Higher Education on the Brink

Higher education as we have known it has now and forever dramatically changed and so must the previous models that we once held dear. Leaders must take a fresh look at how their institutions design, implement, and measure practices in strategic enrollment management and expand the model, as never before.Higher Education on the Brink: Reimagining Strategic Enrollment Management in Colleges and Universities combines strategies for enrollment enhancement with significant support for development of alternative revenue streams for overall sustainability and growth. It introduces a new model for launching highly engaged strategic planning processes for colleges and universities.With current, real-world examples, the book details how colleges can be guided by integrated strategic planning processes to recalibrate efforts that yield key results. The major difference in this work is an exacting focus on organizational culture and each facet that defines it. As colleges and universities place new focus on strategically re-imagining higher education and their role in it, Higher Education on the Brink will serve as a guide for determining what difficult questions need to be asked and how to answer those questions in a manner that will position the college for the future with support from the college community, generating increased opportunities for student and operational success.

Dr. Alicia B. Harvey-Smith is a seasoned leader with a rare talent; she knows how to navigate through the potholes of institutional pastures, and she also has a gift for capturing her journey in writing. In this book she anchors her vision for change in her astute observation that ‘In essence, everything that we do, and how we do it, must be reconsidered.’ This is not just a book about re-engineering enrollment management. This is a book about how to achieve institution-wide student and institutional success with changes in policy, programs, practice, and personnel. For those colleges and those leaders who have suffered from this pandemic, this book is an antidote that provides a prescription for recovery., Today’s college leaders must be prepared to address an increasing number of challenges to the viability of their institutions. One of the most consequential is enrollment planning in the face of a projected drop in college-age students and fluctuations in enrollment caused by economic cycles or unexpected crises such as a pandemic. In this publication, Dr. Alicia B. Harvey-Smith provides needed practical advice for leaders to address this existential threat and to strengthen their institutions., Dr. Harvey-Smith provides a clarion call noting that the long-known rules of the game have changed and community-college-as-usual will lead to sub-optimum outcomes or worse. She suggests a practical and collaborative approach to business model redesign, a reduction in student-customer suffering, tactical uses of online instructional and related technologies, targeted and enriched student outcomes, and an improved and inclusive student demographic mix through a restructured strategic enrollment methodology., The pandemic has, in some ways, forced all post-secondary institutions to quickly and creatively re-imagine how they will attract, retain, and graduate current and future students. This book prepares those institutions who strive to be innovative and entrepreneurial a road map on how to re-imagine strategic enrollment management and remain competitive and sustainable. In this ever-changing landscape of teaching and life-long learning, Dr. Alicia Harvey-Smith’s book, Higher Education on the Brink: Re-imagining Strategic Enrollment Management in Colleges and Universities, will help guide internal discussions and establish priorities that will maximize student engagement and financial sustainability., The steep increase in the number of adults who might question the very value of a college degree, along with the steady uptick in the American entrepreneurial spirit, is forcing higher education to invest more in career assessment, life and career coaching, and career pathways. This is a necessary morphing of enrollment management. Simultaneously, societal cries for diversity, equity, and inclusion, with an ironic assist from COVID-19, further exposed disparities faced by low-income students, in part resulting from the digital divide and other access barriers. Higher Education on the Brink: Re-imagining Strategic Enrollment Management in Colleges and Universities, tackles the hard questions and provides best-in-class solutions for critics and innovators alike. Will colleges survive the pandemic? Yes! Will the students return? Yes! But only if we get it right.

Alicia B. Harvey-Smith, Ph.D., is a passionate, innovative, learning-centered educator with more than 25 years of experience in executive leadership, instruction, training, development, and consulting. The President/CEO of Pittsburgh Technical College, Dr. Harvey-Smith is a visionary with a successful track record of blending knowledge, experience, and entrepreneurial thinking to achieve transformative outcomes in colleges and universities.