Creation of Impactful Higher Education and Industry Partnerships
The “grey space” is a space where there is uncertainty. There is ambiguity and there are not defined processes to guide engagement and outcomes in the grey space. This is a space people tend to avoid because it is uncomfortable. However, this is also a space people are forced to engage within when the stakes are high and this is also where innovation happens. This is where the effective career centers and other external facing units of today and into the future operate, in the grey space.
The concept of career centers serving in the grey space relates to the fact that career centers of today, the progressive ones, straddle the line between the fast-paced needs and bottom line focus of industry and the bureaucratic nature of higher education. There are reasons for the bureaucracy and seemingly slow reaction time of higher education. The point is progressive career services serve as the translator and connector. The goals of higher education and industry are similar, but not exactly the same. Also, they operate on different fiscal calendars, measure outcomes differently, and have different purposes for being. Internal processes for partnerships are often not aligned for optimal, or even surface level, collaboration. They even speak different languages. For example, in industry, spring is never January. However, it is becoming more important than ever that industry and higher education work together. We need leaders and processes to help this happen.
The concept of career centers in the grey space is not unlike the functions and activities of a university community engagement office. However, there is the Carnegie Community Engaged Classification which fills the community/higher education partnership greyspace (The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education ®. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2018, from http://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/). There are guidelines, outcomes, and measures to guide institutions and communities in engagement and partnership creation activities. There are no such resources for how to create great partnerships between industry and higher education.
As we explore how to help industry and higher education create meaningful and impactful partnerships, we must understand that for every action there is a reaction. We need to be keenly aware that when we shift a process, expectations, or key performance indicators something else is being impacted. When that happens, by solving one problem we might create others. The ROI equation is important and to balance the political and workplace culture outcomes of changes is critical. We must be able to accept the new challenges which will arise from solving problems because the cycle is a perpetual one.
In this paper we hope to explore the topic of the industry and higher education partnership, the challenges within, the benefits within, and provide some recommendations as to how to build infrastructure and procedures to support these partnerships. We will be using Ball State University as our example university. Ball State University is a large high research university in the Midwest.
The University and Organized Anarchy
Ball State University (BSU) is like many other Mid-Atlantic Colleges (MAC) colleges in that it is a complex organization with residential students, tenured professors, a research agenda, athletics, and many other attributes. BSU is located in the east central part of Indiana and is a little over an hour from the two closest large cities of Indianapolis and Fort Wayne. All of these attributes, as well as others, make BSU an organized anarchy as related to organizational theory (Manning, 2013). There are state appropriation budgets, grants, auxiliary, foundation, and other sources of money which fund activities. Each funding source has different rules and are designed to impact in different ways. Because of this, there can be competing priorities as with any large organization. However, higher education is a little different than an average business. A university is a group of “loosely coupled systems” (Manning, 2013). Therefore, each individual system experiences the organization from their own perspective.
For instance, tenured faculty members experience the organization much differently than the assistant director in a student life operation. This creates multiple perspectives (Manning, 2013). No one person, regardless of power or position, fully understands the many realities and perceptions present in the organization (Manning, 2013,pg 14). So, if that is true, if in fact people inside the organization have different realities and perceptions, how is an external entity to approach entering a partnership with such an entity? Why would industry want to engage and why would higher education want to engage in such a partnership?
The Need for Partnership
In today’s environment with better than full employment at nearly 3% unemployment, industry needs talent (Hoosiers by the Numbers. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2018, from http://www.hoosierdata.in.gov/). They need talent ready to engage and help them to be competitive. Higher education needs talent also. They need qualified faculty. They need to be sure the skills and education they are providing to their students is meaningful and relevant. They also need to motivate students to learn. These three needs of higher education to employ qualified faculty, provide meaningful and relevant education, and to motivate students to learn are echoed in undergraduate environmental health programs (Bierma, & Krishnan, 1997). Bierma & Krishnan (1997) states that in the case of environmental health, faculty are required to earn a doctoral degree and have scholarly work expectations. Because that is not the expectation for practitioners, these expectations are creating a rift between practitioners and faculty. Therefore, it is difficult to attract faculty with significant industry experience to teach given the academic requirement. This creates a challenge because the faculty which will be attracted will not be practitioners, but academically trained to research and teach content without experiencing the industry of environmental health.
