Last week, we hosted the SSS By NAIS Leadership Forum. With over 120 school leaders from across the country, and reflecting many roles within schools, the forum brought a multi-faceted set of perspectives to discuss and envision new thinking around the confluence of tuition-setting, financial aid budgeting, and demographic analysis as schools tackle the critical question about sustainable affordability (apologies for the abundance of catchphrases).I’m still working on a more comprehensive report/summary of the event to post in the SSS Knowledge Center’s resource library, but I thought some nuggets might be worth sharing to spur some of your own thinking on ‘what’s next’ for your school.
The Forum kicked off with NAIS President Pat Bassett providing a provocative overview and discussion based on some key points from his article “The New Normal.” Times have changed and many of the assumptions/realities that helped schools prevail in the past may no longer hold sway. The economic times and other forces present ample opportunity to re-consider and re-imagine some of our long-held practices, approaches, and designs. He pointed the group to some really useful resources like the MSNBC/Moody’s Adversity Index which shows the degree to which a state and metro areas within the state are in recession, expansion, or somewhere in between. It helps give an indicator of the economic strength of an area and region that could inform your process for establishing and supporting your tuition and financial aid strategies (not to mention giving expectations). Pat, as always, challenges school leaders to ask: What assumptions does your school hold dear that need to be revisited? What was true about your school community ten or twenty years ago but no longer applies today? Have you adapted adequately to that evolution? If not, is it too late?
I then sat in on a presentation by Mike Connor and Vanessa Wassenar on tuition and value. One of the primary takeaways being that setting tuition is a PROCESS, not an event. Be sure that the process includes not just the board or its finance committee but also the school’s senior administrative team, including admissions. They shared a useful calendar of who should be learning/discussing what and when to make an effective tuition-setting decision. One participant shared how her school moved its decision process so that tuition can be announced as early as October, helping to make the fall recruiting season easier to manage. She likened their old approach to trying to buy something you want from a salesperson who is unable to tell you its cost for another few months (hey, doesn’t Apple do that when they put out a new iThing?). I’d never thought about the tuition-setting norms in this way before and it begs a simple few questions worth exploring: What would it take to have your board settle on next year’s tuition in early fall (September or October), in order to support fall recruitment activity better? What would be the benefits and new opportunities yielded? Is there a downside to that timeframe?
The third presentation I saw was on changing demographics, changing schools, facilitated by Rachael Beare, from The Hotchkiss School (Connecticut). The key takeaway for me from Rachael’s advice and urging is that “if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there” (a popular Lewis Carroll quote). By examining key (but simple, free, and easy-to-find) demographic and economic data about your market, you can define the path to building the community you want. One example she gave was of a school that used demographic analysis to realize that an area where a large portion of its students were from was actually projected to decline in population. Meanwhile, they saw another area from where fewer of their students hailed was projected to significantly grow in school-aged children. Given that, they could plan right away to begin a new and different focus on where to target marketing messages, transportation choices, and word-of-mouth campaigns. Rachael’s session implored schools to find out: What do you REALLY know about your market for students? Are your strategies and investments (in program, financial aid, marketing, etc.) changing in ways that support or preface the changes in the demographic and economic realities around you?
Last, I sat in on the financial modeling and financial aid session given by Rick England at Lick-Wilmerding High School (California). From this session a point that is very often mostly rhetorical was brought to life in a very practical way: to establish the kind of financial aid investment you really need, you have to be very clear about its purpose and why it’s important to achieving your school’s mission. Lick-Wilmerding was originally founded in the late 19th century with the mission to teach trade skills. The school didn’t charge tuition for several decades, until it became absolutely necessary to do so after some endowment mismanagement (another topic for another time). This history of the school’s founding and its clear mission to serve a diverse and inclusive community inform so much of what they do (in many realms of school life), that they use a budgeting model that funds financial aid FIRST and builds around that (helping over 40% of students with financial aid support, compared to the median 19.7% for a typical NAIS day school). The school makes financial aid a purposeful priority to ensure the schools serves kids from all walks of the economic spectrum, as it was founded to do. Are you clear about why you offer financial aid and where it fits in your strategic budgeting priorities? Does your school mission or history have a clear relationship to socio-economic diversity? If not, should it?
Of course, the Leadership Forum included more than just these few sessions and each presenter I mention here covered much more than what I’m highlighting (more resources from the Forum will come in the weeks ahead). I hope that’s enough food for thought to tide you over until then. Thanks to all the presenters, school leaders, and NAIS staff who attended for helping us think out loud about these things collectively as a community of professionals.
