“Processes don’t change culture. They merely facilitate it. Courage changes culture. ”
Education relies on processes and committees to shoulder organizational change. Processes don’t change culture. They merely facilitate it. Courage changes culture.
“Education has historically outperformed gold, silver, any precious metal, the stock market. You just look at the data and you will find that education is the best investment you can make. I want to be involved with organizations that actually do, not say, but do, and that have an extraordinary capacity for transformation.”
Ian shared these sentiments at the annual Odyssey Gala for Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy in March. Watch the highlight video here.
One of the challenges we hear most often from clients is how difficult it is to manage change. Often, really great and necessary strategic initiatives stall simply because the culture of an organization cannot manage the change necessary to move forward on a good idea. And, the death of great ideas can often be what I call “dualism”, or the idea that an organization has to be “all in” or “all out” to enact a concept. It is that “either/or” thinking that kills great ideas.
I often believe that building a new idea incubator to “pilot” or “try on for size” new strategies is a way to mitigate and manage the change in an organization. Most schools or colleges are happy to be innovative and try new ideas if — and here is the big catch — it does not impact them directly or change their work environment. Creating an incubation hub is one way of building safe change, innovation, and experimentation into a school or college culture.
Consider making short-term commitments — such as three years — to a few new ideas emerging out of a strategic plan. Put those programs and ideas into an incubation hub and see what sticks. Place your most innovative faculty and teams into that hub to grow and water the seeds. It is a great way to creatively operationalize new ideas that emerge out of your strategic plan.
From a categorical standpoint, one might expect independent private schools and colleges to drive the most substantial change in the education sector. An independent school or college is defined by their ability to make their own choices, chose their own mission, and cultivate their own, self-perpetuating board members. In other words, these are organizations that have few limitations, other than those they impose on themselves.
Why is it, then, that these same organizations struggle from the same historic business model challenges? They often wonder why they struggle with enrollment or finance, yet fail to recognize that they follow a high cost, low volume business model, favor selective admissions, and install other barriers to enrollment and retention. You would think that, given their independence, they would build out their ecosystems to reach new students, audiences, and price points, increasing their footprint, influence, and diversity in the process.
Educators and economists alike have been predicting a reset of education for years. They have warned that the occurrence of one or two catastrophic events could reshape the entire education landscape. They have argued that tuition was too high, expense structures were too bloated, and private schools and colleges were not centered on the needs of the market, just the needs of a minority. And, then came the pandemic.
My theory is that independent schools and colleges have been trying to solve the wrong strategic questions for quite some time. Chief among them include the following, which I shared back in January 2021 in a post called The Reckoning Begins:
How do we find more full pay families? The right question here is how do we scale our price and expenses to meet the needs of the market?
How do we remain selective in our admissions process? The right question here is how do we make our programs more accessible to those who need us?
How do we market ourselves better and be better known in our community? The right question here is how do we better connect and make meaningful and relevant relationships in our own backyard?
How do we acquire more diversity in our schools? People were meant to be understood, not acquired. Diversity through acquisition is among our most significant moral sins as an industry. The right question is how do we gain cultural competency and fluency in order to attract audiences that can see themselves in our community?
We are at another pivot point, an inflection in the education industry. As we emerge and pass into a post-pandemic landscape, our industry has a golden opportunity to challenge some of the inherent failed assumptions of our business model. And, in order to solve these issues, it will need to lean into independence as a primary asset for creating change.
The concept of innovation must be among the most overused in business circles today. In our industry sectors, schools, colleges and nonprofits claim innovation as a common organizational attribute. And, what they pass off as innovation is often nothing more than staying up to date with the industry.
No, innovation is much more than that. True innovation does four things:
Innovation breeds choice. Most good innovations provide customers with more choice and an increasing stratification of offerings.
Innovation decreases price. Most good innovations find a way to live out “Blue Ocean Strategy”, giving consumers more choice with less cost.
Innovation enhances the experience. Most great innovations make the product experience better for the end user, the customer.
Innovation produces integration. At the end of the day, most great innovations end up living within an ecosystem of products, with mixed price choices and mixed delivery options. Innovation rarely remains a stand alone product category.
True innovation actually benefits the end-user, the client, by bringing more to the table without asking for more in return.
