Introduction
As higher education institutions continue to face challenges in our post-pandemic world, one of the most common challenges is related to budget shortfalls and deficits resulting from enrollment declines suffered during the pandemic and now exacerbated by the decreasing numbers of high school graduates and the growing disinterest so many young people are exhibiting towards higher education. Many of the institutions struggling with this challenge are smaller private or public institutions whose fiscal margins are thin to begin with, as described in this article. It is becoming difficult to keep up with the articles on this topic, but here are a few other examples: a story about the president of Brandeis stepping down as a result of a variety of misfortunes and another that raises issues about who is making the financial decisions. There are more that could be cited, but I think you get the picture.
Unfortunately, these struggles end in the all-too-common results of academic program elimination, resignations, and/or layoffs that lead to further enrollment declines, which in many ways result in self-fulfilling prophesy. Some end with votes of no confidence, faculty disenfranchisement, and presidential resignations. Regardless of the visible end, turmoil and uncertainty abound and that can’t be good for students or the communities we serve. As a scholar of change leadership and a change leader in practice, I read these stories with great interest and wonder how it got so bad. Why did it take a turn for the worse? How might it have had a different, less traumatic outcome? Below are some insights from my experience that I hope provides some hope and possible approaches for those at campuses who are struggling.
Accepting Reality: Don’t put your head in the sand, look around and proactively deal with the reality your institution is facing. While this may be a challenge and might make people uncomfortable, one of the main jobs of leaders is to move the institution forward through the good times and the bad. But many institutions that we read about in the Chronicle avoided dealing with the inevitable budget shortfalls through the pandemic, even though their challenges were present pre-pandemic. Those that faced the reality of their situations head on, are faring better. And one of the most important jobs of a campus leader is to keep everyone focused on a vision of the future, despite the uncertainty, challenges, or setbacks. It may also be the most difficult especially in difficult times or when reality that is not the one everyone would like to see. It used to be easier to avoid reality because the enrollment environment was more predictable – there were always upswings and downturns, and when there was a downturn, we knew it would be followed by an upswing. That isn’t the case anymore as we are experiencing cataclysmic shifts in demographics, funding, policies and perceptions, making it even more important for leaders to keep their heads out of the sand and understand the reality of the context they are now operating in. Everything happens in context as described in the Change Leadership Toolkit (Elrod, et al., 2023), where we present a model for systemic change leadership that has the context in which leaders are operating as its base.
When I started as a leader in July of 2019, the campus had been experiencing enrollment declines for over a decade. Addressing this decline was my top priority as a regional public university with a mission to serve north central Indiana. We had just started to turn our enrollment around when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, which resulted in steeper declines. Our enrollment headcount went from dropped 15% in just two years. However, I stayed focused on this challenge through the pandemic and built a strategic enrollment management team, more cohesive campus processes, and stronger attention to targets. It wasn’t easy to keep everyone focused on the world beyond COVID, but we did and, in doing so, we were poised to rebuild as the pandemic waned. Our students were ready to come back, and we were ready for them! Our new “building a brighter future” strategic vision was an important beacon of hope and light, despite the depressing reality we were facing through the pandemic. It took hard work and the engagement of the entire campus community to keep adapting and innovating. This focus on the reality we were facing paid off. In Fall 2023 we saw our first enrollment increase in over a decade and have continued that growth trend. While we are recovering our enrollment, the students are coming from different populations – for example, more underrepresented students of color and online program participants. While it is difficult to predict where our enrollment will go next year, we are on the right track.
Shared Leadership: Take the time to build a culture of shared leadership. This is probably the most important insight but one that takes the most time, patience, openness, and vulnerability. It may also be one of the most difficult to achieve. Especially in these difficult times, leaders may feel that it is their job to shoulder the burden of making difficult decisions. They also may not have the time to spend on engaging stakeholders across campus and in the community when the stakes and urgency are amplified, sometimes on a weekly basis. However, the seeds leaders sow in cultivating a culture of leadership will pay dividends in sharing the load, gaining buy-in, empowering others to work together to find solutions, and improving outcomes.
