What Higher Education Can Learn From COVID
In 2020, higher education, like any other sector of the economy, experienced a near knock-out blow from an unexpected enemy. Now, as we all limp back toward a glimmer of normalcy, what have we learned?
Today, we are battered and bruised, but we are much more capable of adapting to the needs of every student. The only way is forward. Now is the time to carefully step toward what’s next.
College in the Age of COVID
We all had hopes that COVID-19 would be over by now. We hoped our collective actions would have flattened the curve, and that our lives would start to feel normal again. Yet, here we are, still in the throes of a pandemic - trying to return to “normal” with numbers still climbing.
Like every other industry, higher education has been turned on its ear. In the spring, the fear was that students wouldn’t want to transition to fully online classes, and that enrollment figures would suffer. That fear was realized, and schools adjusted, employing new tools and strategies in order to keep students engaged.
Government reacted with the CARES Act - providing support for both students and schools. It helped, but not enough. The rush to get aid to students and schools eclipsed the intention of the funding. Aid was available only to students who already were eligible for federal assistance; no support was available for new students who might have been newly down on their luck and considering education as a way out.
Here we are in early August. Fall semesters are just around the corner. Colleges and universities began the summer believing they would be back in-person in the fall... of course they would. But as we approach the end of the month, each day brings more cases, hospitalizations and deaths. In this unprecedented time, what happens next for our colleges?
Higher Ed administrators are finding themselves at odds with faculty and staff. The personal connection and conversations that are so vital for student success are now potentially risky practices. Leadership is rightly worried about the financial implications of low enrollment figures. College employees are justified in their worries concerning safety, and many are struggling to decide what to do with their own young children, whose schools may or may not be operational in the fall.
Students and parents worry about shifting to online instruction - if the quality of instruction will be comparable to in-person instruction, and are online classes robbing students of the “college experience”? Is it worth it to pay tuition at a pricey university when students don’t get to really “go” to college? Parents are asking the same questions in K-12 scenarios. Weighing the options. Will my child get “behind” if they don’t attend school face-to-face? Will my child become ill if they do?
There are no definitive answers. All of us are experiencing this situation at the same time, for the first time. No one has experience in COVID-19, a novel virus. We are all novel pandemic survivors. We are doing the best we can.
We need to resist the urge to return to normal.
Normal has left the building. Now, we are all pioneers in a COVID-19 world. We must innovate and create solutions. We can’t afford to stall out now - we’re just in the beginning of this new reality. Even when a vaccine is developed and widely administered, we will have all lived in a COVID-19 world; we’ll think differently about our interactions for years to come.
Now is the time for institutions of higher education to take note of what’s working, and build upon those successes. Are there any silver linings colleges are discovering now? What forms of communication are best for your students? Who are your stand-out online instructors? How can you leverage those successes to assist instructors who struggle? How can your institution support students who are challenged by technology or don’t have reliable, personal access to computers or high speed internet? How has COVID-19 impacted your employees and your funding?
Many large institutions have found their hallways relatively empty for months. The operating expenses alone are reason enough to really explore how online options can benefit students not only now, but going forward. Colleges need to invest in innovative leaders - especially in IT - who can accept that the world has changed and begin to build tools that will help institutions excel in the future, regardless of instructional delivery.
Odds are, some of the tools that have helped during the past few months will become commonplace at colleges and universities nationwide. Now, more than ever before, flexible, online tools are essential - and affordable.
Now that we’ve learned a bit about COVID-19, we need to step back and examine what we’ve learned FROM this experience. How can we use what we’ve learned to move forward, to spend wisely, and to support student success? Going forward, success for colleges will depend on how they’ve reacted to this crisis and the considerations they’ve made regarding student outcomes and engagement. If colleges can create online environments that mirror the in-person experience, they will not only weather this storm, but be ready for students who want better online options.
Leading Through Change
Leading any team is challenging. During times of instability, it becomes much more difficult. In higher education, as in any business, positions above and below you change frequently. Small changes typically don’t stir up much controversy, but changes in key positions or in organizational structure can create uneasy feelings and a tense work atmosphere that distract from the tasks at hand.
When everyone is jockeying for position and trust between leaders and their teams fades, productivity loses momentum. Naturally, people become more worried about their jobs and less concerned about fruitful work.
We suggest leaders counter this downward spiral by creating a straight-forward, trusting environment within your own team and by prioritizing production.
Make team meetings a priority. Report what news you can share to team members, preferably to everyone at the same time.
Be honest, but positive. Don’t editorialize. Lead with facts.