The education industry is beginning to witness the same divide as we see in other segments of culture. As the world moves toward a post-pandemic new reality, two different realities are emerging in the world of education. And, private education seems to be the most directly impacted.
On one hand, many private schools and colleges fared very well during the pandemic. They had some resources with which to pivot online and hybrid settings, fostering economic strength and demonstrating resiliency in the delivery. Now, saddled with strong enrollments, balanced budgets, and happy students, we are seeing many established and mature schools settle back into their old ways as they try to recreate the past. Post-pandemic retrenchment has hit the ranks of faculty, staff and even leadership at some of these stronger schools and colleges. Their new reality is one of managing newfound demand, which may outpace capacity, and move back into a more traditional style of education. Oddly enough, we are not seeing the same level of innovation among these schools at the moment. They are less concerned with the innovation with which they leaned into during the pandemic and more interested in stabilizing their current circumstances. Perhaps not a surprising trajectory, but a concerning one if it continues.
On the other hand, there are a cohort of private schools and colleges that are simply not healthy at the moment. They did not fare well during the pandemic, losing students and market position. They are at risk of retraction and market consolidation if they are not careful. They struggle with recruiting and retaining top talent - or any talent, at all - with a faculty and leadership team that are exhausted from the last 26 months. They are at an existential crisis during the next several years and are rethinking how they will survive during the next decade.
Of course, let’s not forget those schools and colleges that passed away during the past two years. We had several small independent schools and colleges that closed or were consolidated by other systems. I wrote an article back in February 2021 about the closing of MacMurray College in Central Illinois - a fine institution that had weathered many economic uncertainties in the past. But, the pandemic accelerated their preexisting conditions. At that time, I shared the same sentiment that I offer and underscore today:
I am deeply concerned that we currently have too many over-generalized, non-distinct, over-priced, inflexible, smallish private schools and colleges, with limited resources. They are all trying to find a way to preserve a past that is declining. There simply won’t be room for all of them.
The largest threats facing the very structure of formal education do not come from inside the organization. You won’t find it in faculty, student and parent survey data. That information can often be fools gold, urging your organization to remain the same, to keep the status quo.
No, the external world is shifting so quickly that it will require great adaptation and evolution from the education industry, especially the private sector. The changes in education and markets will continue to force them to adapt. They must be more thoughtful about how to intersect with the marketplace, including price, delivery, and assessment.
Just as there are stages of organizational maturity and growth, there are stages of decline. Since the onset of the pandemic, there are more than a handful of schools and colleges throughout the nation and globe that have been hit hard in enrollment, funding, and operations. They may not make it.
Now, they share some common attributes. Most of these organizations were smallish, not market leaders in any one area, and had a limited financial runway to keep afloat. Yet, regardless of how bad it may appear to some, there is always some level of hope and optimism that they can outrun their circumstances. My experience is they go through four predictable stages of decline that either serve to arrest - or cement - their downward spiral.
Optimization - At this stage, schools and colleges assume if they reduce expenses, tighten budgets, market harder, add some new shiny objects or consumer benefits, they will make it through this moment in time. Rather than fix the foundational issues to their circumstances, they work on the edges at things that are less risky. They work hard on the small things assuming this will buy them some more time. The big risk in optimization is that most schools or colleges will stay in this space too long, not acknowledging the fragile nature of their situation and fail to deal with the larger, structural issues in their market. Some might call optimization another name for “denial.”
Repositioning - A step beyond optimization, this is the place where a school or college may make some shift in how they are positioning their programs and services. They sharpen their focus, choosing to reduce their number of market attributes, instead focusing on one or two things that they believe it will provide them some sort of singularity or differentiation in the the marketplace. Another name for repositioning is “refocusing”, or getting down to brass tacks.
Reinvention - This is the stage where the rubber hits the road, or where an organization decides that it is finally time to deal with the structural conditions of their demise. This could mean a serious reset on their price, changing the mission, going co-ed, merging with another school, selling their facility or changing locations, or moving to a whole new delivery platform. Reinvention has been avoided thus far due to a fear factor and dealing with the enormous change that will be absorbed by those that love and cherish the organization. The best reinvention often causes interruption in the market. Another name for reinvention is an organizational “rebirth”.
