Strategies to Better Serve Students and Grow Institutions
Hamid H. Kazeroony
The new generations of learners, technological innovations, budgetary constraints, and economic factors have given rise to the need for reevaluating new strategies in Higher Education Institutions (HEI). In addition, quality of learning and responsiveness to economic needs—such as providing competencies that can help graduates be gainfully employed, help economies grow, and help learners to fund their education—are among the ongoing issues that HEI should carefully examine in formulating an appropriate strategy in dealing with the rising challenges.
Higher learning institutions and postsecondary establishments have been impacted by the changing nature of information availability, the pressure for funding their programs, the rising cost of administering student services, the changing nature of regulations, and societal transformation.
Europe and the United States have taken different paths in addressing the same problem—how to change higher education institutions to serve everyone’s needs. Europe has already mapped its course to the year 2020 to improve literacy among all age groups, from preschool to middle age.1 In the United States, while some foundations are determined to push a practical agenda in making sure that anyone with a certificate has the necessary competencies to do the job once hired by a company,2 the U.S. administration continues its agenda, talking about competitiveness,3 but the funds allocated by Congress and the realities of states’ politics, the need for capital improvement, the changing cultural paradigm from traditional to digital age, and the reinvented approaches to education seem to be a more pressing challenge that one should address at the institutional level on each college and university campus. Despite different approaches and different political dynamics on both sides of the Atlantic, the need for changing individual institutions to serve students as customers and consumers of knowledge remains the same.
In the 21st century, higher educational institutions must simplify their bureaucracy and improve their capabilities to serve more learners, contain costs, and build a bridge to economic well-being.4 Lumina Foundation has been vigorously advocating for expanding the opportunities through changes in higher education to address the current U.S. educational ranking in the 10th position among the industrial nations and increasing the number of college graduates by 50% by 2025 to make the United States more competitive.5 Cisco6 has presented 12 social, environmental, and technological factors requiring higher education to change in order to remain relevant in addressing business practices. Higher educational institutions also must respond to lack of preparedness by students entering their systems from high schools.7 Kazeroony8 suggested that learners, educators, and the institutions will face fundamental changes in responding to environmental factors such as social and technological factors. As a part of the Recovery Act of 2009, the U.S. administration has envisioned that all Americans will complete at least one year of higher education by 2020.9 The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education argued that to provide the necessary skills to make graduates more competitive in a global economy via higher education institutions, political and financial resources must be realigned.10
Guy Neave11 suggested that higher education institutions are in a transition where accreditation, academic freedom, and globalization are three dimensions that are subject to change. Rosemary Deem12 articulated reorientation of higher learning institutions is a necessity to address global concerns from policymaking and economic perspectives. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has advocated a fundamental shift in higher education institutions to address the basic skills for learners.13
The emergence of nontraditional universities and changing learners’ demographics has led to new opportunities and has served as a wakening call to traditional universities to change.14 Finally, there is an emergence of adult learners as a distinct student demographic (who are independent, have major life commitments, and have full-time commitments outside learning), as explained by the Council on Adult and Experiential Learning.15
Knowledge Acquisition
Michael Gibbons,16 in a paper prepared for UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) and World Bank, explained that the nature and demographic of the 21st century learners have changed from the learning perspective and the form of knowledge required. In the current environment, learners have access to electronic metadata but are lacking the ability to make sense of a particular subject or the ability to transform information into usable knowledge depending on their learning style.17 Various information channels also present legal, business, and ethical considerations in obtaining, relaying, and disseminating information.18
There is a concentrated international effort in addressing and standardizing quality of teaching and learning.19 Encouraging faculty to learn new instructional methodologies, technologies, and instructional design can assist institutions to address the changes in knowledge acquisition.20 Knowledge comprises a set of skills and competencies that can be locally and globally used to respond to new workplace needs and environmental changes. Kazeroony21 recommended reevaluating and changing the curriculum, the role of faculty, and the delivery method to address changes in knowledge acquisition.