Focus on the work. Praise your team for the good work they do and suggest ideas to move work forward.
Be direct. If you don’t know an answer - admit it. If you have bad news to share, handle it tactfully; say what you need to say and then move on.
Don’t forget to reinforce your own standing with those to whom you report.
Manage up. Prepare for meetings with your supervisor to ask them for what you need. Show that you’re in control of your responsibilities and working independently to move things forward.
Document above and below your position. Keep track of significant conversations. Don’t expect to remember.
Anticipate obstacles. Provide evidence to justify your team’s needs.
Align your goals with those of the institution and emphasize how your team’s work is contributing to the big picture.
Lead through changes instead of just managing them. Your team will appreciate your steadfastness, honesty, and vision, and they'll be more productive while changes take place around them. Your leaders should recognize your efforts to keep things moving forward, and when things settle down, you and your team will be ready for what’s next.
External Input and Influence
We’ve witnessed great professionals get increasingly frustrated about "not being heard." The ethos of this problem can be best characterized as "the failure to convince others your ideas are more important than theirs."
Often the selection of best ideas coalesces not on the merit of such ideas but on the personalities of those presenting them around the table. The question becomes, "How do I make my strategy evident? How can I best support what I see in my mind as the best way forward?" Unfortunately, you can’t do it on your own. Every expert we’ve ever met bases their expertise not a self-enclosed definition of their own knowledge set, but on external vindication of their expertise. In other words, the opinions others have about your professional acumen gives more validity to your strategies than your own attempt to prove their worth. The great news is that this system is easily penetrable.
All one must do is to create a personal network where expertise is shared, judged, and vindicated. There is indeed merit in debating what you believe with others who have no stake at your professional actions. As an example, in my previous CIO position, after considering several factors, I adopted a policy that reduced the importance and focus on thin clients at my institution. Although I was not debated on that decision, had I been asked to explain my position, I could have explained it in detailed as related to the needs of our institution. BUT… I would have also been able to say that I’d discussed the use of thin clients with a group of 10 other CIOs, which included a CIO of a company with distributed offices in 85 countries, and they all agreed with me. It is not that I am not smart on my own, but that my peers will appreciate I am not acting on baseless impulse rather than carefully considered decisions.
We suggest getting involved with groups that can vindicate your ideas, and arm your decision making and influence with stories about those who succeeded and failed at the same task. If you can’t find such a group, create one.
Caution vs. Action
Any business leader who chooses inaction citing "caution" as a reason is misusing that word and its meaning to conceal a lack of preparedness. Anyone who has ever driven a car can tell you what the difference between a stop sign and a caution sign. Why then do these terms get muddled in a business context?
In business, "caution" is quite often the opposite of "action" if placed in the wrong context. When using that word in your business, consider carefully what you are saying, and then consider what your peers will hear when you say it.
If you find that the opposite of your use of the word "caution" in the context of your conversation is "carelessness,” you are using caution for the right reasons. However, if the opposite is "action," adjust your sentence or your stance to fit what you actually mean.
Don’t Go Out of Business
We have experienced being in businesses that depend on another business to exist. Many businesses currently flourishing on the Internet exist only because Google says they deserve a top spot on the search results. A change in Google's policy could break such businesses, who would have no recourse and no other immediate way to reach large audiences. The same thing is true for companies who place their bets on the creation of phone apps versus the internal policies of Apple. (As a matter of fact, a change in Apple policy in 2017 forced many businesses to close later that year.) The same is happening right now to businesses built upon mining and using Facebook data; the changes made by Facebook to its policies on data sharing were swift following interviews with a House and Senate committee about its practices.
In a complex business such as an institution of Higher Education, we depend of each other's function the same way businesses vitally depend on each other. The difference is that instead of causing the closing of a business, internal restrictive policies cause deep inefficiencies in the functions of the college. Those inefficiencies can cause monetary, budgetary, cultural, or academic damage to the entire institution.
So, what to do? Policies are indeed critical, but they must be designed with the global functions of the institution in mind. Here is a fictional example: College staff accessing the cashier window constantly park in reserved student parking in front of the building. To prevent this behave, an institution has two choices: a) Raise the fines imposed on staff parking illegally in front of the business office to $300.00 per infraction, b) create two 15-minute staff parking spots. Both of those policies will achieve your goal, but one supports your function, while the other blocks your function and damages your culture.
Keep a watchful eye on every policy you put in place, and help your colleagues create an environment of permissive controls rather than restrictive barriers.
What Are You Paying For?
