Michael Avaltroni (Fairleigh Dickinson University) on Establishing Ecosystems of Learning in Higher Ed

On today’s episode of the Illumination by Modern Campus podcast, podcast host Shauna Cox was joined by Michael Avaltroni to discuss how universities are adapting to societal changes and technological advancements to help the modern learner succeed. 

Transcript

Voiceover: Welcome to Illumination by Modern Campus, the leading podcast focused on transformation and change in the higher education space. On today’s episode, we speak with Michael Avaltroni, who is President at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Michael and podcast host Shauna Cox discuss how universities are adapting to societal changes and technological advancements to help the modern learner succeed. 

Shauna Cox(00:02):Mike, welcome to the Illumination Podcast. I'm so glad you could join me today.

Michael Avaltroni (00:06):Thrilled to be here. It's a pleasure.

Shauna Cox(00:08):Absolutely. So in recent years, we've certainly seen higher education take a drastic shift in the way it's been operating, who it's serving, things like that, and that's where we're here to talk about today. So I want to kick off our conversation to ask you how have you personally seen the role of universities evolve in recent decades, particularly in response to the changing societal needs and the technological advancements that we're seeing?

Michael Avaltroni (00:36):So I think you're seeing really just a very rapid turn that I think continues to evolve as in real time before our very eyes. I think over the past certainly decade or probably longer, we've seen this huge pivot towards online education. Certainly that's been one of the major shifts is how people consume education and the perception of what an education is. I think this major players in the space like the Southern New Hampshires and others have certainly taken on a very, very significant push towards focusing on education anywhere and focusing on this sort of model of on demand online. And I think that will continue to evolve, but I don't think that in and of itself is the end point. I don't think that there will be a day where all education will be consumed in the virtual world. I think what you're seeing is this continued evolution that education is multiply or kind of complex in a layered system that involves some online learning, some in-person, some real, some virtual, all of these things.

(01:42):And I think in some facets, the pandemic opened up a new opportunity to demonstrate that there is this ability to be truly flexible in a sense of wanting to create a journey that's customizable for yourself to serve your needs. One of the things we talk about at Fair Dickinson is the desire to meet students where they are. And that's not just physically in time and place, but it's in life as well, right? And creating this opportunity for flexibility in how students journey their education from start to finish I think is going to continue to be the future. And I think it'll continue to allow us to think a little bit outside the box to realize that in some cases, leveraging online and leveraging technology is a great thing. In some cases, students want and need community and access to one another or to a faculty member or to resources where in person is an opportunity to really make meaningful interaction. And I think finding this blend will continue to be where higher education goes.

Shauna Cox(02:43):Absolutely. And I want to deep dive into a couple of things that you mentioned there when you talked about online learning, the technology updating and all that. I want to ask you, how have universities integrated or maybe not integrated new technologies into their educational models, and then what kind of impact has this had on the teaching? We're having a day teaching methodologies and student engagement.

Michael Avaltroni (03:11):So I think universities unfortunately by nature I think are very slow to adapt, right? I think what we always say is that higher education is very much stayed in a tradition that oftentimes makes it difficult to implement any sort of change or to in some cases make really a meaningful turn to new direction. I always say that if you look at how any other industry was practiced 20 years ago versus now, it looks very different, higher education, and that I think is one of the crisis points that we find ourselves in is that we need to adapt for a new day and for a new learner who has very different wants and needs, I think one of the things you have seen is that in the online space and elsewhere you've seen that there's a lot more of this opportunity to create asynchronous and synchronous streams of learning that I've often said that if you're not making learning impactful in person, then there's no reason to be in person.

(04:13):And so it changes the mindset to think that there is an opportunity if you're just going to be reporting a lecture where you're giving facts to students as background work to lay the groundwork for something that they're going to need later on, I don't know that we need to drag everybody out at 11 o'clock in the morning to all sit in one space to do that. I think that's an opportunity to create podcasts, to create recordings and other types of interactive sessions that allow people to consume them flexibly and allow them in some cases to listen to it, re-listen to it, listen to it at one and a half feet in the car, and then go back to it, right? All of these things that create this ability for flexible learning and then to supplement that with meaningful, impactful interactions where you're going and doing group work together, you're going and engaging with one another.

(05:03):And I think the opportunity is even greater now because there's becomes such a heavy reliance on technology that you're seeing that people really need those skills developed around communicating with others, working in a group, taking on roles within a dynamic of learners in an environment where you have to take and give, you have to interact. You have to in some ways kind of exchange ideas and that's going to be critical for the world of work once you're gone and out of the university setting and you're going on to what's next. So I think this is an opportunity we have to leverage it more wisely and do it in a better way to assure that students are gaining that benefit and in preparing themselves well for what's next.

