourself student-centered when the core issue is the learning and the education. And again, so it speaks to this change of mindset, going back to the title of this episode. But we've always done it this way. I don't know that anybody's actually saying that out loud. I think it's one of those defenses you would have given a while ago. You're certainly thinking it. Because even if you it's one of those things you say out loud and then realize how silly it sounds. Did I just say that? That sounds like the most stuck thing ever.

But I know and you and I were you know, having worked together in the past we were victims of this during some very busy seasons where So many of us are just so busy running the institution, right? There's so many micro fires issues literal death by a thousand paper cuts as far as things you have to solve personnel stuff, student stuff, academic stuff, administrative, operational, financial. There's just this ongoing list. We get so busy, we get so stuck in the weeds. That phrase we used to use, it's we're so busy working in the business, in the day-to-day operations that we're not working on it. So that ability to step back and look at it from a higher level and kind of map the whole thing out and say, all right, from let's call it the entire student journey, student life cycle, cradle to grave, right, from initial interest through alumni, their experience, the way the university operates, the way we interact with students, that whole student journey thing, and a lot of institutions have gone through student journey mapping exercises, and if they haven't, they should. But there's this question about do we examine or question what we do and how we do it, right? How many department meetings, you know, college-level meetings, cabinet-level meetings, how much airplay is that topic actually getting? I mean, what's your sense? Because you've been in a number of these. I mean, you and I both sat at the big kids table at multiple institutions. But what are those conversations like currently? Are there enough of the what are we doing and how are we doing it self-reflection conversations?

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: Well, I will say this. At the big kid table, the conversation needs to be looking at the environment, the landscape of higher education, needs to be having conversations about vision. Vision for higher education, but vision for the institution as well. I mean, I look out there and I look at different institutions and I'm like, where's the vision? What are they headed toward? And it can be really uninspiring to do the hard work day in and day out in the business when you don't have a bigger picture, even working on the business, how do you do that with a big vision of where you're headed? And so I think that is a key element that needs to be discussed at the executive table because everyone in the institution needs to know it.

Andy Benis: Yeah. And I think it'll come up later in other future episodes as well, but there's this, we used the word crisis earlier, a little bit of an identity crisis for some folks, right? Because the identity that's carried them for the last 20, 50, 100, 200 years isn't the same anymore. Or if the identity is the same, the appeal to the marketplace is not the same. And again, for those of you that have a traditional higher ed background, when we use terms like business and marketplace, you might be feeling the little hairs on the back of your neck stand up saying, we're not a business, we're a university. I get it, but there are customers, there's a product, there's an organization that creates and or delivers that product and or service. So for generic terms, we're speaking about them. And by the way, money's changing hands. So you don't have to use the word business, but let's face it, this is a revenue-driven issue. And unless you've got billions with a B in an endowment, you're having these conversations. And I think that's where it falls on leadership for better or for worse. Heavy is the crown.

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: How is the head, not the crown?

Andy Benis: Well crown's heavy too. It's the head that wears the crown. I will get my cliches right before this is over. Happy Friday. Right? Welcome to the Cliche-a-thon. But it's about leadership making space for those conversations, being transparent. And you and I both know that anytime the further up that food chain you go, the greater role politics plays. And then perception is reality. And then protection of that perception becomes more of a reality, right? So there is this emperor has no clothes thing, like, I'm not bringing it up. You're going to bring it up. I'm not going to bring it up because you don't know who's going to reach across the boardroom table and slap you overtly or subtly for bringing some of this stuff up. And but if we don't bring up the hard topics, we get to stage three of crisis, which is the actual event.

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: And that's when your institution, you know, your top line revenue, your bottom line, those things are swapped. And you're looking to say, where do we do cuts? Why get to that stage? Have the tough conversations. Be OK with tough conversations. We talk about it. Be comfortable with uncomfortable.

Andy Benis: Yep. The messy middle.

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: The messy middle. This is where we need to be if we're going to be sitting in those seats.