Higher Education budgets are inherently complicated - multiple fund sources, hundreds of accounts, and lots of budget managers whose roles change often make the budget picture at most colleges and universities murky at best.
Even when budget managers are engaged and actively trying to both understand their budget and use it efficiently, the process of accounting for every single line item can be daunting.
Shifts in budget management are especially challenging.
A new budget manager may not be familiar with all the expenses for which they’ve been asked to pay, and often reorganizations within the college structure can leave some expenses lost in transition, with budget managers unintentionally renewing software or services that might be obsolete or underused.
So, what are you paying for?
We suggest that budget managers review the following expenses that may go overlooked or be auto-renewed as they plan for the new budget cycle.
Software
Aging software may become obsolete, be available in newer versions, or be charged on a per seat basis (i.e. number of users).
Examine software expenditures for the following:
What version are you paying for and is it the most current?
Are you paying for a certain number of seats for the software? If so, do you still need as many?
When was the last time you negotiated the pricing of each product?
Auto-renewals
Look at the terms of your contracts.
What is the renewal period?
How much notice must you give to cancel a contract?
Is there an opportunity to negotiate rates for extended years of service?
Discover what's not working
Are there items on your budget that were great in theory, but have been tough to implement in the way they were intended?
Review each expense and its purpose
Site the details of its use. Who uses this product/service and why? To what end?
Determine if the product/service is providing the results for which it was intended and if the price for the product/service is justified
Evaluating budget line items for the value they bring to your institution may not only save money, but free up funds for new projects ahead.
Process Improvement
Colleges are hard to maneuver, and the internal processes that may seem obvious and logical to those involved with their designs often end up abandoned for reasons beyond anyone’s control. The "purging" process is a great example of one such problem that affects institutions deeply in a place where some need it most: the bottom line of their budget.
Usually, right around this time of the year, colleges will drop students who are not "paid in full" for the fall term. That process forces administrators to make gut wrenching decisions to enforce college policy, while sometimes watching millions of dollars disappear from the balance sheets. Rules must be followed and students must pay, but HOW an institution decides to handle this process will determine its short and mid-term success or failure.
By following this type of process, students are dropped from classes and their enrollment is cancelled, which then results in a barrage of calls from students attempting to re-establish their status with the college. However, paying is just one little part of the process. Students who have been dropped will then have to re-register and perform many other tasks just to return their status with the institution to a working order. Students' schedules will no longer match their expected schedules with no little to no notice, and they will have to invest additional time and effort just to return to full matriculation status. Institutions would argue that students failed to follow the process, and ultimately, the onus is on the student to follow through. But sometimes, the students just make a mistake. The larger question becomes, Do you want those students enrolled at your institution? If the answer is yes, and we expect it is, it is in your best interest to handle them with care. Here is a list of what you should consider:
Don’t drop students who owe you less than $500.00.
Don’t drop students at all! Apply a fake drop to students or set a deadline prior to the real deadline and make it look like you dropped them. Those interested in returning will call you, and when they pay, their courses and statuses are back just like they were before.
Don’t use email. Use text messages to communicate the urgency of the need. Handle it as you would an emergency.
Resist every tendency to treat students in default as second-class students. They are your students and they need help.
Resist those who tell you that dropping students for non-payment is part of their education. Education is expensive and writing big checks is scary. Students (and parents) will delay it as much as they can.
We've seen many college professionals love the ideas listed above, but not act. That usually happens because no one feels that this is within the capabilities of their area, and the idea evaporates. On the flip side, however, we have been part of teams where offices and decision makers work closely to serve every student, and the actions related to these practices paid handsomely.
We encourage you to pay close attention to this process, and save your institution from missing on an opportunity to retain students who simply need a nudge. They are worth it.
It Takes Strength In Numbers
The best way to enact your strategy is to get everyone else to support it. Do you think that's an obvious statement? Hardly! If getting everyone to support your strategy was that obvious of an idea, how come so few of us do it?
The successful leaders we know understand that it has nothing to do with plowing through people and challenges, but everything to do with approaching the conversation with confidence while convincing others to join you.
There are a few simple points that we consider to be the keys to success:
Move forward first. Nobody will follow you if you hesitate or hide behind “safe fences.” Stand by principle and progress with resolve.
Resource your plan. Consider including the following metrics:
How much it will cost? (Provide 3 options)
Who will be involved?
How can it be accomplished when everyone returns to their every day churn?
How will success be measured?
How long it will take?
