Are College Leaders in Denial?

A recent Inside Higher Education survey found that 81% of college and university presidents believe their institutions will be financially stable over the next five years and over half believe they are better off today than they were in 2019. Hmm. A 2019 report by Moodys found that nearly a third of American institutions of higher education were operating in the red and that was before the pandemic; substantial enrollment and revenue declines have been manifest for over a decade. Additionally, emergency funding via the CARES Act, which kept many schools afloat, has been disbursed and applied. There is no more in the pipeline.

In the same survey, two thirds of presidents claim that their institutions have the capacity to meet the mental health needs of their students, yet another national 2022 survey found that nine out of 10 students report that their campus is in the midst of a full blown mental health crisis! Can both be true?

Following this theme, 73% of presidents believe that race relations on their own campuses are good or excellent, while barely a quarter believe the same thing is true on campuses nationally. Of course, it is statistically impossible for both of those assumptions to be true. Social problems, it seems, are always perceived to be an issue elsewhere.

Optimism is not a bad thing. However, denial gets leaders and their institutions into trouble. It is probably impossible that more than 80% of colleges will be financially stable over the next five years when nearly a third were operating at deficits even before the pandemic and overall enrollments are down another 8% across higher education since 2019. As for mental health and race relations, multiple data points suggests that a substantial number of college presidents are either in denial or simply uninformed about those issues.

The Transformation Collaborative, collects, analyzes and interprets real world data to help colleges and universities understand what’s actually true across post-secondary education and on their own campuses so that leaders can make critical decisions about reinvention and sustainability.

Our data-informed, experience-driven analyses place emphasis on the disrupting phenomena evident in the IHE research: among non-profit and private colleges, 40% are considering the acquisition of other schools, 53% would at minimum share administrative functions with other schools, and more than 60% express support for combining programs with other schools.

Also given short shrift in the IHE research is the fact that nearly 40% of students drop out each year: a non-achievement benchmark for student success that merits high profile and maybe a modicum of shame.

The Transformation Collaborative understands that the hard work of fundamental transformation is best accomplished sooner rather than later, with deep consideration of data, measurable evidence and tangible fidelity to student learning and student achievement. Some may suggest that current events enable diminished emphasis on those principles; the Transformation Collaborative supports transformed organizations and institutions with unwavering allegiance to them.