One of the best ways to build a culture of leadership is to use a shared leadership approach, one I have been practicing for over ten years now and one that is the subject of a book I co-authored with colleagues (Holcombe, et al., 2022). I came to this approach in part because I view my job as a leader in much the same light as I did my job as a teacher when I was a faculty member. I used interactive and engaging student-centered pedagogies then, and my job didn’t fundamentally change when I became an administrator. It’s just that the students are different – my students now are the community that makes up the campus I lead. There is still a syllabus (the strategic plan), exams (performance reviews and metrics) and opportunities for “student evaluations” (annual reviews or other feedback mechanisms) that lead to learning and innovations. And, the classroom is our campus. Akin to student-centered pedagogies, I believe that shared leadership can be thought of as a stakeholder-centered approach.
As a new leader, I started holding open forum events to provide a venue to share campus priorities and progress on key initiatives, but also to hear from faculty and staff. I established new budget and facilities governance councils to include more voices in decision-making. I empowered a new enrollment management team, convening it myself at first to model shared leadership until new leaders were in ready to take the helm. I personally led a leadership program for faculty and staff using the book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership (Heifetz, et al., 2009). We worked collectively in a collaborative decision-making structure including students, staff, faculty and administrators to return to campus safely after the spring 2019 pandemic “lockdown.” It was a shared, deliberative process that integrated operational expectations with faculty and staff expertise, student perspectives, and administrative support. We returned to campus as safely as any campus could and it set the stage for additional shared leadership approaches. I engaged the community and leaned on the collective wisdom of the campus as we worked to stay focused on our mission in this challenging environment.
Long-Term Lens: Resist the temptation to make a quick fix, stay focused on the long run. It is easy to deal with a budget deficit by making across the board cuts, shutting down sluggish programs, and eliminating faculty and/or staff positions. It is much more difficult to take time to weigh various options, consider consequences, and think creatively. With mounting pressure and urgency, it can be difficult to find the time needed to be strategic. Over the past ten years I have engaged with hundreds of campus teams and leaders in national projects or the research I conduct on change leadership. One of the most consistent trends I have observed is that leaders tend to take action before fully understanding the contexts that are shaping their situations. Taking quick action may seem necessary, but it may also lead to unanticipated or unintended consequences that may take years to overcome.
After the pandemic, we were facing a decline in revenue that would take more than enrollment growth to recover. In the past, the campus had used an incremental attrition approach to manage the slow drip of budget declines, but I know that wouldn’t be enough to rebuild our financial base. So, in January 2022, I started a financial sustainability initiative that presented several strategies to the campus. These strategies ranged from utilities savings and organizational restructuring to increasing efficiencies and reducing costs that would allow us to make strategic investments needed for growth. The mantra was the only revenue we could guarantee ourselves was that which we could find in our existing budget. We also knew that re-building our budget would take time. And, I knew it would be difficult but I also knew we had to deal with it before it got worse. During the spring 2022 semester, we got to work on those strategies that could be quickly implemented then spent the 2022-3 academic year diving deeper into this plan.
One of the more difficult tasks we achieved was a redesign of the organizational structures of our academic schools and colleges to achieve savings, as described in the financial sustainability initiative, but also new synergies and time-saving efficiencies. A task force of faculty, staff, students and administrators was charged with making recommendations on ways we could restructure ourselves to meet those goals. As an executive leader, I could have easily issued a decision on which schools or colleges would be combined, which ones eliminated and/or new ones established, but in the spirit of shared leadership I let this task force lead the way. Part of our agreed upon process was that I would choose a structure from those that were recommended by the task force. And, I did just that, although what they recommended was quite different from what I imagined. However, it was what they envisioned and believed they could accomplish. The process generated buy-in and ownership. That is, in fact, one of the benefits of taking a shared leadership approach described above, and it was likely one of the most important outcomes. After the decision on which structure we would adopt, the faculty and leaders in academic affairs took it upon themselves to organize an implementation steering committee that would guide the restructuring processes. They did that without direction or guidance from me. They had gone beyond ownership to leadership! Two years later, we now have a new organizational structure that is well on its way to achieving the goals we set. Of course, not everyone is on board as would be the case with any major change effort, but what we achieved together has set us on a course that will put the university in a stronger position to achieve our mission.
Conclusion
I know many campuses are in much worse positions and many are weathering the pandemic outfall much better. I certainly don’t know all of the contexts, pressures or urgencies presenting themselves to college and university leaders across the nation. But, what I do know is that my campus faced some tough decisions, but by staying focused on the long run, facing our reality head on, and building a culture of shared leadership we weathered the storm. Now, we are poised to confidently face the new dawn that is emerging.
Citations, other than those linked in this article:
Heifetz, Ronald A., Marty Linsky, and Alexander Grashow. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World. Harvard Business Press, 2009.