Get everyone to follow you by proposing a winning strategy. In order to make your plan work, you will likely need strength in numbers.
The last point is the most important. The real question then becomes “How?”
The "How" includes approaching as many people as you can with a scaffolding for your strategy. Present an immature version of your project to everyone, and then gather their input and opinions about it. Visit people in their offices, don’t just call. Go and see them in person. After you’ve done that for long enough, you will begin to understand the right approach necessary to make everyone feel that their input matters to that which you are proposing. If you give them importance and ownership into the process, they will place importance on the project that you're about to bring forward.
By pre-wiring the conversation with each stakeholder, you should find that when the time comes for your plan to hit the table, it has already been approved.
Building a Winning Team
You can hire a great employee, but you can’t hire -- nor build -- a winning team. Reject the analogy of finding puzzle pieces to complete the puzzle of a winning team. The best anyone can do is to buy an amorphous piece and hope it will take any shape that may be usable in the team puzzle.
Finding a good employee can be done on the basis of education, experience and track record. A winning team member is self-generated, based on belief in the message, the personal influence, his or her social graces, the individual's place in the macro economic environment, the current state of the business, circles of personal influence, etc.
A good employee demonstrates a certain verbal tone and inference, an understanding of the core culture, has a capacity to accept personal defeat with grace, expresses a love for the “product of the product”, is emotionally invested, exerts a determination for collective achievement and holds in disdain those that do not show merit to collective thinking.
Such an employee has courage: he or she may have targeted vulnerabilities, but with familial support for time constraints, experience in pushing the limits of personal production, an ability to turn criticism into nuggets of strategic insight, and the desire to understand the frustration of those who don’t like your decisions, such vulnerabilities become towering strengths.
Many of these critical items are not detectable during a hiring process, nor is the hiring process designed to allow one to consider all of these variables effectively as related to your existing team before employment engagement begins. Furthermore, many of these characteristics are created from “moment aero,” when the employee first steps foot into your business, and the psychological contract begins its transformation.
If you have a winning team, cherish it. You don’t control the factors that made it happen, and you may never experience it again.
A Silver Lining?
It’s hard to imagine that some good might come out of all this. Obviously, we are all doing what needs to be done in order to keep as many people as we can healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s hard to look at this from a larger perspective while we’re in it, but if we can observe what’s really working and what specific challenges we can address going forward, we may be able to use that information toward positive outcomes in the future.
Leaders in higher education have undoubtedly learned a couple of things during this crisis. We’re guessing some of those things are:
Many, if not most of my faculty and staff are focused on the success of our students and our institution - I need to communicate my appreciation and empower them to do more
Some of our tools are woefully outdated and need to be updated immediately
There are new tools we’ve discovered to help us to communicate with students more effectively, even when this crisis is over
I need to cut costs because we’re going to feel this impact for years to come
Everyone is Stepping Up
Most colleges have transitioned to a complete online environment. To do this, they had two, maybe three weeks to prepare. Every faculty member, Dean, and support service team had to learn how to do things differently, and quickly. Teleworkers may be in their rattiest t-shirts, but they are getting the job done, despite everything. People are clinging to whatever they can call normal in their new routines. Leaders in higher ed need to acknowledge those extraordinary efforts - often. What’s more, they need to notice what’s actually possible when people truly ARE ‘in it together’ and try to foster that connection when life settles into the new normal.
There’s No Real Going Back
For colleges who weren’t offering online classes or who were not delivering instruction effectively online, this has been an enormous wake-up call. Now everyone, from pre-k through post-doc knows it can be done. Students may not like it, faculty may have initially resisted, but the cat is out of the universal bag, and it will probably not be easy to stuff it all the way back in. Online classes are much less expensive for colleges to offer. Online classes were already popular; they are simply more convenient for some students. If colleges use this time to gather data and figure out how to make their online options more effective and more personal - and how to help students be successful - they can quickly capture a larger market share once we are on the other side of this.
COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the way we deliver instruction. During this time, some institutions will have learned how to do it better. Right now, those leaders are monitoring outcomes, engaging their faculty to see what works and what does not, and exploring tools to make the online learning experience better for all.
Use the Tools
In the rush to get ready for online-only instruction, colleges and universities green-lighted tools to help stay connected. They’re texting more, using live chat, having their employees split shifts to cover more hours, and discovering more about the online habits of their students. They’re also finding and eliminating roadblocks to enrollment, to support services, to financial aid.
Why did these tools go unused before? Why did it take a pandemic to put them to work? Necessity is the mother of invention, or maybe in 2020, it’s implementation. If these new tools are working now, imagine what they could do when schools are functioning ‘normally’.
