Your institution’s mission has not changed.
Despite all that is swirling around us, you are still in the business of helping people improve and achieve. You are still helping them understand what to learn and how to learn it.
Resilience is Built
Many institutional leadership teams are demonstrating the very resilience their mission statements say they will instill in their students. Others are suggesting business as usual with little change to their operations beyond physical distancing practices.
Investing in adaptation and innovation builds long-term resilience. This is what students are doing by investing in their educations – building resilience.
What is the story we tell students and parents? “Take the risk. We know it is a lot of money, but you’ll be better off in the long-term.” We tell students to invest in a 4-year growth plan, and we reinforce it along the way, “Don’t be deterred! Finish in 4 years!”
Are academic leaders following that same advice to build resilience for their institutions? Or are they crying poor, just like the students they are trying to convince to spend savings and take on debt for future gains?
Here’s the thing: institutions rarely stick to their own 4-year plans.
Example: Enrollment marketing initiatives often start with 3-5 year plans. The team acknowledges that real returns won’t materialize in years 1 or 2. And then, turnover in senior administrators and other outside factors suddenly defund the growth plan and little to no progress gets made. The planned investment halts after just 12 months.
I’m sure you’ve seen this happen all too often.
What To Do?
Develop the vision. Build the buy-in. Invest in the execution. Stay the course.
We will be adding a new set of research and resources available to our Intead Plus members over the next 8 weeks to help you do just that.
Read on to take a look at where forward-looking institutions are making these investments for longer-term growth (case studies are available).
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