Every campus I visit is full of talented, committed people doing genuinely meaningful work. The problem is almost never the people. The problem is the absence of a coherent design to hold the work together.
Without good design, something predictable happens: we get the tyranny of more. Programs multiply. Initiatives stack. Every new challenge gets met with the same response: add something, do more, launch a new initiative. Every six months, there is a new focus nobody asked for because of one difficult parent who got to the right person. Meanwhile, the people doing the work are already underwater. This is initiative fatigue, and it is exhausting higher education from the inside out.
The work in higher education, especially in student affairs, is important and is done by caring people making a real impact. We see it every day. Yet, we are too busy, too siloed, or too full of self-doubt to articulate our own value. It is not that divisions lack impact. We lack the collective clarity to see it, name it, communicate it, and build on it.
When I suggest a curricular approach, and folks are hesitant, it’s almost always a similar refrain: “We would love to, but we do not have the money. We are too busy. We are focused on student retention.” Those concerns are real. And they are also exactly backwards. A curricular approach does not add to the load. It reduces it. It does not cost more. It saves money by eliminating low-value programming and redirecting resources toward high-impact engagement. One institution saved $80,000 in programming costs in one year without trying. This saves not only dollars but an even more precious resource, people’s time. Another campus saw a 72% reduction in conduct issues, numbers that never returned to prior levels. It does not distract from retention. It improves it…systemically. One campus saw a 3% increase in first-year-to-sophomore retention in one year with only a residential curriculum, which is why they have a divisional curricular approach.
This week, I am on a campus in California helping a team do exactly this work. The aspiration is there. The talent is there. The impact is already happening. I’m guiding them through a process to build, together, a curricular approach unique to their campus that makes the good work visible, sustainable, and coherent. If your campus is ready for that, I would be glad to talk.