Andy Benis: Yeah. It does. I mean, it genuinely breaks my heart when I hear colleagues in the industry or even just loose acquaintances. Folks, you meet at conferences and stay in touch with who come from institutions with all across the spectrum, from those that are in great shape and trying to ride the wave of adjustment and transformation and those who are just, we don't know what we're gonna do. We barely know what the problem is, that whole spectrum.

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: Or they're just reactive.

Andy Benis: That's what I mean. Reactive to whatever the immediate problem is and not thinking future, what do we need to be solving for three years, five years, 10 years from now?

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: Well, and that's just it to your point about stage three. And I'm trying to learn your stages of crisis because I'm getting many lives in here.

Andy Benis: A lot of folks don't have the conversation until it's time to slash reduction in force, sale of real estate, the dropping of athletic programs, the dropping of academic programs. I mean, all of these negative, negative, negative things that happen almost hatchet style when the boat is taking on water faster than you can get rid of it because you didn't plan ahead and steer away from the iceberg, whatever analogy you want. I think this is the issue is making sure that the conversations are happening, that somebody's got to be bold. And you would hope ideally that starts at the most senior levels, right? The president of the institution, the provost. I mean, so that both operationally and on the academic sides of the house, everybody's addressing the real issues because, and I'm not going to pick on anybody in particular, but whether it's the academy that digs their heels in and says, we are not letting go of faculty. That's not fair to them. They've been too loyal for too long and we refuse. Okay. So you're asking everybody else to do their part, but you, you are untouchable, whether that's, you know, reduction in hours, reduction in labor force, whatever it is, hard, hard discussions, hard, hard conversations. So people start to dig in their heels. They start to protect their own turf. And at the very least it prevents the conversations you were just talking about where people have to open up honestly, whether it's spreadsheet driven or not, where's the reality of where we are so we can start talking about ways out?

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: OK, so I have an example at Point Loma. I'm proud of our faculty for this one. A few years ago, I did analysis of the landscape and our adult undergraduate degree programs. And the model we had was phasing out. I was able to see it. So prior to then, faculty did not want to go online. But we mapped out, okay, here's a timeline of the decline that we're foreseeing. Since then, we've launched online. We saw the decline in the hybrid model, but we were able to mitigate the entire revenue because we went online. So that's what I'm thinking about. Like you have to foresee what's going to start to decline. What is your mitigation plan so that you don't, we didn't have to do any layoffs because we shifted their responsibilities. They shifted to teaching online and many of them did that. There's still some that do not want to be part of that. But at the end of the day, we have the same number of students, the same number of faculty engaging in it because we said, hey, we have to shift with the market. So I'm proud of them. They came a long way 10 years ago. They were voting no on those programs. So the fact that we completely mitigated, that's that prevent. How do you prevent it? You diversify. But you gotta have the tough conversations to be able to get to the point to know how to do that.

Andy Benis: Well, and the word that came to mind as you're telling the given the example is collaboration. Yes, you can't. Anytime it starts to feel unilateral, right? The administration is forcing things onto others, all of the Academy or vice versa. It simply devolves into an us versus them. Now it's turf wars. Now it's ego battles. It's how dare you? Do you know who I am? Do you know how long I've been here? All that stuff. It starts to get personal and where it's not, it starts to get, you know, and no one wants to be in that space, but somewhere somebody has to be facilitating practical options like that, where, again, we're gonna bring up the word business phrases that offend people, but salesmanship. There's a good way to present an idea and there's a really bad way. And you and I both know having had both good and not so great leadership in our past. There's a way to couch something to gain buy-in, right? You build some consensus, you point out the positives, hey, in exchange for this sacrifice, we're looking at an upside of this. Being able to articulate that in a way that your audience hears it without attack, without offense, without it being personal, that's an art form. And that's why you salesmanship, because on average, salespeople know how to say things for their prospective customers to understand, say, ooh, that will absolutely scratch the itch I have at the moment. And you learn to speak that language. And I think a lot of us, sometimes in the higher ed space, look, this is my world. It is what it is. Take it or leave it. Hear me or don't. But if you don't understand what I'm saying the way I say it right now, that's on you. And you can't do that. And it's related to that mindset. If you're holding on to the tradition, if you're holding onto the past, if you're holding onto your favorite way of doing things, all you can say is, let it go, let it go.