Death - And, some schools and colleges just don’t get it, so they close. They waited too long to disrupt the cycle, not seeing clearly the warning signs that were present all along. Maybe their reason for existence had slowly evaporated over the decades, they become less relevant to a changing world. They stayed in stage one for years, not seeing the writing on the way, and rapidly moved through stages two and three without having enough time and momentum to arrest their slide.
My experience is that most schools and colleges will do nearly anything to stay in stage one, optimization, so that they don’t have to deal with the real challenges that change brings to an organization. But, those years spent in optimization lead to wasted time and energy that often could have arrested their slide. In fact, time is the most important asset or currency that an organization possesses once it is starts the stages of decline. Time can be bought by money or reserves, trust of stakeholders, and the belief that their mission will regain relevance. But, time wasted in stage one often just delays in the inevitable.
Educators and economists alike have been predicting a reset of education for years. They have warned that the occurrence of one or two catastrophic events could reshape the entire education landscape. They have argued that tuition was too high, expense structures were too bloated, and private schools and colleges were not centered on the needs of the market, just the needs of a minority.
And, they were right. So, the reckoning begins.
Don’t get me wrong. I am hopeful for the future. While we are in worst moment of the pandemic currently, we have vaccinations being distributed slowly across the nation and the globe. It will be a year of repair and rebound, with in person events and programming slowly coming back. My guess is that 2021 will feel a lot better than 2020 in just a few short months.
But, make no mistake, education will be forever changed. The changes will have the most profound impact on private, expensive, and selective institutions. They have been trying to solve the wrong problems and asking the wrong questions for too long, such as:
How do we find more full pay families? The right question here is how do we scale our price and expenses to meet the needs of the market?
How do we remain selective in our admissions process? The right question here is how do we make our programs more accessible to those who need us?
How do we market ourselves better and be better known in our community? The right question here is how do we better connect and make meaningful and relevant relationships in our own backyard?
How do we acquire more diversity in our schools? People were meant to be understood, not acquired. Diversity through acquisition is among our most significant moral sins as an industry. The right question is how do we gain cultural competency and fluency in order to attract audiences that can see themselves in our community?
Our industry has been plagued with seeking solutions to the wrong problems for some time. That time is over and we will see the innovative, strategic schools and colleges rethink their role, programs, learning systems, and expense structures. The smart ones will start now, or have already started.
Sure, people will be excited to get back into the classroom, on campus, and at sporting events. We are all excited to get back to what we once had just a year ago. But, we all know that what just happened in virtual learning will not go away. It will change the way we deliver, price, and scale education to market. And, maybe, it will make our institutions more viable and sustainable in the process.
Inventors, entrepreneurs, and investors tell us that timing is everything. They often describe their ability to see and invest in opportunities during times of great change. When everyone else’s head is looking down, theirs is up and looking out to the future.
I continue to believe that we stand at a pivot of extraordinary magnitude. There will be an end to the pandemic. The end is in sight, but the residue from the change and adjustments it has created will be with our industries for some time. It will have changed most things - if not everything.
Now is the time to strategize, design, and prepare for a post-pandemic world. There are extraordinary opportunities for those that can see and act upon them today.
I just finished a whirlwind of campus visits to ISA clients across the East Coast and the Midwest. I got a first-hand view of how our clients are pivoting in this new normal of pandemic learning. I saw blended, hybrid, outdoor, and fully remote learning in action across states including Florida, South Carolina, New York (city and suburbs), Philadelphia, and Dayton. Our project design teams and steering committees met while I was on campus both physically and remotely, practicing what students across the nation are doing.
While it is our company policy not to travel during the pandemic, I felt I needed to make an exception to see some of this extraordinary work in action. And, I have to admit, it was amazing to see the flexibility, care, love, and intentionality that is being exhibited in our client schools across the nation. Yes, the travel was very difficult and likely not to be repeated anytime soon, I left fortified by the quality of flexibility in this moment.
As an industry, we are meeting the moment. The question that I find myself pondering is whether we are meeting the future. More of this later this week.
While we are knee-deep in adapting to the pandemic learning environment, many schools and colleges are thinking about their strategic future. How will education be forever changed and how will we respond as a result? The following white papers outlines four types of responses post-pandemic and gives us a clear indication that there will be winners, losers, and a reshuffled competitive environment after this environmental storm. You may download this white paper here.
“The work of the school is determined by the needs of society.”
