It has been a tough winter for higher education. Besides the FAFSA crisis, it seems like every week another institution announces the need for significant budget cuts, with plans to eliminate programs and the jobs that go with them.
Part of this reality check has been driven by concern about the projected “enrollment cliff.” After peaking in 2025 or 2026, the number of new high-school graduates will eventually fall by as much as 15 percent, leaving many colleges short of students. In early February, the U.S. Census Bureau delivered more bad news with updated projections. Before the pandemic, the bureau had forecast that a rebound in graduating seniors would take place beginning in 2034. But its new projections paint a more pessimistic picture, suggesting that a rebound will not happen during the 21st century.
You might be thinking, “This is going to be a horrible time to work in higher education.” My “projection” — as a vice president for enrollment who has spent 25 years in this field — is yes, and no. Whether you will struggle through the enrollment cliff or flourish in it really depends upon the type of worker you are.
If you have spent any part of your career in academe, you have worked with some excellent people who have dedicated their lives to making students successful, who are incredibly creative, and/or who possess an entrepreneurial spirit that they’ve used to improve their fields. But no doubt you also have colleagues who are, well, mediocre in their work ethic. They may like students, but what they really value are holiday breaks, light summer workloads, good benefits, and comfortable, secure environments.
If you fall into that first pool of professionals, the enrollment cliff may be your big break. The folks in the second group, however, are going to really struggle over the next decade.
I am seeing the first signs of this already at institutions around me. Hiring processes seem to be moving faster. Managers are using their networks to find people that they trust. Even as colleges trim their budgets, mobility is high for talented employees.
But the coin has two sides. I’m also seeing more employees, even some with longevity, get downsized if their institution decides they are not contributing in some measurable way. College leaders are more closely analyzing each of their programs to gauge how many students are being served, and to eliminate areas of duplication. Facing the reality that they cannot be all things to all people, many colleges are moving some programs to their “we can’t afford to do this anymore” list.
How can you make this environment of scarcity work for you instead of against you?
Demonstrating your value does not necessarily mean that you need to work harder or do more. Instead, it is a shift in mind-set, in which you highlight how your work answers the biggest needs of your institution. I am aiming the following advice mostly at staff members and administrators, but some of it may be of use to faculty members in their departments, too.
Think financially. Like it or not, the pressure point here is financial, which means that employers will be looking for employees with a demonstrated ability to improve the bottom line. Regardless of your degree or your training, you need to put on your “finance hat” and think like a CFO. How does your department or division either make revenue for the institution or reduce expenses?
Let’s say, for example, that you work in career services. Could you design an innovative employer event that would bring in more sponsorships? Propose ways to serve alumni or regional businesses for a small fee? Offer testing or retreat space to outside organizations? Create programming for fund-raising events that might bring in more donors? Try to identify areas of your work that could drive revenue and make some proposals that will get attention.
This also works on the expense side. This fall, my new administrative assistant asked if he could work on some improvements in our budget process. Within the first week of getting the greenlight, he identified $6,000 of savings a year that we could realize by updating our phone contracts and $300 a month that we could save by changing where and when we buy refreshments for admissions guests. He is now developing an improved inventory system that alerts us to low quantities and prevents us from incorrect ordering and having to throw away outdated brochures. This is financial thinking at its best.
Think enrollment and retention. The most obvious way to affect the financial equation at your institution is to influence either the recruitment or retention of students. Those are the two pillars on which most campuses depend. What can you (or your department) do to make your institution “sticky” for students, so that they will want to choose you and then to stay?
One easy way to identify opportunities is to learn more about the enrollment office and ask its staff members what they need. Among the things they usually need:
- A beautiful tour route of campus, which can be an important contribution for grounds or horticulture staff members.
- Speakers and volunteers for student-recruitment events, from all areas of student life and academic affairs.
- People willing to interact with parents and reach out to potential students.
- Great stories about the institution to promote.
