5 Tremendous Opportunities for Higher Education

Written By Tommy Kiedis

Recently, I wrote the article, “5 Tough Challenges Facing Higher Education.” Shortly thereafter, a reader queried, “Do you plan to write a follow-up that discusses the top five opportunities in higher education?” This article is a response to that question.

THE ARTICLE IN BRIEF:

While higher education is buffeted on many fronts, its leaders have reason to be encouraged. This article examines five opportunities colleges and universities in America can leverage to strengthen their footing, build trust, enroll more students and continue to pace the nation in preparing its students for life and leadership. It is written for educational leaders, faculty and staff, boards, donors, and the communities and industries they serve. A point of application follows each of  the Five Tremendous Opportunities, which are:

  1. The Gen Z Student

  2. Course Sharing

  3. Business and Affiliate Partnerships

  4. The Local Brain Trust

  5. Mission Reboot

Since the founding of Harvard in 1636, colleges and universities in America have played a significant role developmentally, culturally, and economically. Those days are not over. While the horizon of higher education looks different from the past, for those who can believe “impossible things” our best days are in front of us.

Introduction: Believing impossible things!

“Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
— Lewis Carroll, Through The Looking Glass

Relying on fantasy to bolster reality may not be the best introduction to this essay, but I think it serves us well. In Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), Lewis Carroll’s follow-up to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a melancholy seven-year-old Alice encounters the White Queen. Their dialog meanders toward thoughts of the impossible when the Queen tells Alice:

Now I’ll give you something to believe. I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day.’

‘I can’t believe that!’ said Alice.

‘Can’t you?’ the Queen said in a pitying tone. ‘Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.’

Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said: ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’

‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Imagining the opportunities for higher education is not an exercise in impossibility thinking, but it may require us to climb out of some philosophical and pedagogical ruts, ignore the naysayers, put the latest crisis on hold, and rethink the problems in front of us. These problems often appear as giants on the horizon: debt, doomsday demographics, public doubts as to the value of higher education, challenging shifts toward the digital modality, and the ever-changing student.

In David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell writes,

“When we see the giant, why do we automatically assume the battle is his for the winning? And what does it take to be that person who doesn’t accept the conventional order of things as a given—like David?”
— Malcolm Gladwell

Higher education, the academic giant of the last 250 years in America, is looking a little battle worn, slumped at the shoulders, even ragged at times; a punier version of its former self. Increasingly propped up by government subsidies and under relentless pressure on multiple fronts, it marches on by force of habit, but the march is tentative, less self-assured, less certain of its next step.

This article is not David’s sling and stone, but I hope it serves as an impetus to see opportunities in the challenges “on the battlefield,” envision better days and march on. Such envisioning must first consider the educational environment as it is, not as one wants it to be.

It is a world that has gone digital.

Across the globe, people watch a collective one billion hours per day on YouTube alone. Facebook (2.11 billion daily users), Instagram (2 billion monthly active users), TikTok (1 billion monthly active users) are sites familiar to most, while newer platforms such as Discord and Twitch enables users to customize voice, video, and text chats to make digital community a way of life. As Twitch touts: “Twitch is where millions of people come together live every day to chat, interact, and make their own entertainment together.”

While many in academia debate the merits of face-to-face vs. online vs. hybrid education, and argue their respective philosophical and pedagogical positions, Gen Z has moved on. They are happy to hang out online, make friends, build community, study, learn, and invest their days. It’s where many live. Let’s look more closely at this generation, for they represent the first tremendous opportunity.

5 Tremendous Opportunities for Higher Education

Opportunity #1 — The Gen Z’s

Students today are, at times, maligned for being soft, selfish, and scared. This video while directed toward millennials, reflects the mindset of many when it comes to the “younger generation.”

Is the picture accurate? Well . . . “Yes!” according to a survey of nearly 1,000 business leaders by Intelligent.com, a company devoted to helping young professionals succeed in college and career.  “Six in ten companies fired a recent college graduate they hired this year, and one in six hiring managers say they are hesitant to hire from this cohort.” Why? Unpreparedness, etiquette, poor work ethic, lack of motivation, and poor communication are some of the challenges employers cite about this cohort.