— Francis Parker
The world is changing. Fast. And, COVID-19 is acting as an agent of acceleration, deepening all of the preexisting conditions plaguing industries that had not planned for serious environmental disruption. In the education industry, schools and colleges are trying to plan for an uncertain future while simultaneously running continuous virtual learning platforms for the first time. It is a tough task. We know that, given all of the conversations we have been having during the pandemic.
Francis Parker’s view of education was that it should constantly evolve to meet the needs of a changing world. The progressive pioneer did not see education as a static model. Instead, he assumed that education would always be influenced by the external world, even anchored in it.
In January 2018, our firm authored a four-part series focused on recalibrating education for the future. It was not the first series on this topic that we had written, but simply among our more recent calls to action to an industry in decline. It was another chance to rethink the future and create a business model accordingly. We explored the extraordinary challenges that plague our industry, from how we use time (scheduling), how we credential our work (assessment), how we deliver it (continuous learning), and how we pay for it (accessibility).
The time has come. Education is in the process of recalibration. It won’t be the same in the future. COVID-19 is the most recent - and the most deadly - environmental issue to hit our industry. It is huge. But, education has dodged other bullets in the past. Every decade has seen inflection points, from 911 to global economic crisis to SARS, that should have served to place education on notice. The model will change in the future.
I predict four camps will emerge that will serve to define schools and colleges in the future. In which camp will your school or college land?
Innovators.
These schools and colleges get it. They read the tea leaves and got ahead of the curve. Early bird get the worm, as they say. They planned - or are doing so now - with great courage and audacity. They took risks to diversify their access points, from price to location to delivery model, and therefore they diversified their audiences. They challenged the status quo by redefining time (schedule), assessment (credentials), and community (location). Most importantly, they are pulling a Wayne Gretzky: they skate to where the puck is going, not where it is. They will not only make it in the future, but they will drive best practices of the model. As a cohort, they will lead, disrupt and punch above their weight.
Adaptors.
These schools and colleges get it - sort of. They understand that times are changing but they have systems and structures that they perceive are too great of barriers to change at this time. They want to adapt to a changing world, but they worry that they may not be able to manage the internal change to do so. Some of these schools and colleges are current market leaders and possess large resources and big brands that they perceive will bring them through the challenges. They hope they can adapt over a period of time, hoping to implement gradual change that everyone can agree upon. Many will make it - some will get smaller over time. As a cohort, they will follow a safe and proven path and receive incremental results.
Preservationists.
This group of schools and colleges don’t get it. They are intrinsically tied to old models and structures. They believe that there is such inherent value in their type of educational experience that they will not adapt, let alone innovate. These are the organizations that claim that marketing will save the day and that “if we just told our story better, people will flock to us.” They will spend a great deal of resources to preserve their model as they get smaller. Their market share will erode and public confidence will, as well. Some will pass away. As a cohort, they will attempt to preserve an an outdated model, somehow thinking that they will be able to resurrect their glory days.
Fatalities.
Unfortunately, there are a group of expensive, small, overgeneralized, non-distinct schools and colleges that will die. They don’t have the innovative chops, distinctive programs, or large reserves to manage through an inflection point of this size. At one time, they were valid competitors and provided a solid education. But, unfortunately, they never received a transformational gift or extraordinary success in any one signature program. As a result, they entered COVID-19 with the preexisting conditions for a short life. As a cohort, they will die slow and, in some cases, painful deaths.
I see these four camps playing out during the next five years. I am deeply concerned about the future of our education industry, especially since many schools and colleges have failed or will fail to adapt to a changing set of circumstances. If there is a “Blockbuster moment” for those organizations, it is right now. None of us wants to see schools and colleges struggle; we want to see them thrive, so that their students thrive.
So, what is the future of place-based education? That is a question that a small group of ISA-U thought leaders, called the Strategy Collaborative, have been pursuing since January. Tough times to answer that question, right? My sense is that we will return to our natural wheelhouse of place-based in the future. We will appreciate it even more than before COVID-19. And, we will lean into it as a core strength. But, we will not be able to solely rely on it in the future. We have to diversify. After all, restaurants with drive throughs and delivery systems are really grateful to be able to deliver their dishes at this moment in time.
