How Does Higher Ed Rebuild Trust? A Conversation
As the great philosopher Maureen McGovern reminded us in The Poseidon Adventure, “There’s got to be a morning after.” We’re not at that moment yet for the COVID-19 pandemic, but it will come. Three longtime collaborators on higher education strategy and communications—Anthony (“Tony”) Knerr and John Braunstein of AKA|Strategy and Libby Morse of Lipman Hearne—recently discussed how higher education institutions and their leaders need to get ready when that day dawns.
Three themes emerged from their conversations: Rebuilding Trust, Developing Resilience, and Reimagining Leadership. Here’s the first installment, Rebuilding Trust.
LIBBY: The pandemic has resulted in a lot of frayed or broken bonds—bonds that were not particularly strong to begin with. The general distrust of institutions, including higher ed, has been well-documented even before COVID-19. Colleges and universities are a network of relationships, encompassing students, faculty, and staff—and their families—the surrounding community, local organizations, public and private funders, and colleagues elsewhere. How does credibility get restored?
TONY: A first step in maintaining or restoring trust and confidence is taking stock of how students, faculty, staff feel about how the institution handled the pandemic and the attendant financial, budgetary challenges. Were communications regular, clear, and accurate? Did public health safety—and thus the safety of everyone on campus—come before all other considerations? Was institutional leadership transparent, thoughtful, and emphatic, in deed and word? Was decisive action taken when appropriate? Were relevant parties consulted before decisions were made, and were these decisions appropriately communicated? Did the institution take extra steps to care for the entire community?
JOHN: I hope that institutions look back on the past eight or nine months and do a running tabulation—who have we lost trust with and why? What did we do that gave us credibility? Where did we lose people’s faith? On a scale of 1 to 5, what is the trust factor we can count on in implementing future plans? For example, if you’ve been planning to implement a new gen ed curriculum in 2021 0r 2022, and the faculty is outraged about in-person teaching or furloughs, you have to address that outrage first.
TONY: Surveys of key constituencies are helpful in taking stock, as is a chat room on the institution’s website, asking deans and key administrators to query faculty, students, and staff about how they are feeling and what they need. An open invitation to all members of the institutional community can illuminate what went well and what didn’t. I can see asking questions like: Were communications regular, clear, and accurate? Did public health safety—and thus the safety of everyone on campus—come before all other considerations? Was institutional leadership transparent, thoughtful, and emphatic, in deed and word? Was decisive action taken when appropriate? Were relevant parties consulted before decisions were made, and were these decisions appropriately communicated? Did the institution take extra steps to care for the entire community?
Trust ultimately will be continued—or restored—if it is widely felt that the institution is looking after all of its members, making wise decisions in the best interest of everyone, and is thoughtful and careful about how it makes key decisions.
JOHN: I like to believe that an upside of the pandemic is that it’s made us more conscious of the many marginalized people who make a university work—the custodians, security guards, food-service workers who perform hourly wage jobs and face enormous pressures when they come home each night to their families. I hope that awareness of their contributions creates an enlarged conception of the university community. And if it influences who and what institutional leaders consider in making decisions, this will help rebuild trust and sustain it long after the pandemic.
Of course, there are institutions that have been exemplary in their behavior during COVID-19—their responses really embody the institution on its best day. For these institutions, now is an opportunity to ask themselves what core values and strengths of their communities were reflected in the initiatives they undertook, and how can these continue to drive us forward? Maybe it’s using people’s very recent memories of the pandemic to build trust between the university and its surrounding community. We have everyone’s attention. How can we use it to build new initiatives in public health, wellness, healthcare provision that will increase trust in the university among the communities around it, and in time, the public at large?
TONY: There is another dimension to overall trust and confidence in higher education by students and their families. Many are now questioning the value of higher education both in and of itself and with respect to remote instruction, in particular. There is increasing media attention to institutional closings, whether a traditional college education is really necessary for many, how corporate-sponsored institutions are more skilled at job-related distance instruction—among many other issues and concerns.
While the honeymoon with higher education of recent decades is certainly over, most universities and colleges are not going to disappear. Higher education will change: there is likely to be more remote instruction, different funding models, alternative calendars, and so forth.
The new rough and tumble world in which higher education now lives doesn’t help ensure trust and confidence within many campuses, already stressed about the pandemic and budgetary shortfalls. But continued strong performance over the coming several years, experimenting with remote vs. in-person instruction, testing new business models, undertaking imaginative institutional affiliations, demonstrating progress in achieving social equity will help restore public confidence in the sector.
LIBBY: Trust should be the reality check and the core of every institutional narrative—I know that’s how I’m approaching brand projects. Too much storytelling in higher ed is “The world is complex, stand aside” or “We produce the leaders who lead leaderly.” Stakeholders will measure an institution, and trust it, based on its ability to share information and expertise generously, and form partnerships and networks.
What this means for storytelling: Stories need to focus instead on the willingness and ingenuity of colleges and universities to build social capital, both within and beyond the walls of their institution. And the pandemic has exposed that this social capital is built on a basic, gut-level trust that your university will be entirely in your corner when it comes to issues of health, safety, housing, and other basic needs.
It’s not enough anymore for an institution to talk about how strong it seeks to become, or even how strong it will make its graduates. Rather, colleges and universities need to demonstrate that they’ll be there for their stakeholders—students most importantly—in moments of crisis as well as for their lifelong need for professional and personal learning.
The next installment, Developing Resilience, will be published soon.