Such challenges point to a new college reality, namely, preparing students and a younger workforce with the “soft skills.” That said, Gen Z is not all “unprepared and unprofessional.”

Gen Zers are resilient. The smartphone generation is amazingly resilient, having endured COVID, the increase of high school shootings, political animosity (from both sides of the aisle), not to mention national angst over climate change, green energy, and increasing gender dysphoria. Certainly, COVID did something to stunt the growth of soft skills, but it also ratcheted up their digital game.

Gen Zers are digital natives. As a whole, Gen Z are digital natives who are adept at utilizing the vast array of web and app-based tools and are as comfortable on keyboard as their grandparents are at driving a stick shift.

Gen Zers are problem solvers. They are entrepreneurial, hard-working, savvy and thoughtful. Yes, many sit around and play video games (a whopping 85%) but for that matter, many of the older generation sit around watching the TV.

Gen Zers are students of character. Writing for Psychology Today, Ryan M. Niemiec Psy.D., highlights Gen Z strengths (not talent, skill, or interest, but character).

Gen Z's top strengths span four virtues championed by philosophers and theologians throughout time—the virtues of wisdom, courage, humanity, and justice. And, when compared to adults in the general population in the U.S., Gen Z scores slightly higher in their top three character strengths (honesty, kindness, and fairness).

Niemiec’s comments are based on the VIA Character Strengths Survey by the VIA institute for Character, and mirror to a degree, those of Santor Nishizaki, Founder and CEO of Mulholland Consulting Group, an enterprise devoted to helping organizations increase generational awareness and create a happier workplace. In a podcast interview with Clifton Strengths  (reported 4/6/23) Nishizaki highlighted Gen Z’s sense of care and stewardship for the environment; he also noted that they would “rather . . . work for a company with purpose than a pay raise.”

Profiling A Few Of Gen Z’s Shining Stars:

  • Hannah Shane, a Sophomore Communications student, edited my recent book, Forging Your Leadership Heart. Decades my junior, she did a marvelous job and improved the work.

  • At 17, Riley Schlick started her own carburetor repair business. Her entrepreneurial spirit and business savvy has drawn national attention.

  • A group of students from McPherson College Automotive Restoration program secured second place at the 72nd Concours d'Elegance at Pebble Beach for their exceptional work in restoring a 1953 Mercedes-Benz 300s Cabriolet.

  • In 2015, Hannah Herbst won the title of America's Top Young Scientist at the Discovery Education and 3M Young Scientist Challenge. Forbes named her to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2018. Today, she is translating her scientific smarts into entrepreneurial excellence through her company, Auto TQ, based in Boca Raton, Florida.

As we look out on the campuses of the United States we find filmmakers, researchers, entrepreneurs, activists, social workers, digital artists, and more. It is time to flip the narrative on this generation from “head-in-phones” and “ill-prepared” to “digital wizards,” “caring,” and “problem solvers.” Yes, they have room to grow, but who doesn’t at that age . . . or at every age for that matter?

What can I do about what I have just read?

  1. Befriend a digital native! “If you want to learn more about someone's culture, ... you would want to spend more time with folks from that group and not stereotype from them one experience ... That's the best way to add to our hard drive.” Santor Nishizaki

  2. Think nanolearning. Assigning bite-sized chunks is one key to improved learning. “Hey, check out this article. Check out this video,” may be a better approach to whetting the educational appetite and creating a deeper desire to learn and grow.

  3. Venture into a digital community.  In “How Gen Z Builds Communities,” Michael Chmielewski’s notes: “Over 70% of Gen Z individuals rally around shared interests, from the fervor of K-pop to the urgency of climate activism.” They do it utilizing platforms such as Brane,  Twitch, Discord. Take a look or jump in to see some of the ways Gen Z tribes are formed.