Cutting Costs
Enrollment for Summer and Fall 2020 will look different for both universities and community colleges. Community colleges typically fare better when the economy is sluggish, but this economy is unlike any we’ve seen. So much of university life is ‘campus-life’. How will it endure in the age of social distancing? So much is uncertain.
Tough decisions will have to be made. Leaders should look at what everyone is doing now, how people have come out of the woodwork to assist other departments, and to help lighten the load. If cuts have to be made, leaders should take a long look at shared workloads, cross-training, and work cycles. What can be done to make more use of downtime? How can each role creatively contribute more to the overall mission of the college.
Build upon the culture that’s been forced into existence now to make positive changes in the future. Lessons learned in this crisis can carry forward and strengthen institutions for what’s next.
What Can Higher Ed Learn from Video Games?
I am not a gamer. I never had an Atari growing up... no Nintendo, and certainly not a Game Boy. Some 40 years later, one of the top complaints I hear from parents with school aged kids is that they can’t get their kids to give up video games.
As a higher ed professional, that thought makes me cringe a bit, but as we watch the traditional classroom experience buckle under the weight of COVID-19, maybe it’s time for higher ed leaders to take a second, more serious look at gaming.
Why do kids become so enthralled with their phones or gaming systems? Why are GameStop stores still a thing, way after their musical counterparts have gone missing from strip malls? What is so engaging about video games?
Just last week, Epic Games bucked Apple in a very public way. In fact, the gaming company flipped Apple’s iconic YEAR NAME commercial against them. Epic is tired of Apple charging a 30% premium for gamers to download the Fortnite app. To move against Apple Computer, especially in such a public way, took an unbelievable amount of confidence. But, with 350 million registered Fortnite players, Epic decided that trolling was an effective way to make its point.
There is no arguing that the creative folks behind games and gaming consoles are onto something. Games, as a consumable item for young people, aren’t cheap. Game consoles can go for several hundred dollars. Most teens and young adults prioritize having a phone over having a car. Why?
Thirty years ago, I went to get my driver’s license on the very first day I could. I drove an old beat-up Chevy with an AM radio, and I was happy about it. I wanted to be able to see my friends on my terms, whenever I wanted to. My peers worked on their cars and washed their cars and rode together places. Technology has made it easier to connect. It’s nothing to have a face-to-face conversation with anyone in the world - instantly.
This fall, universities are canceling classes due to COVID-19. It’s just too risky to have students living in dorms together, physically distanced by only a few feet. Parents are concerned that their children will lose the “college experience”. Maybe they already have.
If my child was college-aged, I certainly would want them to be independent, make new friends, experience things on their own terms. I would want her to discover how to tackle the world without her parents hovering over her shoulder, but I also have to acknowledge that COVID-19 is not the only factor that will differentiate her experience from mine. Her life and the way she interacts with her friends is already vastly separate from what I experienced in my teenage years.
What I know about gaming, which is admittedly very little, is that the whole point is to overcome some sort of challenge, incrementally. Most games build upon themselves, adding new characters or abilities as the player completes levels of play. Games like Minecraft allow players to create their own worlds, and in Fortnite, occasionally avatars celebrate their players’ victories with an odd - and now viral - dance.
What does this tell us about what compels people to be engaged with video games?
Access is easy. The beginning levels are conquered simply, helping players build confidence. Challenges become more and more difficult, but rewards - while intangible - are celebrated. There are prizes to work toward in addition to those that players don’t suspect. Games give players limited options; players feel some control over their outcome, deepening engagement.
Today’s games add something that was missing in the days of Pac Man and the Super Mario Brothers: community. Where arcades once helped attract scores of children, kids are now connecting with other gamers virtually, talking to them online or via personal headsets during games. Those connections could be with kids down the block or halfway across the world.
If we focus on the positive side of that connection, it’s easy to understand why so many young people are dedicated gamers. Higher ed could learn something here.
Make enrolling easy
Give students little wins in the beginning of their experience at your college
Make goals achievable and celebrate them
Throw a surprise in here and there
Build affinity by building community and fostering events (online or otherwise) that are not necessarily academic
Find ways for students to connect with one another - especially while learning remotely
Personalize experiences as much as possible
It’s naive to think colleges will go back to “normal” anytime soon. The reality is, we will never come back to the place we were before COVID-19. What we can do, however, is notice how our students engage with each other in ways outside of our walls, and work to incorporate successful tactics into instruction.