Discuss Response
Topic: You are the President of a small college (1,000 students) nestled in the piney woods of Michigan. Although the number of students in the college has not declined, it has also not increased. Your current level of students is not financially sustainable, meaning that the very survival of the college is at stake.
You must decide on key ideas to provide to the Board of Directors at their next quarterly meeting. What possible decisions will you provide, and what supporting data would you need to put those decisions before the Board?
Classmate:
The staff at Harvard Business Press (2008) makes a point to explain the critical notion of defining actual problems rather than focusing on the symptoms of those problems (p. 24). One idea to be presented to the board should divulge an answer to the following; Why are current students losing interest in the school? This question goes straight to the most significant issue at hand. If numbers are not increasing or decreasing, an internal factor must be identified to discover why this is happening.
The most considerable portion of action and interest in any corporation is through word-of-mouth advertising (Sapstead, 2014, p. 274). This school’s loss of interest is most likely due to current faculty and students lacking the drive to encourage others to attend.
Initially, studies must be conducted to decipher the reasoning behind the college’s lackluster development numbers. The studies will show accurate results if the proper questions are asked through market research (Sapstead, p. 241).
These could be conducted as surveys sent out to the student body, meetings held in student government or club setting societies, or even holding “town hall” like meetings where students are given a free floor to discuss opinions on improvements they would like to see the institution. DePree (2004) is a prominent advocate for leaders letting followers lead as well; “Leaders must arrange for involvement on everybody’s part” (p. 35).
The idea about taking notions and ideas from the college’s primary revenue source, the tuition coming from student enrollment, is not a bad idea to start from.
The happier the students are, the more likely they will continuously support their college’s progress by telling everyone about it.
Advertisement is key which might also be another factor for dwindling numbers. Money should continue to be put into this department, so people are sure never to forget this college exists (Sapstead, p. 272).
It will take time and resources, but more success is found in continually being known over lower-ranging profits for short amounts of time (p. 272). Of course, this is not just up to the advertising or marketing departments to control; all aspects of the college must be on board in tackling expansion (p. 232).
One way of doing this is by knowing the market of people the college is aiming for and using that as a means of marketing their school, so the experience “sells itself” (p. 236). Financial support will come in time as people become more willing to shift towards expansion through student-led improvement.