  4. Teach life skills. As the Intelligent.com survey revealed, Gen Z is having challenges with basic life skills. Enter Dr. Nido Qubein and High Point University. Qubein’s Seminar on Life Skills is one example of how to address this challenge.

Opportunity #2 - Course Sharing

What do Airbnb, Uber, Pinterest, and higher education increasingly have in common? Sharing! Higher education is catching on to this powerful collaborative mindset. Adrian College, living in the shadows of giants Michigan State and University of Michigan, has used course sharing to add majors, minors and certificate programs in 17 fields in just the last two years, including computer science, web design, cybersecurity and public health. It is the “Amazon Prime approach to higher education” writes Jon Marcus for the New York Times. He adds,

[Course sharing] lets majors in the humanities and other disciplines ‘stream’ classes, often taught by star faculty from top universities, in fields such as coding – without leaving their home campuses.

The Benefits of Course Sharing:

Course sharing is one way for colleges and universities to fill programmatic gaps. These efforts expand course catalogs, launch new programs, deliver certifications, and reach new populations.

Course sharing enables students to attend a smaller school, play a sport, build deeper relationships with faculty, enjoy a particular campus culture while leveraging programmatic offerings of a larger college or university. Does it work? Adrian College added 100 new students through course sharing in just two years. Eureka College gained nine new freshmen and Rochester University attracted 78 applicants to seven programs utilizing this approach.

The Brokers of Course Sharing:

Course sharing is brokered through online providers such as Acadeum, by consortiums arranged by as few as two schools or larger (see the “Five College Consortium”), by online credentialing powerhouses such as Parchment or larger organizations such as the Council of Christian Colleges & Universities which, working with Acadeum, helps member schools “seamlessly share courses, develop new programs, and expand general education courses to support student progress and accreditation requirements.” The Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Pennsylvania (AICUP) Distance Education Consortium currently serves about 40 member schools with education and training resources that multiply institutional opportunities at minimal cost.

What will it take?

Course Sharing Takes Smart Growth:

Educational consultants EAB define smart growth as “the targeted expansion of existing academic programs based on thorough analysis of capacity, costs, and student demand.” In their article, “To grow academic programs profitably, ask these questions first” they suggest the following essential questions:

  1. Which fields do we think are changing the fastest?

  2. Which programs require the most significant changes during departmental reviews?

  3. From where will we recruit new students?

  4. What resource-related barriers exist when creating a new program?

  5. Is the regional labor market large enough to support the instructional needs for the potential new program?

  6. Is there enough national demand in this field to warrant us adding a program that could produce more qualified job candidates for it?

Course Sharing Takes Humility:

In How The Mighty Fall, Jim Collins highlights the five stages of a company’s decline. Stage One is “hubris born of success,” a success that can insulate one from remaining a learner. Collins writes:

Leaders lose the inquisitiveness and learning orientation that mark those truly great individuals who, no matter how successful they become, maintain a learning curve as steep as when they first began their careers.

Academic institutions are loaded with smart people, but sometimes our “smarts in one thing” can lead us to think we are “smarts in everything.” We’re not. In matters of course sharing, we need to adopt the attitude of a learner. Lancaster Bible College has led in some aspects of course sharing with partner institutions. These days we are learning to be followers, adapting and partnering with others to better serve our students.

Course sharing takes knowing your lane:

I own a beautiful 1956 Harley Davidson. I don’t attempt to repair it. Instead, I take my bike to Al, a local Harley guru. Why? Because I know my lane. I’m a hot rodder and fabricator. In this season I am going to waste time if I try to be all things mechanical. In a similar way, course sharing takes knowing our lane, playing to our institutional strengths while recognizing and partnering to offset our institutional weaknesses to best serve our mission and our students.

What can I do about what I have just read?

  1. Examine your institutional strengths and gaps. Course sharing enables the college or university to offer a buffet of programs to offset gaps, build institutional strengths, and better serve students. It also provides schools with the opportunity to be “providers” in an area of institutional strength. The key to course sharing is identifying institutional strengths and gaps. Big schools can be all things to all students, most institutions cannot. What gaps, when filled, enable your institution to better fulfill its mission? What educational strength can you leverage to help another institution?