Not every discipline is as vocationally aligned as environmental health, or other programs such as accounting or nursing. However, the academic requirements of faculty will continue to increase to terminal degrees to satisfy accreditation requirements. Part of the accreditation process is peer review by faculty and administrative peers Schloss, P. J., & Cragg, K. M. (2013). If the faculty are not credentialed at a certain level, this can hurt accreditation. Therefore, universities will strive to hire the most credentialed professors they can, not the most experienced in their vocation. This makes creating avenues for industry and university partnership even more critical for the purposes of ensuring curriculum is meaningful and relevant to industry and to students. There are traditional avenues for this to take place in universities including advisory boards for colleges and departments. However, most of them are arranged as primarily a fundraising activity. Some do work to influence curriculum, but most are pay to play situations where employers will provide a sponsorship to be first to recruit talent from a program. Personally, I am not a fan of pay to play activity. I want open access for our students and employers to connect. However, I also understand the realities of recruiters. They need to find talent and do not have the luxury of complacency and time. They need to fill positions today and want a fast way to do that.
In order to create speed, effectiveness, and efficiency, which industry needs to be competitive in a highly competitive environment, they need partnerships, specifically, higher education partnerships. To develop meaningful partnerships, there must be a clear set of needs from all partners which others in the partnership can fulfill. Higher education needs support for faculty and graduate research, facilities, and other expenses. Industry has a need for an educated workforce, one that meets their vocational needs, but also is trained in a liberal education to deal for instance with the social and philosophical challenges which will be faced in the information age (Matthews, J. B., Norgaard, R., & National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, B. C.,1984).
Academic Freedom as a Barrier to Partnership
The first barrier to partnership is the fear of academic capitalism. The Statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure from 1940 states the importance of freedom and economic security as “indispensable to the success of an institution in fulfilling its obligations to its students and to society” (1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2018, from https://www.aaup.org/report/1940-statement-principles-academic-freedom-and-tenure).
Academic freedom protects against the influence of industry, government, and institution on content of courses. The faculty member in alignment with the master syllabus control course content through collective voting and approval by and filing with the commission on higher education. However, each faculty, in alignment with the master syllabus, can make some adjustments to their syllabus as long as they do not stray from the core of the master syllabus. We will revisit this later as this knowledge provides an opportunity to create partnership.
Collaboration with industry does not have to be a threat to academic freedom. As a matter of fact, academic freedom can be used to infuse needed industry influence into courses and activities influenced by faculty members.
Partnership in Alignment with University Strategy and Protecting Academic Freedom
Bierma and Krishnan (1997) stated that the most common types of employer involvement (partnerships) include guest speakers and field trips. Other forms include the use of real problems, similar to the BSU model of immersive learning. Immersive learning is a good model for experiential learning. However, it has scalability issues. Another form of partnership Bierma and Kirshan (1997) discussed the employer being involved in setting educational goals and directly evaluating student performance. Yet another example is the employer being involved in the creation of curriculum. This is where I want to begin expanding our discussion related to creating meaningful partnerships between industry and higher education and the implications of alignment with university strategy and protecting academic freedom.
BSU is currently implementing a Skills Infusion Program (Faculty Externship Program. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2018, from http://cms.bsu.edu/about/administrativeoffices/careercenter/programs-services/faculty-externship-program). This program brings together faculty, and alumni/employer partner, and a career center representative. The purpose of this team is to explore the faculty syllabus and help to map the course outcomes to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) Competencies. The NACE competencies are produced by the National Association of Colleges and Employers which is one of the most well-known national professional associations for career services ((n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2018, from http://www.naceweb.org/career-readiness/competencies/career-readiness-defined/). The NACE Competencies are a list of transferable skills employers today are saying they need in employees regardless of industry. Therefore, through mapping academic course outcomes to workplace competencies, students can see clearly how a history class will add value to their post-graduation experiences. Step two is to engage in a conversation about how the assignments help students articulate their academic experiences in concert with their transferable skills. The end result is a new syllabus helping faculty communicate how their course connects to workplace skills, and assignment which help student communicate their skills. But wait, there is more.
