You consider yourself an innovator, right? You are someone that does not accept status quo. You challenge everything, never accepting “that’s the way we have always done it” or the “that’s our process” responses that come from the non-innovators. You walk into the office every day as if efficiency will simply create itself because of your incredible ability to ask thought-provoking questions: you are the most interesting higher ed administrator in the world.
But beware, the assimilation culture of higher education exists to stifle your innovative spirit and action-based leadership style. Bureaucratic structures, committees, control, and a general lack of urgency amongst higher education employees can exist to chip away at your desire to create and implement change for your students. In my book Commencement: The Beginning of a New Era in Higher Education, 62% of higher education leaders surveyed said they believe they are strong risk takers. While I’d love to believe that this is true, it is probably much less than 62% - taking a risk often means breaking free from the traditional system of higher education – and the system is designed to make innovation hard. Here are three tips to help you avoid the higher education assimilation culture and keep you in that 62% of risk-taking administrators.
Tip #1 – Create to Evolve (Academic Policies)
Take, for example, the statement that is echoed in every hallway and committee throughout higher education today – “we want the right students at our university”. The head-nodders around you initiate their bobble-headding, but you…you say to yourself, “what do they mean when they are talking about the right students”. Rather than speak up and announce that you’d like clarification on this blanket generalization, you let the conversation move on thinking that it’s not worth getting into a discussion (the higher education assimilation culture has taken hold).
Recruiting the “right” students is an exclusionary statement – and one that universities, particularly elite universities, have embraced. Some universities celebrate when application rates are high and acceptances rates are low. Apply that logic to any other business and it makes zero sense! If a college and university has been engineered or designed to serve a particular student type, the traditional 18-year-old student for example, expanding enrollment to tap into the working learner population that includes 39M some-college-no-degree students is a lot harder than it sounds. Are university policies written for specific populations? Are these adult students the “right” students? Next time someone makes this comment, ask which students are the “wrong” students and you’ll find yourself in a much-needed conversation for the sake of clarity.
By the way, it’s the time of artificial intelligence in higher education which means it is probably time to ditch those admissions recommendation letters as a requirement, chatgpt probably wrote them anyway. Not all policies can be applied across all student types – and policies must be updated or changed if there are adjustments to academic calendars for non-term or non-standard term programs.
The adult student has little tolerance for enrollment barriers and will simply choose another university. I was talking with a colleague recently who was telling me about his personal doctoral journey. This person drove home the point that he tried, hard, to go to a specific university (also his undergraduate alma mater) to achieve his doctorate. He told me about his research journey which included asking the question - “can I start now?”. A university representative replied, “no”, classes don’t start for a few months. The result? You guessed it; he went to a different university that allowed him to start when he was ready with less barriers to admission. Beware the assimilation culture of higher education that makes excluding students easy and including students hard.
Tip #2 – Respect the For-Profit Education Experience
Is your college or university struggling with enrollment, retention, alumni engagement, revenue, expenses, or sales in general? Every single part of higher education is sales based. Every interaction can solidify or deteriorate the student’s exploration of, or continuous journey within, an institution of higher education. One of the surest paths to create organizational change and improve your key metrics, because higher ed is business with metrics, look no further than current or former employees of for-profit education companies (yes, I said it). Somehow, those that worked in for-profit higher education are looked upon as less-than compared to their non-profit higher ed counterparts. Why is that? In many instances, individuals from for-profit higher education, who are specifically trained to monitor metrics and have been trained in the business of higher education, hit goals and work with urgency to create a culture of winning and success almost instantly – while providing exemplary student service.
These employees are business savvy and aren’t used to running deficits (with expenses exceeding revenues) at any point in their careers because it wasn’t acceptable in for-profit colleges. Plus, these individuals will be honored and loyal when a non-profit institution values their combination of business experience and relentless student service focus. When an institution allows these great people to “break into” non-profit higher education, it will be life-changing for them (and it might just help save your institution, too). Beware the assimilation culture of higher education that tries to convince you that employees from for-profit education are not quality people with good intentions.
Tip #3 – Avoid Accreditation as the Red Herring
Nothing stifles innovation more than when someone says, “well accreditation doesn’t allow...”. First, there are very few things that accreditation doesn’t allow for but those who don’t understand accreditation or how it works will use it like a weapon. Second, accreditors are looking for institutions to innovate to allow for better student service and long-term financial sustainability. Most of the regional accreditors have an innovation hub and national accreditors have been allowing innovation to take place for decades. No Accrediting agency wants schools to close or run significant deficits putting long-term sustainability in question. Therefore, they allow for creativity and ingenuity within the standards but will surely hold institutions accountable for following their own policies.
There is a delicate balance that must be maintained between shared governance and action. You’ve probably been in a situation when someone says, “why can’t we just do it” only to have someone else reply with “well, we have to do the other 47 things first”. The question that goes off in the head of an innovator when faced with this situation is, “is the change worth it”? What makes you question whether a change that can increase efficiency to service students is worth it or not? Perhaps it is the time, the effort, the assumed barriers, or something else. This happens often, and if you fashion yourself as a changemaker in higher education, I’d guess that you might have had this thought recently. Sometimes, when we avoid tackling hard issues that we know will be disruptive, we passively submit ourselves to the assimilation culture of higher education…BEWARE!
Dr. Joe Sallustio is Senior Vice President-Global, Lindenwood University and host of The Ed Up Experience podcast. He is also an Advisory Board member for Fierce Education.