  2. Explore your sharing options. Possibilities include utilizing national platforms such as Acadeum or partnering with state associations like AICUP’s Distance Education Consortium or exploring offerings by accrediting agencies such as the partnership between the Association of Biblical Higher Education and Campus EDU. Institutions can expand their academic portfolio by partnering with educational brokers, establishing consortiums, or even white labeling certificate courses.

  3. Talk with member schools and test the waters.

Opportunity #3 — Business Partnerships

In higher education as in life, collaboration is the name of the game. Solomon said it well, “two are better than one because they have a good return for their work” (Ecclesiastes 4:9). Collaboration is much more than sharing programs and courses. It includes partnering to improve athletics, solve housing challenges, create internships, and form alliances that link students (degree and non-degree seeking) with certificate programs that form a value-added aspect to one’s degree or career. Consider the following collaborative partnerships:

  • Athletic Partnerships: NBA Orlando Magic's power forward Jonathan Isaac announced a new partnership between Regent University and UNITUS, an apparel brand founded by Isaac. UNITUS will sponsor the Regent men's & women's basketball teams and provide basketball sneakers to all Regent basketball athletes.

  • Housing Partnerships: University-Based Retirement Communities (UBRC’s) bring together the institutions of higher education and senior living. Carson Parr has more than ten years in higher education planning and design. He notes that UBRC’s are an institutional differentiator, and “can provide instant branding and name recognition, as well as staffing resources in the form of student internships or part-time employment.” Lifelong learning and intergenerational interactions serve both seniors and students, as do athletic, recreational and performing arts amenities. They also “increase social connections and reduce loneliness” among two generations that need it the most.

  • Affinity Partnerships: Elizabethtown College’s School of Graduate and Professional Studies partners with corporate and educational partners to offer access to specialized graduate and adult degree completion programs at a discounted rate. Their list of Affinity Partners is impressive.

  • Business Partnerships: The Professional Logging Contractors of the Northeast have partnered with Northern Maine Community College to create a five-month logging credential that provides commercial driver’s license training “so the students can also haul the logs they’ve learned to cut.” You can read about here.

  • Church/Non Profit Partnerships: Lancaster Bible College partnered with Spanish River Church in Boca Raton, Florida to launch a creative educational partnership utilizing Spanish River’s global reach in church planting (32 countries) to help equip prospective church planters with the knowledge and skills necessary to carry on that work.

What can I do about what I have just read?

The collaborative payoff comes when businesses as well as colleges and universities seek out each other to consider mutually beneficial returns.

  • For businesses: What expertise can we offer to one of our local colleges? If we were to partner in one way, what would that be?

  • For colleges and universities: Do an environmental scan. What local need can you meet? Two examples close to my home: Lancaster PA is the retirement capital of the country, according to U.S. News & World Report, and has sat in the top 5 for the last five years. Additionally, Lancaster ranks as the Refugee Capital of the Country. How should data points such as these impact strategic partnerships to educate and serve?

Opportunity #4 — Leveraging The Local Brain Trust

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt entered the White House, his “brain trust” (agriculture secretary Henry Wallace, presidential aide Raymond Moley, budget director Lewis Douglas, labor secretary Frances Perkins and Civil Works Administration director Harry Hopkins) provided ideas to wrestle the country and its psyche from the edge of the abyss brought on by the Stock Market Crash of 1929 coupled with Herbert Hoover’s inability to stem the crisis.

Earlier in our country’s history, President Abraham Lincoln leaned on his “team of rivals,” and later, John F. Kennedy consulted “the best and the brightest” (with a nod to David Halberstam) to lead the country to a brighter future. On the heels of JFK’s assassination, his successor and our 36th President, Lyndon B. Johnson followed suit. Johnson called Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg Immediately following the assassination and gave Goldberg and others their marching orders:

“You’re going to have to do some heavy thinking for me,’ he said. ‘I want you to be thinking about what I ought to do. . . . I want you to think . . . just think in capital letters, and think, think, think. And then—then talk to me . . . I’ve just got to have your help.”
— President Lyndon B. Johnson to Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg

What is a brain trust?