Through making these connections, faculty are connecting with alumni and employers. While alumni are on campus, they are speaking in classes, meeting with student groups, and becoming more connected to the university. Other examples of career infusion activities include faculty externships and executives in residence programs run through the career center.
None of these programs negatively impact academic freedom and they all support a part of the university mission. From the alumni engagement index to fundraising to retention, persistence, and post-graduation outcomes, these connecting activities are great for the university. However, sometimes an employer wants more.
Sometimes industry wants the university to provide specific trainings to reduce what is called “bench time”. Bench time is the time it takes for a new employee to become a productive member of the employer’s workforce. The more an employer can reduce bench time, the more productive and profitable an organization can be. And here we go, entering the “grey space” of academics.
We must find a way, similar to how Charles Eliot at Harvard in the late 1800’s did, to address the needs of our workforce while still maintaining the academic core and protecting tenured faculty against the full onslaught of academic capitalism (Davidson, C. N. (2017). The new education: How to revolutionize the university to prepare students for a world in flux. New York: Basic Books). If we do not find a way to make each partner content with the work we are all doing, not only will our educational systems fold, but so will our industry because we will not have the talent to compete in the global marketplace. However, it is more likely that industry will remove higher education from their supply chain of talent rather than fold. IT is more likely that industry will create their own campuses and training programs either supplementing, or fully removing the credentialing process of higher education for talent confirmation (First phase of Infosys’ $245M airport campus will be $35M training center. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2018, from https://www.ibj.com/articles/68581-first-phase-of-infosys-245m-airport-campus-will-be-35m-125000-square-foot-training-center). Similar to what is happening with science, engineering, technology, and math (STEM) related professions in the United States. One reason employers want partnerships to be able to reduce their “bench time”. Bench time is how long it takes to bring a new hire to a place of contributing more than they are taking in resources. To do this, employers needs academic programs geared towards their specific needs. Herein lies one of the challenges. Faculty do not want industry telling them what or how to teach. The tenure of a faculty member ensures academic freedom from government and industry to influence what and how they research and teach. There is a need to create specific academic programs and student experiences, and we have a challenge in that faculty do not want to be told how and what to teach. So, what are we to do?
There is a way to make this work. It takes relationships, trust, time, some political pressure, some policy change, and a pain that is worth making compromised to eliminate. Some of this is having the right people in the right place to facilitate partnerships between two sometimes opposing potential partners. Yet other parts require processes to follow to connect the right people at the right time. Still, the pain needs to be piercing enough to move to change. The pain is coming.
The competition for students is increasing. Funding is waning. Pressure to produce a return on investment is high and increasing. Soon, the partnership will be forced due to environmental factors. We need to get ahead of the curve, and there are examples of this at Ball State University. However, they are in isolated pockets, not connected and fused under a common mission and vision with empowerment through position, reward, legitimate, nor expert power. In other words, there is not a position charged with forging these partnerships and leveraging them across campus.
These types of partnerships are not in any Promotion and Tenure P&T) documents. There are grant and some other funds to pay faculty for professional development and provide course buyouts if faculty participate. Immersive learning and the Career Center Skills Infusion Program are two such programs. However, they need a lot of help to be scalable. They are on the right track, but they are not connected nor synergistic. Those programs are just two examples of many. If there were someone responsible for fostering these types of programs and responsible for creating industry partnerships within a framework of empowerment of the faculty and of industry, we might have even more relevant curriculum not only in the vocational areas of study, but also in the liberal arts. However, the very structure of higher education is prohibitive to making this happen.
Creating a Structure for Industry and Higher Education Partnerships to Flourish
The organizational structure and political structure of higher education can be reflected in an organizational chart. The simple hierarchy structure is what most closely resembles the higher education organization chart. The simple hierarchy allows the leader to focus on mission, strategy, and external relations while empowering a middle manager to oversee operations as referenced in Exhibit 1 (Bolman, Lee G., & Deal, Terrence E. (2013). This structure is evident in units, divisions, and entire universities.
