The New Nimble

CHAPTER 6Seek “Meaningful Knowledge”

Institutions of higher education are facing challenges on many fronts today, including:

• declining enrollment,
• increasing costs,
• clashes regarding what content is appropriate to discuss on a campus, and
• attacks on the very value of a college degree.

These and many other issues make managing a university a daily exercise in evaluating complex information, balancing competing interests, and making quick decisions. And universities operate in a more public forum than most companies. When students, faculty, staff, and alumni choose to air their positions and their occasional grievances on social media, they only heighten the challenge.

A liberal arts education has historically involved learning to ask better questions, thinking critically about the information gleaned, and responding thoughtfully. A public company might focus on meeting quarterly projections. By contract, an academic institution, especially a liberal arts university, is supposed to keep its eye on the big picture, seek eternal truths, and take a holistic approach to analyzing and understanding the human experience. Thoughtful, discerned responses take time and deliberation, neither of which is valued on the nightly news' “viewers' polls” or in twitchy-fingered Twitter responses. And, yet, colleges and universities, too, must learn to be nimble in their responses to events of the moment. How do you play the long game while responding to daily disruptions? How do you keep playing ...