A brain trust is a collection of people gathered to “think, think, think” with a view to improving a present (and future) situation. And while that group may be comprised of the “the best and the brightest” as in the examples above, it may just as well include “rank and file” as Patrick Lencioni notes below. Equally as important as the people gathered are the ground rules for how the group operates.

How the brain trust works

In “Inside The Pixar Braintrust,” Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar and former President of Walt Disney Animation Studios, said:

A hallmark of a healthy creative culture is that its people feel free to share ideas, opinions, and criticisms. . . . Candor is the key to collaborating effectively. Lack of candor leads to dysfunctional environments.

One of Pixar’s mechanisms for promoting candor was the Braintrust. Catmull said its premise was simple: “Put smart, passionate people in a room together, charge them with identifying and solving problems, and encourage them to be candid.” In discussing this idea, Catmull has stressed:

  1. Peers talking to peers

  2. No power structure

  3. Vested interest in mutual success

  4. Giving/listening to good notes.

While Catmull brought together individuals within Pixar, higher education’s next best idea may very likely come from outside its walls. So, don your pith helmet, venture outside the land of academia, and explore. As Lencioni notes in Silos, Politics and Turf Wars,

Executives must remove their functional hats, the ones that say finance or marketing or sales, and replace them with generic ones that say executive. They must dare to make suggestions and ask questions about areas other than their own, even when they know relatively little about those areas.

And while that may seem to smack of a lack of trust among team members, it is actually a realization that the most insightful questions and ideas often come from people with a more objective—even naïve—viewpoint than is possible for experts who are living and breathing an issue every day.


What can I do about what I have just read?

  1. Think! Think! Think! What issue/project needs concentrated thought? Perhaps you need to consider how your business/industry can partner with your local college or university. College leadership may be wrestling with the merits of a capital campaign, new program, how to better engage Gen Z or another generational cohort. What is the issue at hand for you?

  2. Who is my Brain Trust? Who do I need to add?

  3. What is my curiosity quotient? Have I grown comfortable with the status quo? What other institution have I visited? Jim Collins exhorts leaders to “vacuum the brain.” Whose brain have I picked lately?

Opportunity #5 — Mission Reboot

Is your mission delivering an educational degree or an education?

Lancaster Bible College is 91 years old. Whether I examine the history of our mission or return to our nation’s first college, Harvard, higher education institutions were stated to deliver an education, not a degree. That seems simple enough, until the means by which we deliver the education – the degree – becomes the end and not the means. I recall a story told by Doug Sherman, who trained pilots for the United States Air Force. Doug relayed a near-death experience that helps me remember where my educational focus should lie.

A student pilot was responsible to follow a lead aircraft that was attempting to outmaneuver him. Both aircraft were painted white and were traveling at near supersonic speeds. At one point, the lead aircraft made a sharp dive. The student followed in hot pursuit. He was about 1000 feet behind the lead jet, which appeared as a white dot on the horizon. Suddenly, the lead pilot executed a high climb. Sherman waited for his training pilot to follow suit, but he never did.

“Lieutenant, do you have the lead in sight?” Sherman asked.

“Yes sir, I do,” came his confident reply as they screamed along at about 1500 miles per hour. 

“Well,” said Sherman in a slightly higher voice, “Where is he?” 

The pilot shot back, “He’s in my twelve o’ clock, sir – right in front of me.” 

Sherman sat up and looked out over his student’s shoulder. Sure enough, there in front of them was a tiny white dot--and they were gaining on it rapidly. The only problem was that it was not the lead pilot, but a white oil tanker on the ground!

