With graduation on the horizon, you’re likely feeling a mix of overwhelm and anticipation of impending relief. But over the last few years, the summer campus lull has felt less restful. Initiative overload seems to be an unending state of mind for many campus leaders. In a sea of priorities, how should you think about what should get done over the next few months versus what should be resigned to next year’s (already mile long) to-do list? It all builds from your strategic plan.
We review hundreds of strategic plans as a team every year. How active institutions are in carrying out their strategic plans vary from campus to campus. Some plans become stale by the time they’re published and others breathe new life into campus, becoming a defining rod that the whole community rallies around and consistently works towards. But the themes in most plans, regardless of how they’re implemented, are largely consistent:
The last one is often seen as a contradiction to the others. Institutional leaders can get lost navigating the political tension that arises from that contradiction. Few people want to think about higher education as a business, but ultimately without a balanced budget, none of the other goals are feasible to achieve long term. The growing number of college closures is an unfortunate reality and wakeup call for its importance. That’s not to say the other goals are unimportant. To the contrary, the other goals are integral to maintaining a balanced budget and the inextricable link between them can make it even more unclear where to start. We were founded at a small private college in rural Michigan on the principle that institutions can’t afford to deliver on only one of the above goals. We believe you can achieve all of the goals in your strategic plan through program sharing.
We’ve written about program sharing and how it compares to other program development approaches at length, so we won’t beleaguer the explanation here. Essentially program sharing enables like-minded institutions to quickly develop and launch programs at a significantly lower cost by sharing a centralized curriculum, instructors, and services like enrollment marketing, student support, and administrative resources. At Rize, we’ve helped 90+ colleges achieve their strategic goals through program sharing. The core underlying belief to this is that colleges should prioritize program expansion to achieve the goals listed above.
New programs > New enrollments > New revenue > Better student experiences > Better student outcomes…and the cycle continues.
Whether or not you leverage program sharing, new programs enable you to expand the educational opportunities your institution offers to engage new audiences and serve existing students. Research shows that 93% of students say that the majors an institution offered was one of the most important factors in choosing a college. Keeping up to date with student major demand trends, like AI, Climate Tech, and Cybersecurity, is essential to meeting the academic needs of students interested in joining your campus community. Providing courses in varied modalities and lengths also helps expand access to a wider range of learners. By adding new programs, you’re not only expanding educational access to new fields (Goal #2), you’re also increasing enrollment (Goal #1).
Spikes in student demand for majors also closely pair with the fields leading to higher salaries and better student outcomes (Goal #3). Graduating with an in-demand degree doesn’t necessarily mean positive ROI for students, which is why our programs emphasize real-world skill building and hands-on projects developed in partnership with industry experts, alongside career navigation courses. Better student experiences in the classroom lead to better post-collegiate outcomes long term.
This brings us back to Goal #4: balancing the budget. New programs bring new enrollments which bring new revenue which can help create better student experiences which lead to better student outcomes. Is the lift of new programs enough to cover the increased cost they bring? According to Lightcast, 55% of new programs fail and can cost anywhere from $350k-$1M to start. That’s worse than a coin toss. So why would you prioritize new programs when the odds are not in your favor?
Not all new programs are created equal when it comes to cost and risk. Program sharing drastically reduces both by distributing the cost and risk amongst a consortium of institutions. The cost of starting a program with Rize is one tenth of the typical cost of new programs. On average, colleges who leverage program sharing powered by Rize see a 5x return on investment through increased enrollment.The combination of cost reduction and generating new revenue with Rize programs helps institutions achieve the final goal (4) of balancing the budget.
The cycle of adding new programs to drive enrollment to generate new revenue to invest in better student experiences to yield better student outcomes is one you can’t afford to wait to start. The timer is already running for your competitors as another enrollment cycle comes to an end. If you want to achieve the vision of your strategic plan and achieve all of your campus’ goals, now is the time to prioritize new program development conversations.
