Review of "Survivor College"

I read a short book called Survivor College on best practices. The basic argument is that the educational "marketplace" is becoming more and more competitive (technology, demographics, for-profits, etc.), so if we're going to avoid the fate of Antioch College, we need to be more disciplined and creative. Here's a short summary of some of the author's suggestions, especially for those schools that have (in all programs?) less than 3000 students, that accept more than 70% of applicants, and have have aggregate financial resources per student of less than $50,000. Of the roughly 3500 accredited colleges and universities in the U.S., that's about 2000 schools "on the bubble," including JBU.

1) Avoid the big potential pitfalls: too much emphasis on "research for the sake of research," too much focus on athletics, too much discounting, too much kow-towing to various constituencies (typically the trustees or the faculty), not enough "brand" development.

2) Move to integrated marketing strategies with potentially all of admissions, marketing, etc. reporting to one person. Use Stamats for marketing and Noel-Levitz for retention as much as possible instead of going it alone. Gear your marketing to your "feeder" institutions instead of creating department-specific marketing on the one hand or national marketing on the other. These approaches may satisfy your internal constituents, but they're less effective in bringing in more students.

3) "Customer Service" matters more than we imagine. Adopt a customer service "pledge" that everyone has on his or her desk.

4) Set aside 2-3% of the entire operating budget for curricular and other types of innovation and reward people who do innovate.

5) Use merit pay in a big way.

6) Decentralize and streamline decision making as much as possible.

7) Curriculum should emphasize life-long learning skills (Gen Ed), a body of knowledge (the major), and significant application elements throughout, but especially at the culmination stage. Curriculum should also focus on outcomes, not inputs. Even accreditation bodies are getting on board with these concepts, so fight against the "large course load in the major" approaches that most faculty would prefer.

8) Develop a detailed "dashboard" or series of reports that you look at every year (he has a few lists of what he thinks are vital, most of them related to enrollment numbers, endowment totals, employee productivity, and other financial aspects of the institution.

9) Spend more time on developing leaders.

10) Provide more "open book" management in which all data that managers see is shared with everyone at the institution.

11) "Grow or die," but spell out in advance where the growth resources will go so that people know what they're working toward.

There was more, but I didn't want to replicate too much what JBU is already doing.