The training pilot had fallen victim to target fixation. Thinking he was tracking the right thing, he became oblivious to the most important thing—the lead pilot. The trainee needed a “reboot.”

Institutions of higher education have to assess if and when they have fallen victim to target fixation – focusing on the the little white dot we call a degree, while missing the bigger picture – education. Perhaps it is time to reboot and refresh the mission. What are we really all about anyway? Gap year programs, micro credentialing, certificate programs, boot camps as well as other non-degree granting efforts may bring a negative wag of the finger from some; that cannot deter leaders from pursuing the ultimate aim of higher education which is . . . education!

Recently, I received a note from a former board member and dear friend. He was challenging me to continue to think outside the box when it comes to fulfilling our mission. Then he wrote this:

I find it helpful to use blank slate thinking. If we didn't have an LBC right now and had to invent one to meet the present market demand, what would we build?" I think that is more helpful than "Where should we go from here?" or even worse, "How can we make our dying model survive? and "How can we  convince the world not to change?"

My friend was doing for me what Doug Sherman did for his trainee. He was helping me avoid target fixation, or to put it positively, to continually refresh the vision and how we effectively achieve it in these days of rapid change.

What can I do about what I have just read?

  1. Read the room. Have you, your team, or your board become so fixed on one thing that you have missed the bigger thing — your mission?

  2. Engage in blank slate thinking. If your college or university did not exist right now and you had to invent one to meet the present market demand, what would you build? How does the answer to that question sharpen your focus on your mission and help you think differently about why or what or how you offer your education to the world?

Higher Education is not “Down for the 10 Count”

Higher education is, at times, the media punching bag. Discussions of debt, campus protests, rising costs, and “outrageous” athletic salaries dot the headlines. One gets the sense that higher education is on life support with the dearly beloved huddled in the corner debating whether to pull the plug.

Not so.

If the future job market is any indicator of the relevance of higher education, academics take heart! The Institute for Student Access and Success (TICAS) claims that by 2031, “the percentage of all jobs requiring some form of postsecondary education is expected to increase to 72%; 42% of those jobs will require a BA, at least.” 2024. Postsecondary Attainment Quickfacts (ticas.org) ACIUP 9/12/24

Practically all with whom I speak recognize the challenges facing higher education. To the banks, we are not a “growth industry.” To the public, we are increasingly suspect. To parents, we are a good deal but are we the best deal for their students? Our patrons believe in us but watch with cautious optimism. And on the inside, employees share a collective hope that we will not become the next domino to tumble in this line of institutional instability. Yes, challenges abound, but with the White Queen we have good reason to be confident.

This is higher education’s moment: Curse the digital darkness or light a candle?

 

 About the author:

Tommy Kiedis, Ph.D., D.Min. serves as the 6th President of Lancaster Bible College, which provides accredited university-level education (undergraduate, masters, doctoral level) for multiple careers with a focus on the Bible and a biblical worldview, Christ, and Christian character. We promise our 2500 students that we will equip them to flourish in college and life, inside and outside the classroom, from the conviction that Christ is real, and the Bible is true. You can read more at tommykiedis.com

Notes:

Sources: Articles & White Papers

Sources: Books

  • Caro, Robert. The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson. New York: Knopf. 2012

  • Carrol, Lewis. Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. 1871.

  • Cohen, Adam. Nothing To Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle And The Hundred Days That Created Modern America. New York: ‎ Penguin Press HC. 2009.

  • Collins, Jim. How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In. New York: HarperCollins. 2009.

  • Gladwell, Malcolm. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. New York: Little, Brown and Company. 2013.

  • Hendrickson, Robert M. et al. Academic Leadership and Governance of Higher Education: A Guide for Trustees, Leaders, and Aspiring Leaders of Two- and Four-Year Institutions. Sterling VA: Stylus Publishing. 2013.

  • Lencioni, Patrick. Silos, Politics and Turf Wars. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 2006.

  • Sherman, Doug. How To Balance Competing Time Demands. CO: NavPress. 1989

Tommy Kiedis www.tommykiedis.com
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