Just four years ago, Sweet Briar College adopted a new strategic plan with the desired outcome to build an “enhanced national reputation for vitality, currency and relevance.” The college has become much better known, but unfortunately that increased awareness comes as the “poster child” for the challenging market facing many colleges and universities across the country.
Commentators have drawn comparisons to similarly situated institutions while many campus officials have gone to great lengths to differentiate themselves from Sweet Briar’s situation. Now would be a good time to compare your strategic plan to Sweet Briar’s last effort. Here are 6 observations for higher education executives, Board members and faculty to test their plan to see how they stack up.
It’s not strategic if you can cut and paste
Financially sustainable colleges offer a strong and distinctive value proposition to prospective students. Sweet Briar’s 2011 vision statement says it “operates sustainably, competes effectively, engages a diverse population and produces liberally educated, digitally sophisticated graduates.” No one could identify any particular institution in that statement. The longer plan document cites women, rural location and small size, but offers very little sense of where it needs to go other than to become “the most dynamic, focused and effective possible version of itself.”
Competitive advantage is not self-defined
Sweet Briar’s plan wisely took on the issue of competitive advantage. However, it mistakenly assumes that its competitive advantage already exists. It only needs to be made clearer to others. There is no indication that they sought to understand why students didn’t apply and why most accepted applicants chose not to enroll. Faculty and alumni were engaged in this question, but they aren’t the audience that can shed light on why applications, yield and enrollment are declining.
Strategic direction must be aligned to mission
Financial success is essential for any entity and shared governance is an important element of the higher education culture, but neither constitutes institutional mission. The distinctive mission of a college is found in the realm of education – finances and governance are methods to achieve the mission. Sweet Briar’s goals lead with finances and move onto building maintenance and renovations. The “Academic Action Plan” opens with a lengthy discussion of faculty authority over the curriculum and the role of various campus committees. These are important issues but they are not strategic direction.
Don’t be afraid to create a sense of urgency
Other than one sentence that mentions the “immediate and imperative need” to grow enrollment, Sweet Briar’s plan doesn’t create a sense of urgency or offer any context on the challenging times facing tuition-dependent institutions. I understand that colleges can’t be too explicit about their level of risk if they want to continue to enroll students and hire promising new faculty members, but some background on the difficult environment would help set the right tone.
The answer isn’t in slicker enrollment management techniques
The “Marketing and Recruiting Action Plan” focuses largely on the execution side of marketing. It does call for market research but as a means to target their recruiting resources. Sweet Briar needed the market research upfront to understand exactly who they would be recruiting to enroll in what kind of institution – and if there were enough such students within their reach to make it work. Events did provide the answer to that question but if it had been understood years earlier, there might have been time to chart a new course. They made a common mistake of thinking that marketing is just a fancy word for better “sales practices” when marketing is a much more fundamental and strategic effort.
What you talk about reveals what you care about
From an outsider’s perspective, the plan talks more about what Sweet Briar needs than what it will offer students. Perhaps that comes out of the belief that what they are doing now is wonderful, and it may very well have been. But colleges with declining enrollment must recognize that you only get what you need if you can figure out how to offer what students want. The most amazing attribute of this final Sweet Briar strategic plan is that it does not discuss the role and value of a women’s college. When you are in a niche market, you had better eat, sleep and drink the dynamics of that market. My daughter attends a women’s high school and it is very clear that her school is “all in” on the proposition that this rare attribute is the keystone to the value proposition they offer students.
In my experience, traditional strategic planning has been failing organizations for a long time. Sweet Briar’s plan is just another example; but, unfortunately, occurred at a time when strategic direction was essential to their future survival. Survival risk has not been on the table in the higher education sector for many decades, but it is now. Colleges that want to step up and take control of their future will have to find better ways to chart their course than the tired planning approaches of the past.
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