10 Articles Every Leader in Higher Ed Should Read

Over the past 7-8 years, Academic Impressions has designed and delivered leadership programs for over a thousand leaders across the higher education landscape. We have had the opportunity to work with academic and administrative leaders as well as presidents and provosts. The learning experiences have been outstanding because almost every participant was curious and interested […]

Preventing Presidential Derailment

Do you know the 10 early warning signs? Patrick Sanaghan, Kathleen Gaval, Steve Riccio, and Steve Titus review the early signs of a derailing president in this paper informed by decades of experience from university presidents and professionals who work closely with them. Presidential derailments (defined by Stephen Trachtenberg as an exit in less than […]

6 Powerful Ideas for Building a First-Class Team on Campus

Why You Need a Stellar Team To build a high performing team is a daunting and noble task, and such teams are as rare as blue diamonds. The silo mentality that often exists on our campuses often limits our collective actions, and creates redundancy and replication. Given shrinking resources and the rapid pace of change, […]

Presidential Dialogues: Making Difficult Decisions

How do you make important decisions when you don’t have perfect information? When you know there will be resistance? Recently, we convened six leaders from very different institutions to discuss how they have approached making difficult decisions. In this quick, practical paper (a 15-minute read) hear advice from these six presidents on making the difficult […]

How Simpson’s Index Can Offer Universities a Different Look at Diversity

This is one of two companion articles that form a dual installment in our “Changing How We Understand the Market” series. The companion article to this one is “Why Measuring Diversity Matters” by Ricardo Azziz. In this series, we analyze current enrollment and demographics data, uncovering stories that challenge how institutions often understand their marketplace—or […]

Overcoming the Heavy Weight of Tradition: A Practical Approach

Series: Costs Down, Quality Up Historically, initiatives to improve quality have also meant added cost—smaller class sizes, more faculty who conduct research, etc.—but this is no longer a sustainable model for all institutions. What are the innovations that can actually drive the cost to educate a student lower while driving critical outcomes like student success and completion higher? This […]

Is it Time to Launch that New Academic Program? The Art and Science of Answering that Question

Related Articles (these are Member Exclusives): Feasibility Checklist: The Science of Bringing New Academic Programs to LifeFinancial Modeling for New Academic Programs The challenges facing higher education in recent times are well documented. Never has it been so critical for colleges and universities to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset.  Especially for resource-constrained institutions (which is most […]

Yield Rates are Declining – Why?

Series: Changing How We Understand the Market In this new series by Jon Boeckenstedt, we analyze current enrollment and demographics data, uncovering stories that challenge how institutions often understand their marketplace—or that shed new light on emerging trends. We want to encourage a deeper look at the implications of today’s marketplace data. We hope that […]

5 Strategies for Leading Change

Addressing the challenge of institutional change is necessary and difficult. Each institution has a unique path forward; the ones most successful at moving forward are those that match their unique organizational strengths to a compelling vision of the future. Implementing change within our diffuse decision-making structures requires an approach anchored in social science, communication studies, […]