The Learners
The 21st century learners tend to be multitaskers who convey ideas with sounds and images rather than writing.22 Learners’ attributes, such as (1) know-how, (2) self-concept, (3) experience, (4) readiness, (5) learning orientation, and (6) motivation, affect the way learning can take place.23 Adult learners have different needs in addition to the attributes discussed. The American Association of State Colleges and Universities has identified lack of remedial services, institutional support, and adequate financial aid as challenges faced by adult learners who are constantly juggling family, work, and learning in higher education institutions.24 The learners today will not wait for a professor to provide an answer but rather go to Google for the answer.25 Through destruction of national barriers, global learners who see the big pictures and relationships are frustrated with explaining themselves constantly.26
Higher learning institutions cannot afford to ignore the changing nature of learners. There are a number of factors in play. Currently, there are 32 states that have online and distance programs at elementary and secondary schools, and 70% of all school districts have some form of distance and online program to complement their regular programs.27 This reality points to the fact that the students entering higher learning institutions have different expectations from the learning delivery models. Additionally, the number of older learners entering higher learning institutions is beginning to grow faster than the younger learners. From 2006 to 2007, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) projects saw a rise of 10% in enrollments of people under 25 and a rise of 19% in enrollments of people 25 and over.28 Also, NCES findings indicate that the number of female learners entering graduate programs has outpaced their male counterparts two to one from 1984 to 2007.29 However, as NCES findings demonstrate, only 57% of all students who enrolled in bachelor’s programs in Title IV institutions between 2001 and 2004 as full-time students graduated,30 which yields another insight into the nature of learners’ commitment to completion and possible issues that they face.
Chapters Roadmap
The following chapters explain the current circumstances and suggest strategies and their associated tactical tools for successful, growth-oriented, and self-funding operations in postsecondary institutions.
Chapter 2, “The Changing Environment of Higher Education” (Olga Kovbasyuk and Glyn Rimmington), through examination of the past and existing HEI approach to education, offers a new paradigm for formulating new strategies in addressing the cultural and environmental challenges, which is the first step in any coherent organizational strategy before any other fundamental changes can take place.
Chapter 3, “Organizational Culture in Higher Education” (Rana Zeine, Michael Hamlet, Patrick Blessinger, and Cheryl Boglarsky), using Human Synergistics International (HSI) Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI) Survey tools, provides a window to the HEI cultural setting and offers concrete recommendations that can be used by human resource professionals and HEI executives in modifying their future strategies to arrive at a desired outcome.
Chapter 4, “Change Process in Existing Institutions” (David P. Bugay), explains the cultural and political rationale for HEI entrenchment in the current system and offers strategic tools for changing HEI to serve its students or customers.
Chapter 5, “The Changing Learners” (Michael J. Sukowski), discusses how HEI learners have changed and what HEI should do strategically to serve the new learners.
Chapter 6, “Supporting Learners’ Activities” (Robert Thorn), discusses how HEI can develop learners’ supportive strategies through understanding their attributes and responding to them.
Chapter 7, “Online, Hybrid, and Face-to-Face Higher Education” (Dakin Burdick), explores the pedagogical approaches, teaching modalities, and infrastructure requirements for formulating a cohesive strategy in accommodating the needs of learners in all three modalities as learners’ demographics change and as expanded access to higher education becomes more urgent in a tight fiscal environment.
Chapter 8, “Publishers’ Technologies and Their Impact on Higher Education” (Virginia Jones), draws on the emergence of a new generation of learners in the Internet age to address the changing needs of HEI strategies to accommodate new learning and publishing technologies and to address how to make learning more robust.
Chapter 9, “Administrative and Academic Structures: For-Profit and Not-for-Profit” (Andrew Carpenter and Craig N. Bach), reviews and draws on the differences between highly skilled business professionals with limited academic expertise in for-profit and highly successful academics without managerial experiences in nonprofit in the United States in running their respective institutions to offer a convergent perspective in developing effective strategies to run both forms of HEI.
Chapter 10, “Funding: Student Loans, Scholarships, and Endowments” (Santa Ono, Kristi Nelson, Gisela Escoe, and Caroline Miller), addresses innovative strategic approaches that HEI can use to help students fund their education, help HEI improve their retention rate, and lead to better graduation rates and higher financial stability for HEI.
Chapter 11, “Accreditation” (Cyndy J. Woods-Wilson), examines various accreditation requirements and reviews national and international standards in creating optimal strategic approaches in serving students’ needs with appropriate competencies for working in the global workplaces.
Chapter 12, “Marketing Your Institution and Its Programs” (Helena Kantanen), explores three additional Ps to the classical 4Ps of marketing in attracting students to HEIs. She draws on a unique European experience and provides case studies to demonstrate how the proposed marketing strategy works for growing an HEI.
Chapter 13, “The 21st Century Higher Education Strategy Road Map” (Hamid H. Kazeroony), outlines the learning modalities, technology application, accreditation options, organizational structure, faculty and curriculum development choices, and product development to address the needs of particular stakeholders.