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: Can't tell you how many times we've needed to break out into that song.

Andy Benis: I know, I know. In meetings, right? OK, I appreciate how passionate you are about that. You've got to let it go. But let's go back to the leadership piece, and we'll start to wrap up on this. When we start to talk about what does change even look like? We talked about being okay with not being okay. But how do we, when I say we, I mean you, me, everybody listening, regardless of where you are in some kind of hierarchical org chart, I would say everybody's got a leadership role, whether you're a manager of people or not, because you can lead change without being a leader of people in an org chart, right? How do we start to have those transformational conversations in an industry that is really resistant to change. I mean, what's the grassroots version of this?

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: Well, that is the question of the hour. You know, I've had to take that approach because my institution is more traditional minded. And it's been about building relationships, creating awareness, respect for what each player's role is. I mean, I'm enrollment. I don't have a job if I don't have academics, right? But academics doesn't have a job if they don't have me bringing in students. And then where's marketing in that? And so I think it's respecting everyone's role, but creating awareness and that common vision. You've got to have a common vision. I think that's just such a key element of it. But, you know, I think about the academy, they're focused on their area of expertise, whether that's biology, nursing, whatever it may be. That's their expertise. How do we help them understand the landscape of higher ed, which coming from marketing enrollment, that's what we study. When we're researching, we're looking at the landscape, the competition, who's doing what. Those are the conferences we go to. So it's like, how do we bring that to the table? There has to be that mutual respect and relationship so that we listen to one another.

Andy Benis: Yeah. I mean, you used the word twice and I love it because you nailed it. It is relationship. Again, like any social or professional or corporate situation, the relationship piece, this issue of well, whose issue is it anyway? Who owns this? Well, there's a problem financially. Well, get the CFO on it. Get the finance office on it. Well, they've got to figure something out. It's their thing. This siloed, and again, we opened by saying any one of these topics could be a week-long conference. Breaking down silos is not something that's going to be done in one 30-minute conversation. It hasn't been done in 150 books on breaking down silos. So we certainly aren't going to tackle it. But that is the issue ownership and deciding, no, we are all a piece of this. And to your point, talk about that grassroots. That's the other cliche, and I'll get this one right. Think globally, act locally. So think macro. We need to turn things around. We need to operate a little differently. We need to make ourselves financially solvent. We need to do this. We need to do that. Think globally, and then act locally. What your next conversation, your next meeting, what can you do to help maybe start shifting the mindset more towards let's be flexible. Let's think of different ways to do this. You know what, time out. Let's come at this at a totally different angle. I know this is normally a half-hour meeting. We're going to push it to 45. And I'd like to take some time to talk about, forget how we do it right now. Forget any of this has even existed. If you were building it from scratch, how would you do it? Whatever. But start changing, interrupting the process cycle, the think cycle, the repetitive cycles, it's May, it's budget month, start to get out of some of the hamster wheel experiences that we just get locked into. And I think what you just mentioned is huge. If you're not doing any kind of interdepartmental introductions, not cross-training as in you're going to do the job, cross-training as in I tell you what we do and how we do it, you come and talk to my team and tell me what you do and how you do it. That automatically builds that respect, awareness. And now when the senior cabinet starts to start having tough conversations about the big picture and bringing more and more leaders to the tables, VPs, directors, and whoever else, there's at least a mutual understanding that like, yeah, we are all in this together and we all do need to contribute to the solution. And hopefully you've got leadership that does listen to those contributions because that's eventually going to be the only way out.

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: I think that's a great place to leave it for now because in the next episode, we're going to get into more detail about, this is a highly academic title. Next session, we talk about numbers shmumbers, making data-driven decisions. And again, for those who are more classically trained or theoretically minded, talking numbers might be a little scary. It's one of those things, much like everything we just talked about, you can't do without.

Andy Benis: So good stuff. Thank you, Jamie. This is fun.

Jamie Brownlee-Turgeon: Thank you, Andy.

Andy Benis: So that'll do it for part one. Again, it's part one of six. So we'll be back with another episode of The Currency of Change and this special edition of the EdUp Experience podcast. So good to be with you all and stay tuned.