Exhibit 1 – Simple Hierarchy
The benefits of a simple hierarchy include providing opportunity for the leader to spend more time on strategy and external relations, freeing the leader from daily operations and other decision making process which can be decided upon by those closer to the daily work. A negative to this structure is that it further removes those doing the work from the main decision-maker and limits communication. Also, this structure can create silos and political positioning for those interested in climbing the position ladder. The most concerning aspect of this structure for me is the challenges in communication and silo-ing of activities, making it ever more difficult to cast vision and be sure everyone is aligned with and making decisions in concert with the mission and strategic plan. This is where culture and leadership can play a crucial part in forming a structure conducive of empowering industry and higher education partnerships.
Ultimately, industry wants to be connected to the right sources effectively and efficiently. They want easy access to talent, faculty, student groups, and to influence curriculum. The university wants more donors, for their students to retain, persist, graduate on time, and have positive post-graduation outcomes, influencing performance based funding metrics and the power to craft a strong incoming class. There are many other things universities want. For this illustration we will stick with these. So, to make all of this happen, students, faculty, alumni, administration, development, career centers, and others need easy, quick access to gather information and make decisions. The simple hierarchy is not built for that. However, the All-Chanel Network is. This structure creates multiple connections so that each person can talk to anyone else (Bolman, Lee G., & Deal, Terrence E. (2013). This structure works well when the team has certain skills. Those skills include well-developed communication skills, enjoy participation, tolerate ambiguity, embrace diversity, and are able to manage conflict (Bolman, Lee G., & Deal, Terrence E. (2013). Now, we are getting into a workplace culture discussion which is less about the structure but more about how to create an environment which is conducive to the benefits of the all-channel network which is shown in Exhibit 2
Recommendations for Empowering More Industry and Higher Education Partnership
The approach to addressing the challenges related to creating impactful higher education and industry partnerships is multi-faceted. Organization structure, the organized anarchy, bureaucracy, and differing processes and needs between industry and higher education need to be considered. However, we are reaching a point in time when the pain of not having a process and infrastructure for meaningful relationships will be too much to bear and that will force partnerships to occur under pressure. Artificial intelligence and advances in other areas of technology require higher education to revise how and what we teach so students can be more than the robots. To make this happen we will need infrastructure and processes to allow industry to speak into higher education and to support higher education in that process. Higher education will need to find ways to support industry in meeting their goals and staying competitive in the new economy. How?
This is most likely not a linear process where one thing happens after the next, so the following is a list of possibilities in no particular order except for the position power. Without this the activities will happen in vacuums and will not be systemic.
Make industry partnerships a priority. Not just lip service, but a real priority. To do this in an organization which is set up as a simple hierarchy with complicated political and power structures, we must first have someone with legitimate power, also known as position power. This signals to the university that this is a priority, resources are aligned, and there are expectations related to the initiatives from this area. However, position power is not enough, specifically in higher education. Expert power is a source of respect in higher education. Someone needs to be heavily involved and seen as a leader in creating collaborations understanding both the academic and industry points of view. Next, someone with referent power, which is the influence one has through building trust and relationships with others. This is gained through how we handle situations, and how others perceive us to be someone they can count on.
Once we have a person with position power, who can be seen as an expert in this space perhaps through engagement with national associations and proven collaborations bringing together faculty and industry, and this person has built referent power with academics and industry though their work building trust and influence, then there is a chance to move the needle on partnerships. However, to move the needle on partnerships we need to focus on partnerships and not start with position power. Position power is critical, but position power without the other sources of power simply will not be effective in this endeavor specifically in higher education.
Create inclusive strategy. With the person holding position power, an engagement committee should be formed to foster collaboration across constituents to help inform this work. However, these members should be as close to the work as possible, not necessarily only top leadership. This is where a new vision of combining the simple hierarchy with the all-channel organization structure should happen. The simple hierarchy is the formal model. The all-channel becomes a culture overlaying the simple hierarchy. The all-channel and the culture that it creates supports the fast paced needs of industry and the simple hierarchy supports the bureaucratic processes of higher education. This places the person with position power right in the middle. THE GREY SPACE. The space where these two entities so desperately need to collaborate but do not yet know how. There is a culture of connecting, speed, efficiency, and timely outcomes managed through a structure of bureaucracy and simple hierarchy. Kind of sounds like organized anarchy. It sounds difficult. This is why having the right person at the helm is so critical. It is important to have someone who can help those who want to connect and influence to navigate the grey space and get things done. Like what?
