How Community Colleges Can Turn Higher Ed Threats into Opportunities

Meeting Market and Job Demands

The Impact of the HigherEd’s “Trust Deficit” on Community Colleges

A majority of higher ed news these days is focused on the increasingly negative perceptions of college. The perception of higher ed has never been lower – mainly because of the lack of transparency for the cost of college, practical return on investment, and student aversion to educational debt. 

 While these issues get the most publicity, they are not the only challenges facing higher education:

Changes in the environment have been approaching at an increasingly rapid pace year over year, making it hard to adapt. Colleges who have failed to change have faced budget cuts, mergers, and even closures. Community colleges are indeed facing significant threats, and are still down in enrollment by 12.5% compared to pre-pandemic levels, despite an increase in public and private 4-year enrollment nearing pre-pandemic levels. It seems the media, our government agencies and perhaps, our communities (college-going or not) are seeking a change to the current higher ed landscape, and colleges already feel like they are in a pressure cooker. 

Despite these threats, there have never been more opportunities for community colleges to redefine their role in the higher ed landscape and meet the needs of their communities. Apart from the accessibility and affordability of community colleges, significant changes in the higher ed environment give more hope than ever: 

However, in order for community colleges to combat these continued threats, they must adapt strategically to transform these challenges into opportunities for growth and innovation. Achieving this requires a deep understanding of the environmental factors that affect their reputation, as this understanding will determine the context for colleges’ decisions and actions.

Current External Factors Affecting Community Colleges

Community colleges already assess environmental factors through strategic planning every 5-7 years, however, the pace of change has outstripped the strategic planning process, causing colleges to miss threats and opportunities and forcing them into a reactive scramble.

Community colleges must continually identify and understand the factors influencing market needs to stay ahead of rapid changes. Colleges that will survive and thrive are those that are willing to proactively adapt to the market needs by turning these threats into opportunities. 

While consistently sifting through this information can be overwhelming, it is essential for future-proofing the college and ensuring long-term success beyond traditional strategic planning. 

Using the following questions as a guide, colleges can identify and assess external variables, so they can take action proactively, continuously and consistently: 

1️⃣ Policy: What larger policies in higher ed are affecting our college?

2️⃣  Nationwide Industry: What are the major labor gaps nationwide?

3️⃣ Local Industry: What are the industries with labor gaps in our community?

4️⃣ Perceptions: What does our community think of us?

5️⃣ Community: What part of the community are we serving? Who are we not serving?

Practically applying these questions to higher education in July 2024 may look like the following analysis of variables impacting community colleges: 

Policy

National Industry

Local Industry

Perceptions

Community

Apparent in these external factors are some common trends of increased focus on outcomes by prospective students and regulatory/policy bodies, desires for affordable pathways to these outcomes, and an increasingly competitive market to provide these solutions. In identifying and understanding these external factors, colleges can take strategic action with consideration to the current landscape. Without this context, colleges will not be able to prioritize action based on the market needs between policy, national industry, local industry, perceptions and community, creating misalignment with the current market needs and college and impacting the college’s enrollment and fiscal performance. 

An Enrollment Success Story: Bismarck State College

It’s easy to say community college’s should adapt, but what does this look like in action? 

Bismarck State College in North Dakota is one of the colleges that grew their enrollments consistently, despite a downturn in enrollment nationwide. Their efforts to adapt to market needs led incredible results within a short timeframe, including: 

Some might look at this success from Bismarck and simply point to the fact that they changed their mission to polytechnic, began offering 4-year degrees, or maybe the fact that they don’t have the word “community” in their college name as the reason for their enrollment success, but their sustainable enrollment growth cannot be attributed to any one action. Bismarck State College’s success came from proactively recognizing market needs and adapting strategically internally to meet those needs by going through the following steps. 

1️⃣ Identified and Understood External Factors: BSC had been evaluating external factors since 2018 and continually hedging against potential threats and looking for opportunities. Here’s a breakdown of the external factors BSC faced across policy, national industry, local industry, perceptions, and community.

Policy

National Industry & Local Industry

Perceptions

Community

Bismarck State College is a great example of a community college that has been continuously identifying and evaluating external factors. For example, the college leadership had been focused on understanding the industry market needs since 1999, which led to their specialization in energy, leading to building expansions, national and international partnerships.

2️⃣ Postured: With continued evaluation and developing context, the college was able to make strategic changes internally over time to continually align with those market needs, turning potential threats into opportunities, and formalizing these changes with a new college-wide strategic plan in 2022.

Bismarck State College is a great example of a community college that has been continuously identifying and evaluating external factors. For example, the college leadership had been focused on understanding the industry market needs since 1999, which led to their specialization in energy, leading to building expansions, national and international partnerships.

Prior to the new strategic plan, BSC adapted Programs and Offerings:

New Meaning for Student Success

Beginning with a new strategic plan, BSC outlined how they would further solidify their college as a polytechnic institution and focus on student experiences as a polytechnic institution.

This is a screenshot directly from their 2022-2027 Strategic Plan.

BSC recognized that potential threats including: changing workforce needs, declining enrollment trends, and a competitive higher education environment and determined that student success for the college would be:

  1. Linking Talent to Opportunity
  2. Communication
  3. Fiscal Stability

These areas later became the college’s differentiators in their messaging and marketing.

Focusing on adapting in the context of these potential threats allowed BSC to redefine student success to further the college’s mission and student experiences.

3️⃣ Positioned: Building off of their posturing work, Bismarck State College finalized their new definition of student success with communications (as outlined in their strategic plan), which fed top-of-the-funnel enrollment growth.

Focused on Communication

For Bismarck State College, focusing on any one area without the necessary context wouldn’t have resulted in the same success. Instead, BSC continually progressed their mission and student experiences from 2018-2022, approximately 4 years of working up to a deliverable like a strategic plan and a college-rebrand. BSC did the hard work to recognize market needs continuously and adapt to those needs progressively, which is what led to their massive enrollment results.

What Community Colleges need to do to Adapt to Market Needs

While Bismarck State College has forged their path to overcome potential threats and turn them into opportunities, community colleges nationwide need to do the same in order to survive and thrive.

Community colleges leaders can emulate Bismarck State College’s success to drive change in response to market needs by:

Continuously and proactively assess external factors and variables to identify threats and opportunities.

Awareness is the first step. By identifying these threats and opportunities continuously, this builds working context for the college decision-making beyond the strategic planning process. When college’s have this working situational analysis, it provides foundational data for the college to foster collaboration continuously.

Be willing to make necessary changes to adapt to today’s marketplace.

While our systems can be slow to change, community college professionals do not need to be, going through this practice should build the muscle for college teams to make continuous improvement and adaptability a part of the college culture.

Take action to ensure the college is relevant to the mission and student experience.

Redefining what student success looks like internally at the college in the context of today’s marketplace will be the key to community college’s enrollment success.

For the first time, community colleges already reflect the market needs of their communities – they are accessible, affordable, fast, and provide a quality education to get students jobs. Now, it is time for college’s to take action on opportunities to meet the needs of their communities and redefine success for higher education.

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