I am bullish on the future. This is a terrible moment in time, no doubt, with challenge and heartache in abundance. But, innovators never miss the opportunity a crisis represents. COVID-19 will provide the backdrop for that extraordinary innovation. It will accelerate the issues that already plagued us. And, it will breed a new frontier for education. I am confident in education as an industry. We will change and create a new model for the future.
Simply stated:
If more students can be served in the future, and if more students can be served better in the future, then some good will most definitely emerge from this pandemic.
Today I am sitting across the street from the world headquarters of State Farm insurance in Bloomington, Illinois. I am back in my college town of Bloomington/Normal at Illinois State University. From my window I can see four or five large corporate buildings - of the dozen or so that are located here - with nearly empty parking lots. On a normal day, these lots are packed full of insurance executives.
Will business travel come back after we have had a vaccine for the coronavirus? It is a question that many have been pondering for the past six months. With recent developments such as the significant early retirements issued from global airlines, news of increased remote productivity among the corporate work force, and a push into new and improved video conferencing, it is hard to imagine business executives returning back to the old airport to hotel grind.
The business travel sector fuels both the airline and lodging industry. Without it, the entire industry has to restructure around smaller and less lucrative segments, such as tourism and incidental travel. Recent estimates indicate that business travelers account for only 12% of airline bookings but nearly 75% of all revenue. As we watch the airlines prepare to downsize, they know what the future holds.
I can’t see business travel returning to days of past glory. It will likely be six months more before a vaccine has hit and penetrated the global marketplace. That means national and global businesses will have had nearly a year to run remotely with their work teams. Airlines will not be able to follow the same equation of packing large numbers of passengers into small planes, driving overall costs up. Business traveler hotels have largely exceeded the capacity needed for the future of travel, which could mean a shift in how they use their large chains.
At ISA, we like to talk a lot about how the pandemic is accelerating changes in industry. As we watch different industries adapt to a new reality, we will see them completely restructure their business strategy. The travel industry is just one of these new realities. Travel experts agree that, once the government subsidy has been removed in the fall, consumers should expect to see higher prices and fewer choices in the marketplace of travel. What this means is that the industry will have had to pivot around new consumers and a new price structure.
Next week we will talk about the shifts in office and real estate.
Promotional ad for the Ultimate Tennis Showdown in Nice, France.
If you want to see the potential positive disruption of this pandemic on an industry, you might want to take a look at what is happening in the sport of tennis. It is a game that has lasted the ages, but failed to innovate historically. It is one of the few truly global sports, attracting players from around the world, but it has been in decline in participation, apparel sales, and television ratings for awhile. It also was the first major sporting event to cancel during the outbreak of COVID-19, with the famous Indian Wells tournament closing down literally after all of the players had shown up and a few matches had been played. What is interesting is what has happened during the past few weeks of tennis. Remarkably, it is one of the first sports to innovate on live television during the pandemic. A little more context will be helpful here.
A few weeks ago, tennis great Roger Federer took a strong stance on the future of the sport he has led for three decades. He publicly reignited a conversation, initially started by Billie Jean King in the 1970’s, about combining forces between the men’s tour (Association of Tennis Professionals) and women’s tour (Women’s Tennis Association). He did so via Twitter and the conversation quickly went viral, becoming the main story on the Tennis Channel, as well as on social media among the game’s enthusiasts. This pivot also happened at a time when few people can play tennis right now as a result of club and park closures, so his comments got a lot of attention.
Not too long after the Federer comments, we now bear witness to several made-for-television live tennis exhibitions. Each of these exhibitions have attracted some - but not all - of the top players and featured new formats. From accelerated scoring, less time between points, piped-in audience applause, new rules, and drone camera coverage, tennis became the first sport to innovate as a result of the pandemic.
Why is this such a big deal? It is actually remarkable for a game that has failed to change in over a century that is has used this time to experiment in order to recreate itself for the future. As we always say, never miss the opportunity of a crisis.
Here are eight things you might not know if you are not a tennis enthusiast. It’s a messed up sport, plagued with strategic dilemmas.
Tennis is a declining industry. It has struggled for fans and adaptations to television in a faster pace sports world. It is also struggling with overall participation rates. No one region of the world has figured out a model to really grow the sport in a sustainable way.
Tennis struggles with diversity and inclusion. It has long been perceived as a sport for the wealthy, which is actually inaccurate but the stereotype prevails. It goes back to the founding and early years of the sport in mostly exclusive country clubs. Today, however, tennis is more diverse and inclusive than it has been in decades. It still struggles with a large base of participation due to long term stereotypes.