Activities which have proven effective and are best practices at least in the career services world is a place to start. Immersive learning is another. Immersive learning is successful in that it delivers upon its mission but is not scalable. The strategy of Career Infusion is scalable.
Career Infusion Strategy is a strategy coined at the Ball State University Career Center. This strategy states its purpose as “to create common space with common purpose, to empower all of our partners to help Ball State Students become even more successful post-graduation”. This strategy engages alumni, employers, students, faculty, administration, and community with each other, very much like an all-channel network.
Examples of Career Infusion Strategies which engage industry and higher education together creating the basis for partnerships include the Skills Infusion Program, Faculty Externships, and Executives in Residence, to name a few.
The Skills Infusion Program brings together a faculty member, an alumni/employer, and a career center representative, work together over the course of a semester to map course outcomes to NACE transferable skills, place this mapping on the syllabus, and enhance assignments and activities so students can articulate their academic experiences in concert with their transferable skills. This happens across curriculum so a student taking an English class experiences the same thing in a Philosophy course.
Faculty Externships place faculty in industry over the summer. Faculty experience what employers need in their fields. Then faculty return to campus and present on how they are going to enhance their curriculum to more closely align with industry needs. This has resulted in new experiments in classes, grants, research, and new partnership with employers.
Executives in Residence Program is not the typical residence program crafted to cultivate a gift form an executive. This program brings back alumni around five years after they graduate to engage with their faculty and students.
The Education Advisory Board predicts three futures for career services which speaks directly to the ability of industry and higher education to create partnerships. The future which is most sustainable, efficient, and effective, is the connector model. This model places career services at the center of an all-channel model as a servant leader, connecting all parties in meaningful ways.
A few actionable recommendations include:
- Charge a cabinet position with empowering meaningful impactful connections creating synergy across all areas of the campus. Some examples of deliverables include:
- Create a model of engagement empowering connections across academic colleges, student affairs and enrollment services which moves passive engagements to intentional interactions
- The immersive learning showcase inviting employers to engage with students in a reverse career fair scenario
- Expand the Skills Infusion and Faculty Externship Programs, connecting more alumni/employers to faculty and students
- Create a connecting activity council including members from all colleges, student affairs departments, and business affairs functions to discuss leveraging events and activities meeting the mission of connecting
- Engage government relations, alumni center, and development in leveraging connecting activities
- Strategically place key employees on economic development boards and committees
- Embed in Promotion and Tenure documents that every three years faculty are to engage with industry through Faculty Externships, Skills Infusion Projects, Immersive Learning, and other robust engagements approved by the cabinet member or their designee
In conclusion, to have an effective implementation someone with referent power, expertise power, and position power must lead the charge to create a pathway to high impact industry/higher education partnerships. If we do not, we will forever need to defend our relevance, and employers like Infosys and others will build their own campuses, offering credentials aligned with current and future industry needs. More important, if we do not pave the way for these partnerships, our students will be woefully unprepared for the changing world of work, and will not be prepared to be what the robots cannot be.
References
Bierma, T. J., & Krishnan, U. (1997). Educator-Employer Partnerships: A Tool for Improving Environmental Health Education. Journal Of Environmental Health, 60(1), 11-15.
Matthews, J. B., Norgaard, R., & National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, B. C. (1984). Managing the Partnership between Higher Education and Industry
(n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2018, from http://www.naceweb.org/career-readiness/competencies/career-readiness-defined/
1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2018, from https://www.aaup.org/report/1940-statement-principles-academic-freedom-and-tenure
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2013). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Davidson, C. N. (2017). The new education: How to revolutionize the university to prepare students for a world in flux. New York: Basic Books.
Faculty Externship Program. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2018, from http://cms.bsu.edu/about/administrativeoffices/careercenter/programs-services/faculty-externship-program
First phase of Infosys’ $245M airport campus will be $35M training center. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2018, from https://www.ibj.com/articles/68581-first-phase-of-infosys-245m-airport-campus-will-be-35m-125000-square-foot-training-center
Hoosiers by the Numbers. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2018, from http://www.hoosierdata.in.gov/
Schloss, P. J., & Cragg, K. M. (2013). Organization and administration in higher education. London: Routledge.
The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education ®. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2018, from http://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/