Trusteeship - May/June 2020 - 26

IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT THE ENROLLMENT CRISIS-IT'S TIME TO MODIFY OUR LEARNING PARADIGM

occur if there is courageous leadership within each major constituency. Strategic planners Joanne Soliday and Rick Mann have
concluded that leadership in thriving colleges must be both collaborative and courageous. They conclude that colleges that are the
best at confronting their challenges have "strong leadership teams,
engaged and strategic board members, and courageous presidents
who stay."14 Such leadership is critical in today's supercharged
shared governance environment where it is too common to assign
blame about who is responsible for an institution's particular threat
rather than focus on the crisis itself.
In today's world, effective, change-oriented, strategic planning
can occur only if all three major constituencies together take responsibility for understanding and systematically addressing the complex
and interrelated external forces of the current enrollment/financial
crisis and the inescapable challenges to higher education's traditional
teaching/learning paradigm The Summit Program at Agnes Scott
College is not only a good example of shared governance but also
one that has addressed its significant enrollment/financial challenges
by creating integrative learning goals, curricula, and programs
around leadership and international awareness for women that its
applicants and current students find compelling. Such strategic
thinking and planning essentially requires of all three groups of institutional leaders the kind of integrative and holistic problem-solving
for our higher education institutions that the 21st century's communities and workplaces expect of the students we teach.

Endnotes
1. The enrollment statistics and projections in this essay come from Nathan D. Grawe's
excellent book, Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education, Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2018 or his essay in the list of Recommended Common
Readings. The sources for the remainder of the bullets come from articles, surveys, and
reports published in the past three years by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside
Higher Education, AGB's Trusteeship, and online data bases.
2. Regarding the 52.2 percent discount rate see: "A Turbulent Future for Enrollment." The Looming Enrollment Crisis. Washington, D.C.: The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2019. p. 14.
Regarding 34% see: Carlson, Scott. "At the Precipice: Six in ten college missed their fall enrollments." Washington D.C.: The Chronicle of Higher Education. March 20, 2020. pp. 42-45.
3. "The 2019 Inside Higher Ed Survey of College and University Admissions Officers: A study
by Gallup and Inside Higher Ed." Washington, D.C.: Inside Higher Ed and Gallup, 2019.
4. National Center for Education Statistics, Immediate College Enrollment Rate, February
2019, online at https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cpa.asp
5. "How Far Do Colleges Go to Reach Exclusively Online Students?" Washington D.C.: The
Chronicle of Higher Education. October 18, 2019, p. A27

Recommended Common Readings for
Trustees, Administrators & Faculty
Association of American Colleges and Universities. LEAP
Vision for Learning: Outcomes, Practices, Impact, and
Employers' Views. Washington, D.C.: AAC&U, 2011.
Association of Governing Boards. "AGB Board of Director's
Statement on Innovation in Higher Education." Association
of Governing Boards, 2017.
Bahls, Steven C. Shared Governance in Times of Change: A
Practical Guide for Universities. Washington, D.C.: The AGB
Press, 2014.
Blumenstyk, Goldie and Lee Gardner. The Innovation
Imperative: The Buzz, the Barriers, and What Real Change
Looks Like. Washington, D.C.: The Chronicle of Higher
Education, 2019.
Grawe, Nathan. "Advancing the Liberal Arts in the Face of
Demographic Change." Liberal Education. Washington, D.C.:
Association of American Colleges and Universities, Vol. 104,
No. 4, Fall 2018.
Kelderman, Eric and Lee Gardner. The Looming Enrollment
Crisis: How Colleges are Responding to Shifting
Demographics and New Student Needs. Washington, D.C.:
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2019.
Marcy, Mary B. The Small College Imperative: From Survival
to Transformation. Washington, D.C.: An AGB White Paper,
May, 2017.
Shinn, Larry D. "Liberal Education vs. Professional
Education: The False Choice." Trusteeship. January/February
2014, pp. 45-48.
Shinn, Larry D. Strategic Thinking and Planning in Higher
Education: A Focus on the Future. Washington D,C.,: AGB
Press, 2017.
Zemsky, Robert, Susan Shaman, and Susan Campbell
Baldridge, "Will Your College Close?" The Chronicle of Higher
Education, March 6, 2020, pp. 27-31.

6. Selingo, Jeffrey. "The New Generations of Students: How colleges can recruit, teach, and
serve Gen Z." Washington DC: The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2018.
7. Schneider, Carol Geary. "General Education 1.0: An efficiency overhaul for the Cold War
Curriculum." Liberal Education, 96(4), p. 2.
8. Association of American Colleges and Universities. LEAP Vision for Learning: Outcomes, Practices, Impact, and Employers' Views. Washington, D.C.: AAC&U, 2011.
9. Shinn, Larry D, "Liberal Education vs. Professional Education: The False Choice." Washington DC: Trusteeship. January/February 2014. Pp. 45-48.
10. Lampel, Joseph B., Henry Mintzberg, James Brian Quinn, and Sumantra Ghoshal. The
Strategy Process: Concepts, Context, Cases, 5th Ed. New York: Pearson, 2014, pp.197-99.
11. Bahls, Steven C. Shared Governance in Times of Change: A Practical Guide for Universities and Colleges. Washington D.C.: The AGB Press, 2014, p. 27.

26 TRUSTEESHIP MAY. JUN. 2020

12. Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. The Leadership Imperative: The Report of the AGB Taskforce on the State of the Presidency in American Higher
Education. Washington D.C.: Association of Governing Boards of Universities and
Colleges. 2006.
13. Heclo, Hugh. On Thinking Institutionally. Boulder, Colorado: Paradiigm, 2008, p. 109.
14. Soliday, Joanne and Rick Mann. Surviving to Thriving: A Planning Framework for Leaders
of Private Colleges & Universities. Whitsett, North Carolina: Credo Press, 2013, pp. 18ff.

Larry D. Shinn, PhD, is an AGB senior consultant and a former president of
Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, and a trustee emeritus of the University of
Mount Union in Alliance, Ohio. Email: shinn@berea.edu.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cpa.asp

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