We love what we do, which includes our campuses, students, colleagues, cultures, athletics, and leading our incredible institutions. We wish nothing had to change, but it does. Our business model is broken, terribly broken, and institutions will close by the dozens during the few years ahead unless we make the changes that we intuitively know are inevitable, changes that so many other sectors of society have already implemented. There is still time, but we must act.
Hundreds of boards are facing chronically stressed budgets and uncertain futures. Many have recently been forced to make significant cuts to academic departments, programs, and faculty. And there are still many more to come. These unfortunate announcements now seem to have become a weekly occurrence for a wide range of institutions from small privates to large public flagships.
These difficult cuts in academic offerings may have been unavoidable, but there seems to be a growing consensus that institutions cannot simply cut their way to sustainability. Absent significant transformation that also addresses enrollment growth, program cuts may ultimately be self-reinforcing as reduced services lead to fewer students leads to further cuts. It is a vicious negative cycle.
In isolation, this leaves most colleges with very few options. Every institution would love to focus on growth as opposed to cutting costs, but manufacturing growth can seem impossible without significant capital to invest in new academic programs, a luxury many institutions simply do not have.
I’ve served as Adrian College’s president since 2005 and we’ve been fortunate to have a measure of success growing enrollment with the latest sport or residence hall or major. But 16 years later, I have realized that incremental solutions are no longer enough. Our budget problems can’t be solved with a few more summer camps or a few more weddings in our chapel. We need to get at the heart of the issue and fundamentally shift our operating model, while, of course, preserving all that is good about our institutions. If we do, we will enjoy a prosperous and wonderful future. If we don’t, we will struggle mightily.
In response to these challenges, 87 colleges in the Lower Cost Models Consortium (LCMC) are cooperating on a grand scale to increase the enrollment of our institutions. Enrollment, as we know, is our lifeblood. According to 2015 College Decisions Survey: Deciding to Go to College, a report from New America funded by the Lumina Foundation, the majors offered by an institution is the most important factor in a student’s college decision. Yet, many institutions are falling behind when it comes to offering new, competitive, in-demand majors because they are too expensive to start, it takes too long, and it is far too risky.
The LCMC eliminates these barriers to starting new majors and minors. Rather than spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire more faculty and develop new curriculum, colleges simply pay for the incremental classes needed to start that program on a far more affordable per-student per-class basis ($350 per student per three-credit course). The classes are taught by other college faculty who have already invested in that particular offering, faculty on one of our 87 campuses.
We specifically target subject areas where our participating colleges are confident they can attract incremental enrollment and provide a more well-rounded, job-centric experience to students. These include computer science, public health, data analytics, electrical engineering, supply chain management, and 20 other majors that our modern economy desperately needs. In other words, this model enables our colleges to adopt virtually any high-enrollment major or minor our students need with zero upfront investment, fixed costs, or risk, and in a fully accredited and reliable way.
Course sharing through a consortium has been occurring for decades, but institutions previously averse to collaboration are recognizing the immense potential of not only adding a few outside students to existing classes but also expanding their mix of majors to meet the shifting needs of the market. Attracting just 10 new students to a campus each year through popular majors like data analytics can generate a million dollars in additional annual enrollment revenue, not to mention a major bump in retention.
At Adrian College, we recently started eight new majors, minors, and certificates in just one semester. At the top of my list was supply chain management, a high-demand major with amazing job prospects for graduates. To start the supply chain management major, Adrian added just three incremental classes to our business department that will be taught by another LCMC institution. For each new supply chain major we recruit, we will pay about $1,000 total for those three courses ($350 x three incremental classes). This cost pales in comparison to the revenue generated by each new enrollment, and is far, far less than it would cost to hire several new faculty members to teach supply chain.
Adrian’s faculty governance committees are in the process of passing nine additional majors and minors for next fall. In addition to delivering vital modern skills to incoming Adrian students, we also believe that the additional enrollment revenue these new programs generate will allow us to significantly lower tuition in the years ahead. This is our goal.
Financial sustainability is within reach if we work with each other—while leveraging the Internet—to improve our business model. Like so many sectors of society before us, we must change for our own good. Not only will it ultimately lower costs for students but it also might just save hundreds of our colleges, professors, and administrative jobs in the process.
Jeffrey R. Docking, PhD, is the president of Adrian College. He is on the steering committee of the Lower Cost Models Consortium and author of Crisis in Higher Education: A Plan to Save Small Liberal Arts Colleges in America.
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