Shauna Cox(05:49):Absolutely. I really think that that idea there circles back to meeting the students where they are and engaging them in ways that it's going to work best for them. And I do want to circle back on a point that you made in terms of higher ed, of course being known as very traditional and ask you what are some of the challenges that the universities, maybe not all of them, maybe it's a majority, but in general that universities are facing during this drastic shift in higher ed.

Michael Avaltroni (06:16):Yeah, there's a lot of these headwinds certainly facing every one of us. The first fundamentally, and I say this regularly to people, and it's not to sound fatalistic, but the business model is fundamentally broken, right? It was built for a day that no longer exists because it was built largely on a structure where the ways in which universities could operate was by continuing to collect more and more tuition from students to be able to cover their costs. I think there's this misnomer that universities are flushed with cash as a result of taking tuition from students. Maybe some institutions have very deep endowments and are doing well, but the majority of institutions are raising tuition and only because costs are going up exponentially to a point where it's the only way that you can make the model work. It is fundamentally a very, very sort of locked in model on the business side that doesn't allow you to adapt to a very different dynamic than what existed 50 years ago.

(07:15):And at this point, what we've seen now fundamentally is that tuition can't be increased anymore. Students are unable and unwilling to pay more. In fact, the net cost that most universities collect now is going down, not up as a result of scholarships and other types of discounting. So something needs to change. And fundamentally, if you can't change the business model, then you can't ever get out of this sort of vicious cycle of continuing to charge more and offer less, and that's not a winning model in any business. So certainly higher ed is a business maybe with a very more admirable outcome, or we hope it is, but it's a business nonetheless, and so we have to get something changed in the way in which we offer and do things in this space. I think we also have to become much more aware of what the public is saying right now.

(08:09):We have seen a major, major downturn in the perception of higher education somewhere on the order of 20 to 25% of people thinking less of higher ed than they did even a few years ago. You probably have seen surveys that have been released about what people perceive as the value of a higher education degree about what they think of higher ed institutions. Those numbers are scary because they're dropping precipitously and very rapidly, and at some point that's something that tells us about what the public thinks of the product we are producing, right? In a sense of the education we're offering and the things we're doing. So we need to take a look at all of this and we need to rethink how it is that we're providing the services that we provide to students. I think it requires us to think more about addressing the cost issue.

(09:00):We have to come up to terms with the fact that we can't do this on the backs of students burying themselves in debt that they're never going to get out of for degrees, that they're saying, I don't know what I can do with this, right? There has to be that. So we're certainly looking much more focused on from our institution, how do we think about more effectively putting tools in the hands of our students to make sure that they're setting themselves up for careers and opportunities that will make the degree meaningful, impactful, and prepare them well for it. It's one of the reasons why, for example, we've expanded a lot of our programs in the health sciences and see that as an opportunity for growth. It's not that we think that the health sciences are more or less important, but we know that students going to health science degrees are doing so with opportunities to climb a career ladder.

(09:51):Typically, those students are focused on knowing that this is what they want and seeing some sort of an opportunity at the end of the degree to practice and to apply their learning, and they know that they need a degree or credential in order to be able to get there. So that's an area where you can see that higher education is clearly providing that gap filler that is there between a student and their desired outcome. And that's a place where we know that higher education then is well worth it because if you want to become a nurse, a pharmacist, a physician assistant, the only way to do that is through licensure and through a degree that leads to licensure and we can be that sort of gap filler that allows you to get to where you want to go. I think those are the types of things that we need to think about beyond just those very technical careers to create these pathways for learning and create these pathways towards an outcome that students feel like they've gotten to the finish line of where they want it to go and can start an opportunity to earn and to engage in meaningful careers and do that as a result of the degree, not because serendipitously it happened just as a result of things falling into place.

Shauna Cox(11:02):Absolutely. I think that's a prime example of showing how higher ed is focusing and adapting to what's now in the moment needed and things like that. And I definitely think that the element that you're talking about of change is absolutely required in today's environment. And you did allude to it a little bit, but I want to expand on that a little bit more of what are some of the best practices to overcome some of the obstacles here that you've laid out?

Michael Avaltroni (11:29):So I think one of the things we have to start really, I think in many cases thinking about is coming back to thinking about our strategy institutionally or not necessarily always wanting to be everything to everyone. I think unfortunately in most businesses, again in higher ed is oftentimes people cringe when you call it a business, but at the end of the day, it's a business just like any other, again, different strategies around it and different outcomes, but it's a business in the world of strategy, you typically will look as a corporation or as a startup or whatever it is to focus on an area of need that's unmet and just to build your model around saying, we're going to go and target ourselves in that area to really focus on providing that, not that other areas aren't important, but that we believe that that's our area where we can excel, that we can own some space and that we can provide a quality experience and make a meaningful impact.

