What if College Presidents Are Like General MacArthur (Korean War) and General Westmoreland (Vietnam War)?

Generals MacArthur and Westmoreland ignored the obvious.  Today, college leaders are too.

Our two children took my wife and I to New York City in 2019 to celebrate our 40th anniversary.  One of the many adventures we took was to New York's legendary Strand's bookstore on Broadway and East 12th Street.

I actually picked up two old-fashioned hardback books to take home.

The first was  David Halberstram's 2007 book about the Korean War, The Coldest Winter.  The second was Mark Bowden's Hue 1968 published in 2017.  Both books shared examples of stunning systemic and individual displays of ineptitude and ego -- along with stories of courage, tenacity, fire power, and heroism beyond my ability to envision.

The Halberstram book details how General MacArthur and many of his senior officers in Tokyo and Korea exhibited levels of bias and indifference to individual soldiers under their command.  Their inability to use information available to them to make better decisions cost the lives of many American and UN forces during that conflict.

General Westmoreland and too many of his military leaders in Vietnam and Washington D.C. refused to acknowledge what was obvious to those on the ground in Hue and other battles during the Vietnam War.  Those leaders also cost the livelihoods and lives of hundreds or more troops.

As I read these books, it brought to mind a logical and concerning connection to the leadership in today's American higher education system. It can be argued that too many college leaders only see the battle for survival in terms of their local biases, perceptions, and situations.  Like the generals before them, the information and intelligence available to them is either ignored or left without substantive action.

Certainly, this is not life and death -- like those of the soldiers and sailors in military conflicts.  This is, however, the livelihood of thousands of college students - both traditional and non-traditional.

As I read media reports and analyzed the audited financial statements of hundreds of private colleges over the past three years, I can make a case that too many college leaders are ignoring the same type of obvious intelligence ignored by these two past military leaders.

For example, the pressure to discount tuition has resulted in decreased net revenue since 2013 for too many.  Yet, these small to medium-sized private colleges have almost universally chosen to focus on their really small piece of the higher education world.  They ignore the benefits of scale.  They encourage only the parochial view.  They speak as if the inevitable consolidation of colleges will not happen to them.

Military leaders are quoted throughout history as suggesting that strategy is for amateurs, but logistics are for professionals.  It is reasonable to speculate that leaders of financially troubled colleges are doing just the opposite; they are focused on some grand enrollment, marketing, or new degrees strategy, while leaving the logistics of  scaling operations to drive down costs as unworthy of their time and efforts.

Their 'troops' in the form of faculty, staff, students, and others are at risk of becoming economic and education casualties of a battle whose outcome will not end well for those unwilling to recognize the higher education wars now being fought among struggling colleges.  Competition for students will continue to drive down tuition revenue needed to remain financially viable. 

Each college,whether it has a few hundred or few thousand students, has its own set of executives - along with the compensation for those leaders. Each has their own leaders for human resources, IT, marketing, institutional research, finance, and others.

Like the generals that were stuck in a biased mindset that did not take into account the actual intelligence available to them, these presidents, provosts, and trustees likewise maintain a local bias that defies the available intelligence that their actual financial viability is in question.

There is near-universal recognition that lower birth rates that started in 2008-2009 will result in a lower high school graduation numbers during the next decade.  Imagine the intense tuition discounting competition that will develop when there are even fewer traditional students available to fill classroom seats and dormitory beds. Tuition discounts will skyrocket even more.  Revenue will plummet.

The Halberstram and Bowden books both referenced examples of individual courage, tenacity, fire power, and heroism. In 2019 and beyond, what will courage, tenacity, fire power, and heroism look like from college leaders?

Courage: A recognition that the future of their students - not their faculty is their fiduciary responsibility.

Tenacity:  Identifying and sticking with a consolidation or closure plan -- in spite of the intense, vocal and passionate objection of faculty, students, and the community.

Fire Power:  Leveraging the scale of 15-20 colleges in partnership or merger to lower the cost basis while increasing academic offerings to a wider base of students.

Heroism:  See 'Courage' above.

No News Is Bad News for Struggling Colleges

 One of my Google Alerts searches for the term: 'freshman enrollment'.

As the new college year begins, I have seen many college PR machines crank out headlines like: "largest enrollment ever".  While some have clearly grown their numbers, reading between the lines suggests that there is some obfuscation taking place for some.

Knowing the intense pressure on tuition discounting in higher education today, I also wonder if these colleges with enrollment growth had to 'give away the store' with high tuition discounts to grow their enrollment.  Interestingly, none report on the discounts they had to offer to entice students to enroll.  I sincerely doubt that 'new marketing strategies' were a substantial factor - unless those new strategies were associated with high discounts.

What is even more important are the large number of colleges not reporting anything about their Fall 2020 enrollment.  This has to be bad news - especially for those small to medium-sized private colleges.  It is reasonable to assume that these colleges engaged in substantial tuition price discounting - and STILL did not grow their enrollment.

Sadly, there are no timely reporting mechanisms that provide this information to students and many other stakeholders.

As the process starts to enroll the freshman class of 2021, interested students and their parents should make sure to ask about the size of the class of 2020 and what the average tuition discount was.  While good for the students, tuition discounts that are too high put these colleges and universities at risk of not being financially viable.