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Organizations that use teaching, mentoring, or consulting to deliver their mission have likely faced an existential challenge since the COVID-19  pandemic hit, restricting in-person connections. Perhaps they had previously considered moving online but had not yet made that commitment. When the pandemic struck, they had to quickly transition to an online-only delivery model. This has probably involved copious amounts of Zoom and Google Hangouts.  Organizations have no doubt discovered that filming a play and calling it a movie does not result in Avatar. 

The pandemic has challenged higher education institutions to move their courses and services online quickly. However, despite the vaccine rollout, schools still face unique challenges heading into the fall semester, including providing faculty support, ensuring student success, and minimizing risk.

Schools are preparing to launch the Fall 2020 semester under a cloud of uncertainty over further COVID-related school closures. 13% of US higher ed institutions have announced that they will either be fully online (6%) or have proposed various hybrid models (7%). Students suffered through the hastily cobbled-together Zoom lectures when schools first closed but they will not want to continue college if the Fall semester was a repeat of the remote learning model of the second half of the Spring 2020 semester. 

This last entry of the strategy series both highlights important points from the series and also lays out the decisions that must be made to carry out the strategy during and after the pandemic. I start by laying out the assumptions that I make about the reader, her organization, and the operating environment. Next, I highlight some important point about management of changing expectations.

Higher Education Strategy Series: This is the 15th and last entry of this series. This page describes the whole series and provides links to all of the articles.

Questions: Why and how will the institution obtain sufficient returns to undertake this effort? Will it be through scale advantages (either per program or investments that pay back across multiple programs) that are going to lead to lower costs? Will it be through premium prices due to a difficult-to-match learning experience (via technology, pedagogical approaches, community building, student service provision, etc.)? Will it be through superior marketing strategy and insights (and appropriate execution) that allow the institution to significantly affect the value profiles of prospects?

Higher Education Strategy Series: This is entry #14 of this series. This page describes the whole series and provides links to all of the articles.