You can’t earn a real living as a professional tennis players unless you are ranked in the top 50 or 100 in the world. You heard that right. It turns out that tennis players - unlike any other sport - compete for themselves. They are self-employed businesses and have no salaries. And, only the top 50 or so players in both men’s and women’s tennis have sustainable endorsements with the leaders, such as Nike, Adidas, Fila, Wilson, and Babalot.
The business model is broken - and it has been for years. If you don’t win, you don’t earn money. And, if you are not playing, as in our current COVID-19 circumstances, you are not earning money. The only players making money right now are the ones with the large endorsements.
The large tournaments require 128 players, plus another 64 for qualification “pre-tournaments”. The large Grand Slam tournaments that you see on television, such as Wimbledon, US Open, or the French Open, require 128 players in the main draw, plus another 64 or more in the qualification rounds. For both men and women. So, these large tournaments need the lower ranked players to actually even function.
Pro tennis matches are extremely inefficient. It takes one chair umpire, a crew of at least six ball kids, and perhaps six more line judges to play just one tennis match. Yes, it requires 13 “officials” to support a match between two players. Add that there are 64 opening matches in men’s and women’s tennis each in a Grand Slam, which equals 832 on court volunteer staffers to play one round of a tennis tournament.
The length of some matches cause the casual viewer to tune out. While no one loves a five set, five hour marathon as much as I, it does not lend itself to mass appeal on television. The market is flooded with pro sports competitions that that top out around 2 hours in length.
Men and women have their own tours and fan base. This is perhaps the oddest aspect of the industry. Rather than work together for the better of the sport, men and women’s professional tennis efforts have historically treated each other as their own competition. Rather than understanding that they have bigger issues in the game (such as items 1 to 8 above), they have historically functioned independent of each other, never capitalizing on the consolidation of their efforts. They have never been true collaborators.
As you can see, tennis is a largely uninterrupted business where income inequality is severe, participation is lagging, and it is a largely inefficient and ineffective business model. And, COVID-19 is merely serving as an accelerant in this industry, making us painfully aware of the shortcomings of the model. This is the moment of deep disruption.
Market contraction promotes consolidation. Billie Jean King is a strategist. And, so is Roger Federer. They each know that COVID-19 will leave a wake behind it that may never be fully recoverable. They also know that now is the time to recreate the model. It is time to blow it up and create a resiliency that the sport has been missing for years. As a result of this moment in time, three main initiatives are emerging in tennis:
Income disparity will become less. Lower ranked players will have some subsidy from higher ranked players on the tours and their associations in an effort to widen participation and keep players in the game.
Contraction will lead to consolidation. It is likely that we might see one joint men’s and women’s association for tennis professionals, where they compete in the same place, time, and venue, and share marketing and collaborative forces. No, they won’t play against each other, but they will become strategic about working as one for the better of the game.
Tennis will reinvent itself for the future. While some of the new variations on the game will likely not remain post-pandemic, some of the new innovations will likely stick around and play an important role in reshaping tennis as it reintroduces itself to new audiences.
If any of this sounds familiar to our educational model, you have started to make the connections. This moment in time is not just critical for tennis, but for schools, colleges, and all businesses to anticipate a retraction in their market and use this time to recreate and reinvent themselves.
Who knew we could learn so much about strategy from tennis?
If you had the chance to build the school or college of the future, what would it look like? How would it function? Who would it serve? How would you price it?
We are living in unprecedented times. This may be just your moment to create the change you wish to see in our educational system. While we have experienced tremendous heartache from our current crisis, there has never been a better time to engender the change necessary for the future.
If you have been contemplating your post-pandemic strategy, take a moment to reflect upon this three minute message of urgency. Rather than asking your faculty, staff, and board for permission to develop strategies for incremental change through a traditional strategic plan, maybe take this moment to anchor your thinking in where the world is going.
As we move into a likely blended learning environment for the fall, with students learning both on campus and online, here’s a quick thought on a Friday.
Community or geographically-bound schools will now have to ponder if they really are a day school in the future. Are they really bound to a geographic region anymore? How will they define that market? By a geofence? Or do they now compete in a regional, national, or global marketplace? We know that new competitors will be entering into the online space in every market. That has been and will continue to accelerate post-pandemic. What will be the impact on community or day schools?
