Hire Education

Higher education in the United States operates on a quasi-capitalist model. Similar to businesses, the country’s 4,100 colleges and universities, both private and public, are expected to compete and strategize for targeted students, talented faculty and staff, and financial awards. If they are unsuccessful, they will be less competitive, lose financial stability, may lose accreditation and possibly be forced to shut down.
There was once a small community college that struggled to move beyond mediocrity for decades. Like many of their counterparts, they competed with other institutions to attract students and remain solvent. After hiring a visionary president, and following a strategic plan, the college was eventually able to achieve national distinction and attract students from over 40 foreign countries.
North Carolina’s Elon College not only made the transition to Elon University, but it was able to emerge as one of America’s most desirable institutions and it has been ranked as the nation’s top “School to Watch” by U.S. News & World Report. George Keller reveals the factors that helped Elon rise from ordinariness and poverty to distinction and financial stability in his book, Transforming a College: The Story of a Little-Known College’s Strategic Climb to National Distinction.
Of all the factors, the most important was the leadership of Fred Young. When he was hired to take the reins of Elon College during the spring of 1973, it was tuition dependent and had to rely on student enrollment. President Young recalls that “in those days fear was our great motivator.”
He determined that Elon College was financially vulnerable with 90 percent of its revenues coming from student tuition. After careful analysis, Young made admissions and student life programs his top priorities. Admissions would bring more qualified students to the campus and improving student life would keep them coming back. Over the years, the leadership at Elon College took the following steps to advance the institution:
• Young felt that a major handicap to attracting more students was the appearance of the campus. Additional property was acquired and an architectural firm was hired to create a master plan to transform the college’s campus into a lovely place where students would want to stay and parents would want to visit.
• A marketing task force was formed in the early 1980s, and the leaders decided to reposition the college to attract a different clientele. Instead of admitting relatively weak students, Elon targeted students with above average SAT scores from middle-class families. Once Elon decided on its new student market, its priority of initiatives became clearer.
• President Young was convinced that if the college was to become one of the best institutions of its kind it had to develop a distinctive academic and extracurricular program and have exceptional quality in everything Elon did. “Quality everywhere” was the mantra of Young and he constantly pursued excellence in every aspect of Elon’s operations. “Study squads” were sent to examine the best practices of top-notch institutions and the results were used as benchmarks in Elon’s pursuit of excellence.
• Strategic planning throughout President Young’s administration became an indispensable guide for setting priorities and making decisions. The 1994 strategic plan called the Elon Vision was a highly useful blueprint, and it was largely fulfilled by 1998. When President Leo Lambert took over in 1998, he initiated three different plans to increase academic excellence, provide new facilities to boost academic life, and gather the resources to make the other two goals possible.
Through strong, committed leadership, strategic planning, and dedicated teamwork, Elon has been able to realize its vision. This has resulted in low turnover rates of faculty and staff, high employment after graduation with about 43 percent of the students receiving two or three job offers, and strong financial stability for the university.
As I was reading about Elon College’s transition from a struggling college to a competitive institution and eventually a university that has garnered praise and distinction, I couldn’t help but think about what the future holds for NMC. Northern Marianas College is on the verge of choosing a new leader who will determine the direction and stability of not only the college, but the entire CNMI. NMC is responsible for preparing future business and government leaders, but it could also play a critical role to determine the financial stability of the islands.
The purpose of this article was to glean key points that Northern Marianas College can reflect on as it braces itself for new leadership. The scrappy community college has gone through a lot and achieved much in the past three decades, and there is tremendous untapped potential waiting to be realized as it continues its transformation process.
The key that eventually unlocked Elon College’s success was committed, visionary leadership. It will also be the critical linchpin that allows Northern Marianas College to complete its transformation into the premier college of choice among local traditional and non-traditional students, as well as Asian students seeking to develop their English language skills and improve their acceptance to universities in the United States. You could say that the key to success in higher education at NMC lies in who they hire.
In the next article, I’ll discuss the results of a survey that was given to faculty, staff, students and community members concerning the opportunities and challenges they see awaiting NMC.