The Edge: Working the Public-Perception Problem

As colleges face internal and external pressures that predate the pandemic, doubt over ROI needs urgent attention. ADVERTISEMENT [The Edge Logo]( Did someone forward you this newsletter? [Sign up free]( to receive your own copy. I’m not Goldie Blumenstyk. I’m Scott Carlson, a senior writer at The Chronicle exploring where higher ed is headed. Goldie is away, so this week I’m here to share what I’ve been thinking about. ADVERTISEMENT SUBSCRIBE TO THE CHRONICLE Enjoying the newsletter? [Subscribe today]( for unlimited access to essential news, analysis, and advice. Top of the list of problems: public perception of ROI. Last week I went down to Galveston, Tex., to [speak to members of the Texas Council of Academic Libraries](. Although my report “[The Library of the Future]( had earned me the invitation, and I also wrote “[Sustaining the College Business Model]( and several other articles and reports on the financial and reputational challenges facing higher ed, I’m always reluctant to play the onstage “expert.” I mean, I’ve visited many campuses, but I’ve never worked on one. So I opened the talk with a caveat borrowed from the famous military historian John Keegan: I might be a well-known scholar of war, “but I have never been in battle,” Keegan says in The Face of Battle. “And I grow increasingly convinced that I have very little idea of what a battle can be like.” Battle could’ve been an apt metaphor. Even before the pandemic, colleges were struggling against a set of internal and external pressures, many familiar to readers of The Edge. Among the internal factors: decades not knowing the detailed costs of institutional operations, in part because they were difficult to track, but also because doing so would have meant making hard decisions. (“I don’t know,” a college trustee once told me, “and I don’t want to know.”) “Zombie” academic programs, underenrolled and distant from the mission, often accumulated. Also internally, colleges [expanded administrative ranks]( but with uncertain effects on student success. Leaders often had too short a tenure to pull off a real transformation. Raising money to put up a building became a common way to signal achievement, but two-thirds of its lifetime cost would accrue after opening. Construction on many campuses outpaced enrollment, and deferred maintenance stands as a [billion-dollar problem]( in many large university systems. Among the external pressures: a demographic slide in student numbers. Populations of low-income and first-generation students who tend to need more resources and support. Rising college costs and stagnant family incomes. Confusion over college and career pathways despite an intense focus on college as the primary track to a “good job” (see the growing number of organizations offering [questionable and incomplete data]( to label certain majors as job-market “winners,” like business, or “losers,” like philosophy). Those converging challenges predated the pandemic. My article on the “[college deathwatch]( industry appeared about a month and a half before Covid-19 shut everything down. Now we are (still) waiting to see how the pandemic affected those trends. Did federal relief funds give colleges enough of an opportunity to reorganize, or just take off some of the pressure — temporarily? Fortunately, many solutions are in colleges’ power to pursue. More leaders are assessing the costs of their various programs and centers. Many institutions are paring back their majors and departments, after, we can only hope, not just hasty perceptions but a careful consideration of the enrollment, revenue, and potential of those programs. The prospect of partnerships abounds — between or among institutions, or between colleges and their surrounding communities — but such models still seem underused. But most of all, I told the audience of heads-up librarians, higher ed needs to tackle the return-on-investment equation, which [drives doubts]( about college from the public, policy makers, and employers. As many of us know, about 40 percent of students who enroll in college do not graduate within six years, a figure stratified by types of institutions and student populations. Among graduates, some [40 percent are underemployed]( which can mean more training (and more money) to break into a solid career. For decades — not just since the Great Recession — students have viewed college as career preparation, and ranked that purpose more highly than those in the realm of learning and ideas. Yet polls by Gallup and other organizations [show a longstanding disappointment]( with the preparation of graduates for the world of work. In The Chronicle’s recent report on [employer perspectives about college]( many noted a gap between what they needed and the skills graduates brought to the workplace. A surprising number of employers said that they had started considering applicants without college degrees, seeing the requirement as an artificial and unnecessary choke point in finding talent. College degrees will probably remain important to landing good jobs. But some employers are chipping away at a narrative colleges have trumpeted — and relied on — for years. This is not an admonition to colleges to hew to a narrow definition of career readiness, or to shutter programs in philosophy or [art history]( in favor of business or welding. Instead, help students see how [philosophy is legitimate preparation for business]( or how art history leads not just to museums or galleries, but to all kinds of roles in the world. I’m exploring those final points now in a lengthy project with someone who has actually spent decades in the trenches. I hope to offer more thoughts here in The Edge when the time comes. Goldie’s Weekly Picks WORK FORCE [Higher Ed’s Hiring Crunch Was Already Bad. It Got Worse Over the Summer.]( By Megan Zahneis [STORY IMAGE]( The pandemic and its aftermath have “created a tsunami of hiring and retention challenges,” according to a recent Chronicle survey. STUDENT ACCESS [The ‘Student List’ Business Is Changing. Will That Make Student Recruitment Less Equitable?]( By Eric Hoover [STORY IMAGE]( The big, unregulated industry that helps colleges generate “leads” “is undergoing a radical transformation that threatens to cause a college-access crisis,” a new report says. THE REVIEW | OPINION [The Dumbing Down of the Purpose of Higher Ed]( By Patricia McGuire [STORY IMAGE]( The university’s core values are under attack. We must speak up. ADVERTISEMENT FROM THE CHRONICLE STORE [Building a Faculty That Flourishes]( [Building a Faculty That Flourishes]( Colleges and universities cannot be successful without vibrant and engaged faculties. Now is the time to figure out sustainable ways to recruit, support, and diversify the faculty. [Order your copy today.]( NEWSLETTER FEEDBACK [Please let us know what you thought of today's newsletter in this three-question survey](. This newsletter was sent to {EMAIL}. [Read this newsletter on the web](. 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