- Any idea that can give them an edge or connect them with people who can influence college-choice decisions.
It might be even easier for you to contribute to student retention. In most cases, employees can improve retention by just doing their job, but doing it better. Every institution has some beloved staff members. Because while they’re doing their job — whether it’s in an office, in a dining hall, or in a dorm — they also reach out to students. Ask if they’re OK. Know them by name. Help the lost ones find their way. Of course those aren’t job requirements but they do make campus life better. Such staff members tend to have amazing job security because everyone knows who they are and values what they do.
But more than just job security, this approach to work leads to career opportunities. One of our admissions counselors received a promotion after three months because of her ideas, follow-up, and can-do attitude. A member of our financial-aid staff was promoted after a year because he volunteered for every admissions event and turned the financial-aid presentation at our open houses into a game show that families loved. The executive director of our advising center was the clear choice for that leadership role because of her reputation for problem solving and positive collaboration.
These are the people you want on your team. You know they are contributing to retention because students tell you.
Think like an entrepreneur. Institutions know that they need to find ways to do things differently. To become invaluable, you want to help them do so. Adopt an entrepreneur’s mind-set in the work you do. Question each process you see and ask, “Is there a better way we could be doing this?” When people are stuck between two competing options, ask if there might be a third way that no one has thought of yet. Don’t let people get away with saying, “We can’t do that.” Turn it around by asking, “How could we do it, if we chose to?”
Entrepreneurs don’t see obstacles, they see pathways around them. When it became obvious that delays with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid were pushing the industry into a crisis, we brought a small SWAT team of five staff members together to find solutions. We met for the first half hour of every day for three weeks. By the end of that time, we had a work-around process that could provide solid estimates to 90 percent of our population and already had the first communication out to families.
What is the characteristic most highly prized by senior leadership? Ability to execute. The most valuable thing to me as a manager is to be able to assign a project to someone and know that it will get done. Entrepreneurs take ownership of the projects they are involved in instead of backing away from responsibility.
Even the best employees have to go to their supervisor at times, and ask questions for clarification or direction. But they also come with solutions, and they understand that they “own” the project — it is their responsibility to get it across the finish line. If you can develop such entrepreneurial skills, you will be a manager’s dream, and will soon find yourself a manager as well.
Quantify what you do. Log every student served and keep good data on the impact of the work that you do. When I worked with career services, I always coached students to use numbers in their résumés. Quantifying your contributions in the positions you’ve held is one of the most powerful things you can do in presenting yourself on the job market. You do not “work at a call center,” you “manage 10 busy call lines, providing customer service to more than 200 clients on the average day.”
That concept holds true for seasoned professionals looking to move up in higher education as well. How many transactions do you process in a day? How many projects do you complete in an academic year? How many students do you serve in a week?
In a time of financial anxiety, it is important to quantify even the qualitative work that you do for your institution — and that you could do. Perhaps you could design a process that allows your office to serve five times more students, or propose a way to use technology that cuts processing time in half. If you are in human resources, you could measure how your initiatives reduce absenteeism or lead to more first-candidate hires. If you are in academic advising, you could show how your work has led to fewer students missing the four-year graduation target.
A great way to quantify your value: Show the percentage of the student population that is directly affected by your work. Then brainstorm how to increase that proportion in realistic ways that won’t lead to your own burnout. Does your programming currently reach 10 percent of your college’s students? Could you partner with another program to reach 25 percent? Could you change the venue, time, or the content and get bigger audiences?
Embrace the cliff. Yes, the enrollment cliff is coming. We can see it in the numbers, and we are feeling its effects already. That does not mean, however, that good people should be panicking and exiting higher education. On the contrary, it means that higher education will need good people more than ever, but it needs the right people with financial and entrepreneurial mind-sets. Higher education will need people who truly value higher education, and who are willing to help their institutions change to make sure that students have the best experience possible. Higher education needs people like you — your best you, ready for a different future.
