by Dominic D. J. Endicott and David J. Staley
Mojahid Mottakin/Pexels
In our prior blog, Turning College Towns into Knowledge Towns, we defined one potential strategy for colleges or universities and their host locations in response to enrollment declines and other pressures on a traditional higher ed business model. The proposed approach is to evolve the college or university into a “Knowledge Enterprise,” to evolve the town or city into a “Talent Magnet,” and thus to jointly evolve their place into a Knowledge Town.
By Knowledge Enterprise, we mean higher ed institutions that are stretched beyond their narrow educational focus to become critical agents of economic, social, and environmental progress in their host location. New kinds of activities could include:
- Becoming a founding investor and leader in forming a venture capital fund focused on spinning out and scaling companies based on higher ed research.
- Collaborating in a masterplan well beyond the narrow needs of the institution, focusing on the broader place-making needs for the entire town or city to attract top talent.
- Incubating new forms of higher ed, including the formation of new micro-colleges and other novel institutions, designed to meet the current skill formation needs of the community.
- Working with other regional stakeholders to help foster new industrial sectors in high-growth markets in which the region is competitively advantaged.
- Leveraging its recruitment capabilities to support the region’s talent requirements.
- Integrating all these activities into a coherent strategy, and one that is in synch with the capabilities and interests of the surrounding local government and key stakeholders.
- Working with town and gown communities to ensure that the strategies pursued are aligned with their interests and priorities, and that these communities will be involved in their success.
- Revisiting all of their assets with a view to reconsidering whether they are contributing to the long-term mission of the institution or could be otherwise repurposed.
Our contention is that higher ed institutions under pressure are generally not thinking this way. The preponderant strategy is to try to be a bit more efficient within the current model. The strategy we propose will be uncomfortable for many higher ed professionals because it requires them to move beyond their traditional areas of expertise, to become much more collaborative with other local institutions, perhaps to reallocate resources away from areas that have been successful in the past.
We asked ChatGPT to tell us what were key areas of growth in higher ed jobs and got the following order: (1) STEM faculty and research, (2) Health professionals, (3) Business and management faculty, (4) Online education and instructional design, (5) Diversity, equity and inclusion, (6) Data analytics and institutional research, (7) Student success and retention, (8) Sustainability and environmental studies, (9) International, and (10) Cybersecurity. The overall flavor of current hiring priorities would seem to reflect growth in the current legacy model (online revenue, STEM, health, business, sustainability, international), as well as improved risk management and analysis (DEI, cybersecurity, student attrition, data analytics).
If ChatGPT’s response to our query is a reflection of the market, it would reinforce the idea that few institutions are likely pursuing Knowledge Enterprise strategies in earnest today. What kinds of new roles would we envision? We can start to define what the jobs to be done might be and some of the future hiring needs that they would imply.
- Sustainable economic development. With declines in traditional student populations, and their associated income, there is a need to incubate new economic engines around the college. This could include professionals to manage technology transfer, start-up accelerators, seed venture capital funds, scaling venture capital funds, and new industrial sector development, or new micro-college formation.
- Place-making and housing abundance. With higher ed partnering with local government and others to create vibrant and attractive places with abundant and high-quality housing options, there will be new roles in urban, suburban, and rural planning, zoning and street design, construction efficiency, adoption of new materials and processes, pollution reduction, town curation and management.
- Talent attraction, retention, and growth. Higher ed can leverage its skill in attracting faculty and students into a broader regional talent role. This implies new roles in talent identification and recruitment, skill gap assessment, new skill formation, talent lifecycle management, talent flow (in and out of higher ed into start-ups and other vehicles).
- Knowledge-economy formation. One key element of the future model will be a Cambrian explosion of new academic models. Getting ahead of this trend implies roles in identification of new educational niches or markets, skill gap assessment and response, lean strategies for testing and scaling new academic models.
- Long-term institution formation. New kinds of local institutions will be required, for example local purpose development corporations with a mission to maximize housing abundance. This implies roles in strategy formulation, economic and real asset development, institution formation and governance, sourcing and management of finance, project management, and grant acquisition.
The good news for many higher ed institutions is that they likely already have some of these skills in-house or in their broader network (including the massive hidden asset of the alumni diaspora). If not, they have the capability to attract key professionals with the right proposition. They are often sitting on unfathomably valuable collections of assets: land and buildings, faculty talent, student talent, alumni, patents, and brands.
Colleges and universities at risk may one day realize that they failed to repurpose their assets in novel ways because they were unwilling or unable to take stock of the new context, look at everything they were doing with a fresh pair of eyes, and test new models.