(12:34):I think higher ed has never done that, or over years, the lines have been blurred so that now it tries to be the general store, it tries to be everything to everyone, and it tries to run this sort of, we want add a major of this, we'll add a degree in that. And over years, because higher ed is very good at adding and it's very difficult to subtract, it becomes sort of an inventory of programs and services that now are completely unmitigated in their scope and size, and that's part of the scaling issue of why the business model can't work. You are trying to offer too many things, but the volume isn't there in any one of them. So I think one of the things higher education needs is really an infusion of more traditional strategic thinking to think about at some cases being bold and courageous, which I think is sometimes very tough in higher education, going against the core values of what people believe higher education is to say we're going to be bold and thinking about what is it that's the core of our identity?

(13:44):Who do we serve? How do we serve them, what do we do well? What do we believe there's a future in? And really honing in on those being the core of what our offerings are. And if you do that effectively and there's complementarity amongst institutions in the state or region, the hope is you can create an ecosystem within that region and even potentially some partnerships or collaborations to say, well, this is not what we do well, but our neighbor here does, so you should go there for that. Right? The analogy I often make is that we are experiencing right now what 20 years ago healthcare organizations experience, which was hospitals couldn't run independently any longer to be everything to everyone. So what you saw was this sort of systemization where they folded into a system whereby each of them created an opportunity to own certain spaces.

(14:38):So it used to be you had 20 different hospitals, all of them functioning independently, and each of them probably had an orthopedics unit and each of them had a cardio unit and each of them had and down the line, but you realize that that didn't work If you created a system where they were all under one sort of shared model, then if you wanted orthopedic surgery, you went to anchor point A, which is well-known and well-renowned for that. If you wanted cardiothoracic surgery, you went to B. If you wanted to go to the emergency room, you had something, any one of them could support you, but each of them sort of owned a specialization area. I think we have to move in that direction, and it may not be as extreme as the health system version where it was a true merger and acquisition type of thing, but I think the best approach for us is to create ecosystems of learning in the state, the region, or even beyond, whereby each of us is able to gain some economies of scale and each of us is able to build to our mission, our core strength, and be able to live within it and be able to provide students a support in that environment as well.

Shauna Cox(15:46):Absolutely. And I feel like that type of approach or direction of moving into the hospital example you provided of the specialization for each college or region and things like that will also help solve the issue of learners and just society questioning the value of the ROI of higher ed. And I think when it comes to that ROI in today's environment, it's really about getting a job, getting a stable career to launch themselves to be stable for their families and things like that. So how can universities strengthen their relationships with local communities and their industry partners to enhance learning opportunities and foster more innovation?

Michael Avaltroni (16:30):I think you've hit on the key, which is that we need to be much more externally focused and thinking on building these partnerships that one of the things that's a great benefit in health science programs is that there's a huge clinical component where students are out in the community practicing and gaining this experience, and many times, more times than not, that leads to their first job that their first introduction as a nursing student on rotation as a pharmacy student on rotation typically is the experience and exposure they have to somebody there who if they're good in their five weeks, says, you know what? When you're done, why don't you apply for a job? Here we have a vacancy and these are the meaningful interactions. The other benefit, of course, is that students are getting the broad experience of what they like and what, what sorts of things they're interested in, what they're not they're good at and what they may not be as good at, and it helps them to define this.

(17:23):So experiential learning and the applied learning aspects have to become a hallmark of education much more robustly than they've ever been. And if you look at models that are thriving, Northeastern has a co-op model that is probably one of the best, if not the best in the world, and they are able to place students in these cooperative experiences as part of their learning journey. Drexel is another good example of this. First of all, what you're seeing is those schools now are thriving. Enrollments are up, and it's becoming more and more difficult to get in, and then they're expanding their footprint around the world to give more experiences. But it also speaks to the fact that what you're looking at is that there's a direct linearity between a student, what they select to study, what they're interested in, what they have aptitude in, and what they will ultimately look to do when they get out.

(18:20):And it sets them up to help them in both getting the experiences that they kind of get a clarity of understanding of what the career would look like and whether they like it or whether it's something that they want to do for a lifetime or at the very least for a long time. And then secondly, it gets them this foot in the door to begin building a resume of skills and meaningful interaction. I just think that becomes more and more critically important, and we have to think about what an education was even 20 years ago, let alone a hundred years ago versus what it is now. It used to be that you came to the university because the college campus was the place where all the information in the world was held. It was in the library. There were hundreds of thousands of volumes of books and information.

