Reinventing the Community College Business Model

Designing Colleges for Organizational Success

Christopher Shults - Series edited by Debbie L. Sydow; Richard L. Alfred and Kate Thirolf

Community colleges were established to provide an accessible, affordable education and have largely met this charge. Access without success, however, does not benefit the student and traditional planning, operational and financial management, and infinite enrollment growth strategies have not produced positive student outcomes. The Great Recession, disinvestment in higher education, and increasing costs and competition have further exacerbated the inability to deliver better results. Community colleges need an operational framework structured for student success. The community college needs a redesigned business model.

This publication breaks new ground by introducing the community college business model (CCBM), an intentionally designed operational management approach that provides a comprehensive approach to understanding students and meeting student needs by providing an exceptional educational experience. Supported by a fiscal management that targets finances to support student learning and success, the model guides the reader through the growth, development, and leveraging of the resources (human, physical, and intellectual) necessary for delivering a successful educational journey. The CCBM is designed to restructure community colleges for delivery of a student value proposition built on learning and success. The philosophical underpinning of the book is that student success is the ultimate measure of organizational effectiveness.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / American Assn of Community Colleges

Pages: 248 • Trim: 6½ x 9

978-1-4758-5072-7 • Hardback • April 2020 • $92.00 • (£71.00)

978-1-4758-5073-4 • Paperback • March 2020 • $47.00 • (£36.00)

Series: The Futures Series on Community Colleges

Subjects: Education / Higher, Education / Administration / Higher, Education / Finance

Reinventing the Community College Business Model

Designing Colleges for Organizational Success

Hardback

Paperback

Summary

Community colleges were established to provide an accessible, affordable education and have largely met this charge. Access without success, however, does not benefit the student and traditional planning, operational and financial management, and infinite enrollment growth strategies have not produced positive student outcomes. The Great Recession, disinvestment in higher education, and increasing costs and competition have further exacerbated the inability to deliver better results. Community colleges need an operational framework structured for student success. The community college needs a redesigned business model.

This publication breaks new ground by introducing the community college business model (CCBM), an intentionally designed operational management approach that provides a comprehensive approach to understanding students and meeting student needs by providing an exceptional educational experience. Supported by a fiscal management that targets finances to support student learning and success, the model guides the reader through the growth, development, and leveraging of the resources (human, physical, and intellectual) necessary for delivering a successful educational journey. The CCBM is designed to restructure community colleges for delivery of a student value proposition built on learning and success. The philosophical underpinning of the book is that student success is the ultimate measure of organizational effectiveness.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / American Assn of Community Colleges

Pages: 248 • Trim: 6½ x 9

978-1-4758-5072-7 • Hardback • April 2020 • $92.00 • (£71.00)

978-1-4758-5073-4 • Paperback • March 2020 • $47.00 • (£36.00)

Series: The Futures Series on Community Colleges

Subjects: Education / Higher, Education / Administration / Higher, Education / Finance

Author

Christopher Shults is the Dean of Institutional Effectiveness and Strategic Planning and the Middle States Accreditation Liaison at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. He has authored publications, presented, and consulted with colleges and association on issues of institutional effectiveness, planning, and leadership; co-created and co-led development programs for senior administrators and faculty; and is currently an advisory board member for the EdD Program in Community College Leadership at New Jersey City University.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Foreword

Russell D. Lowery-Hart

Preface

Section I: Building the Case for a Community College Business Model

Chapter 1: Introducing the Community College Business Model

Chapter 2: The Increasingly Dynamic Higher Education Industry

Chapter 3: Operational Management in a Community College Business Model

Section II: Creating the Conditions for a New Community College Business Model

Chapter 4: Organizational Culture, Organizational Change, and the Business Model

Chapter 5: Administration, Governance, and Leadership

Section III: Exploring the Community College Business Model

Chapter 6: The Student Value Proposition

Chapter 7: Managing Key Resources

Chapter 8: Delivering the Product

Chapter 9: The Profit Formula

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Reviews

Christopher Shults lays the foundation for some conversations we desperately need to have. If community colleges are going to survive in forms worthy of their students, they need to have serious conversations—internally and externally—about their business models. Shults provides an expansive overview of their current business models and offers a framework for building a new one. Here's hoping we hear his call.
— Matthew Reed, PhD, Senior Executive Officer at the New Jersey Council of County Colleges

This comprehensive look at the community college business model is a framework that offers insights and examples that will ring true to practitioners engaged in the redesign of the student experience into and through our colleges. Most importantly, the author makes a strong case that the business models we use to support this redesign can not be the “accidental” or “de facto” models of the past. The path forward will require leaders to disrupt our current business models with the same intentionality we are using to redesign and transform the learner experiences on our community college campuses.
— Karen Stout, President of Achieving the Dream

Today’s community colleges face a crucible moment: how do they continue to advance their access mission in an age of unaligned accountability expectations, shrinking investment in public higher education, nuanced and growing student diversity, and a growing realization that the current economic model is unsustainable within this context. Inevitably, if community colleges are to continue with their distinctly American mission, Shults brilliantly and provocatively challenges the way we conceive of this work and asserts a new business model for the future. Uncomfortable and engaged, it is impossible for a reader to leave this experience unchanged in how one thinks about how community colleges conceive of their future and advancement of the mission. “Reinventing the Community College Business Model” offers a clarion call—are we courageous enough to answer?
— Dr. DeRionne Pollard, President, Montgomery College, Rockville, MD