Ten Ways Universities Are Being Changed by COVID-19
University presidents, as you prepare for the new norm, take a clear-eyed view and make bold, necessary changes. Make them with the intent of moving forward, not to return to the pre-COVID world. These changes will help you and your students navigate the crisis, and it will energize your leadership team and board to prepare your university for its next era.
Here are ten insights to consider:
Now, more than ever, your university’s value proposition needs to be crisp and different. It is not be enough to say, “We have lots of programs, you will feel welcome here, and you will have close access to faculty”. The pandemic will flatten the world of university choice. People will price shop more. Some may look for higher quality online experiences than those they experienced this spring. Others will stay closer to home. Others will question the value of residential experiences like learning communities, athletics, greek life, etc. and you may need to unbundle those. As unemployment climbs, the last recession taught us to demonstrate career advancement and competitiveness as a key part of the value proposition.
More students will stay closer to home and cost will influence choice. This will be driven by safety, but also by the lack of clarity in some college’s value propositions. Students will be more likely to get basic courses at a community college for a fraction of the cost, resulting in higher demand for community colleges. Long-term relationships with local feeder schools become more important in comparison to depending on out-of-state students.
The number of people with some college/no degree will dramatically increase. More people will be unemployed. More students will stop out and, even with the best intentions, not come back. The institutions that have the flexibility and online capacity to support learners with families and intermittent jobs will grow.
Flexibility is critical now and will be a differentiator going forward. As you are forced to implement more flexible academic calendars, flexible modalities, and flexible locations (ie. Work From Home, Learn From Home), make the changes permanent. These changes will open access to a broader segment of students and improve student service over the long term.
Administrative and service functions will change permanently. Necessity is requiring more automation, shifting on-premise administrative tasks to the cloud, demanding online support, eliminating paper workflow and standing in line. People realize they can work from home, travel less, and get more done quicker with Zoom meetings and conferences. Make the changes now in a way that is not a short-term fix. Never turn back.
Plan for fewer physical classrooms and offices and more digital infrastructure. University capital budgets and fundraising will be less dominated by shiny buildings in the future and more by digital and human infrastructure that serves students well, flexibly, and meets them where they work and play.
Reliance on auxiliary services (dining, parking, residence halls, bookstore revenue, athletics) as a dependable portion of the budget is a thing of the past. As such, stop depending on their revenue and consider the amount of time, energy, and resources that you invest in them. Be clear-eyed about both their costs and their benefits because they are no longer a dependable component of the budget.
The most vulnerable families (low income, low wage/low skill jobs, immigrant) will be the first hit and take the longest to recover. Lower-income, students of color and first-generation students are the most likely to disappear from campus rosters — invisibly. They are also the most likely to never return once they are gone. Immediately and proactively focus on removing barriers, staying in communication, helping them with continuity, bringing them back. These families and students need proactive, intrusive support and communication. If they are important to your mission, you cannot be passive and hope they make it.
Students counting on campus work-study jobs and summer jobs for fall have lost that income and will not have the money to pay on time. Consider delaying payment. Maybe giving them summer online free. Also consider utilizing next summer as a full semester like fall/spring to make up for a lightly attended fall semester. This may help utilize facilities and keep engagement and enrollment from dropping long-term.
Now is the time to re-evaluate all faculty contracts and to renegotiate union restrictions. This is not a luxury. There needs to be much more flexibility in order to survive and to meet the new norm.
Dale Whittaker is a Senior Program Officer in Postsecondary Success at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. A former executive at several of the nation’s largest and fastest-growing public research universities, he now works with other rapidly growing institutions with national and global footprints to help them innovate at scale to provide more degrees for more people with greater equity.