(19:08):The faculty were the purveyors of that information and the conduit of knowledge. We now are an instant information society, and so the way in which people learn and gather information has to be very different now because the access is very different now. So we need to adapt to think about what then really is our role as educators. It needs to be in preparing people for their future in a very different way than it was before. Technology was everywhere and it was easy to access volumes of knowledge on your phone or volumes of knowledge anywhere you went on demand. It needs to be a very different way in which we provide this experience to students and it sets them up much more effectively for a world that has evolved and changed rapidly in the last 24 months, let alone 24 years or let alone before that.

Shauna Cox(20:06):Absolutely. It can be really overwhelming trying to figure out what direction you need to go in. And I think you're touching on some really key points on how to move forward, and I want to summarize them into little bullet points here and ask what advice you have for higher ed leaders when it comes to this adapting and thriving in a constantly changing environment.

Michael Avaltroni (20:29):I think it's one of the things I've tried to even frame in my role in stepping into this area of leadership for the university is thinking, I would say in framing it in three, I would say major points. The first is talking about sort of being bold, being visionary, really taking courageous steps at this point in time because we're at a point in time where we're in some cases fighting for our lives. There's this urgency because if we continue to see that the value of a higher education degree continues to be devalued and it continues to be sort of torn down as a requirement, the need and important thing societally, I think everyone loses. We certainly lose as a higher education institutions, but I think society loses because I think we play a critically important role in the realities of what students want and need from us.

(21:27):I think the second component of critical thinking for us is to really be thinking about your mission, thinking about your role as an institution and thinking about how you can serve students now versus how it might have been that you were serving them when your mission was created or when it was last evaluated, right? This is a rapidly changing society with rapidly different needs and a drastically different environment that we find ourselves. In some cases it's world economics. In some cases it's world geopolitics. In some cases it's hyperlocal, but all of it points towards tumultuous times and we need to be ready thinking about our mission and how we serve our students through them. And the third is I think we need to really critically look at our students and how we serve them, and more importantly, the things that they come to us wanting and needing and challenged by.

(22:25):There are a number of different things that I always try and frame myself around, but one of them is around being a parent to three college and high school age kids, is seeing the world through their eyes and seeing some of the challenges that they're experiencing, some of the opportunities that they have, some of the real difficult times that young people find themselves in. And of course, higher education serves a gamut of age groups and demographics, but a lot of the people we serve are people coming from high schools as first time undergraduate students. And I think that we need to think about the challenges that they're coming to us with and understand that we need to serve them differently if we want them to be successful. And I read a book recently, the Anxious Generation that talks about the rewiring of young people through social media, through a technology based childhood, through the ways in which we've taken away play an interaction from them.

(23:25):So students now are coming to us much different in terms of the way in which they interact with one another. The way in which they interact with us, the preparedness that they have to be world citizens is very different. They come, I think, with a greater amount of knowledge and awareness, but with a lot less of an ability to communicate with one another and engage and work as a member of a team and be comfortable in an environment around different views. So that requires us to rethink how we do things because an education may need to evolve to be much more about developing impactful adults than just developing impactful people who majored in history or chemistry or biology, and that requires us to really rethink everything we do. So those are the three things that in my head I think about as a leader, and I would urge others to really think about it's your institution and how you adapt it for the future, how you stay true to a mission that can be realized and delivered on, and how you serve the students who are fundamentally very different now than they've ever been in their wants, their needs and their expectations.

Shauna Cox(24:40):Amazing. I love it so much, Mike. Thank you for your very insightful remarks here. But before I let you go, I'm going to need a restaurant recommendation from you because it's a requirement of this podcast. All

Michael Avaltroni (24:54):Right. So certainly I have a bit of a quandary because my home is about an hour away from each of our two New Jersey campuses, so I could go in any direction. But I will tell you, I would say the recommendation is 1776 in Morristown. I think it is a David Burke restaurant. Two reasons. We enjoy it at First because the Great restaurant, and it's got great spaces and it's got a great vibe in Morristown's downtown, but also Chance Healy, who's the person who runs the restaurant, there is an alum and a great and loyal one at that. So it's nice because a lot of times we'll have events there and he's very supportive of the things we do and very supportive of the mission of the university. So it kind of is a win for all fronts.

Shauna Cox(25:41):I love it. Mike, thank you so much for the recommendation and for joining me today. It was great having you.

Michael Avaltroni (25:46):My pleasure. It was great talking with you today.