Have a great holiday weekend.
What’s the long-term impact to our industry of COVID-19? While it has been a painful and exhausting road so far, we must begin to see some of the potential benefits of what we have experienced. We must find the opportunity in the crisis.
Our sense is that the long-term impact of the coronavirus pandemic on education will be four-fold. When our environment returns back to some level of normalcy, albeit a new normal, the pandemic will have:
Legitimized online delivery at the primary/secondary level, which was much-needed in order to schools to start thinking about expanding their learning modalities;
Created new price and access points, which could serve to educate more people in more effective ways over time;
Transformed how we use time, potentially moving us away from an old, tired schedule model of 8 AM to 3 PM to a dynamic, continuous learning environment;
Improved credentialing and assessment. moving away from the old Carnegie unit assessing merely seat time in class and rote learning to a competency, skill, and attribute model of assessment.
I am sure that there are more benefits, but for starters, it is an impressive list. While each of these four items were in motion prior to the outbreak, the pandemic will serve as an accelerator to transform learning and restructure our system.
What really drives change in education? It is a question that we all ponder at times. How do we create more nimble universities, responsive to the workforce? How do we inspire aging faculty to keep pace with technology? We tend to think that change happens purely from fear, or disruption, but I don’t think that this explains the change process completely.
I think change is driven from culture, which is an internal variable, and context, which is an external variable. Put them together and you get a recipe for scalable change. When you assess the current culture of an organization, and the context in which they operate and compete, it often gives you a strong sense of the change required to be successful. And, for those people like me who use strategy processes to drive change, understanding these variables is everything to getting change right. So, as I think about strategy development for schools, colleges, universities, and non-profits, my experience tells me that there are three "levers" or controls that are key to the strategic planning process. Understanding and reading them right is everything.
Culture
Culture eats strategy for breakfast, as Drucker said. And, he was right. Understanding the good, bad, and otherwise of an organization's culture is everything. This is getting down deep on the "inside" of a school or college and finding out why it behaves the way it does, and what it's underlying issues reveal. "Getting the culture" is key, and you can only do it by immersing yourself in it.
Context
Reading the tea leaves of the outside world is really as important as anything else in the planning process. While schools and colleges love to "navel gaze" in their deeply satisfying ways through accreditation self-studies, the outside world is moving at warp speed and industry is innovating and changing. Reading the context of any school or college gives us an understanding of their relevancy to the future.
Change
Ah, the dreaded "change" word. At the end of the day, all great organizations understand the answer to two critical questions: how much do we need to change to be successful, and what is our capacity to enact that level of change? Getting the change quotient right is both art and science and can make or break a process. Read it wrong and you are out of business.
Culture. Context. Change.
These are the three most important levers to optimize when planning. Using good data and research that informs the answer to all three is the best best to make sure that you are hitting them head on. And, making sure that you have sorted all of the issues out with all three ensures that you are balanced in your approach to planning. Try it on for size and see if this recipe sticks in your head. It might not be the Four P's, but helpful nonetheless.
America is going to need to find strategic solutions to deal with a demographic blip that will have a ripple effect for years in the education sector. In 2018, the United States experienced the fewest number of births in three decades. Demographers tell us that ten of the past eleven years have seen births decline in the US. Add that to a declining fertility rate, the United States is below the “replacement” level for overall population.
The Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education (WICHE) periodically publishes a study called “Knocking at the College Door: Projections of High School Graduates”. This publication outlines state by state trends and is an enrollment planning resource fixture in every college admission office in the nation. Their summary in 2016 with projections through 2032 included the following:
After steady increases in the overall number of high school graduates over the last 15 years, the U.S. is headed into a period of stagnation. WICHE’s projections indicate that the number of graduates in each graduating class will average around 3.4 million through 2023, before peaking at 3.56 million prior to 2026. At the same time, the number of high school graduates from private religious and nonsectarian schools is projected to decline.
So, what does this mean? The impact of these numbers will be real. Child and youth-centered services, structures, and systems will be impacted. The educational infrastructure of our nation was built on a much larger volume of students moving through the system. The reality of the future will see educational leaders with big brands and resources seize market share, innovative disrupters show flexibility and agility by creating new markets, and followers fall behind.
