The Edge: $2 Million of Consulting Later

How did an experiment in giving a rural college two years of free consulting play out? ADVERTISEMENT [The Edge Logo]( Did someone forward you this newsletter? [Sign up free]( to receive your own copy. I’m Goldie Blumenstyk, a senior writer at The Chronicle covering innovation in and around academe. We’ve made some changes to The Edge. I’ll continue to report, write, and produce this newsletter, but some weeks it will lead off with contributions from my colleagues. This week, you’ve got me, with my final take on a consulting gig I’ve been following for more than two years. Where does $2 million in free consulting get you? Did two years of free consulting for Fort Lewis College produce results? Can other institutions learn from [this experiment]( The answers are yes and yes — with a great big however. As with most things in the age of Covid-19, the situation is a bit more complex than expected. That goes for the college, the consultancy Entangled (which was acquired by Guild Education partway through the process), and one close observer (me). ADVERTISEMENT SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY OFFER Enjoying the newsletter? [Subscribe today]( for unlimited access and save 50% for the first year with this limited-time offer. First, let’s cut to the chase: As I describe below, Fort Lewis is a lot better off today than it was in the fall of 2019, when this gig began (I [accompanied the consultants to the campus]( in Durango, Colo., six months later). How much of that is due to the consultants’ analysis and advice is harder to pinpoint. But two things couldn’t be clearer: - An established relationship with this consultancy was an enormous benefit to Fort Lewis in maintaining momentum, especially once the pandemic hit. - The consultants were (more) effective because they were working with an institution ready and able to accept their help. Before Covid, the San Francisco-based Entangled consultants spent a lot of time visiting in person and virtually with Fort Lewis students, faculty members, administrators, and trustees. They legitimately had a good feel for the campus, isolated in the mountains of southwestern Colorado, near the border with New Mexico. Then the pandemic derailed that work for a few months, Guild acquired Entangled, and the consulting team had some turnover. But by the fall of 2020, the college’s leaders and consultants had established an every-other-week check-in. That, in the words of the Fort Lewis provost, Cheryl Nixon, “became a space of reflection and strategic thinking.” The regular meeting “kept us focused on things other than Covid,” she told me. And crisis aside, scheduling time to think, with knowledgeable outsiders as a sounding board, was invaluable, Nixon said: “I don’t think higher ed is doing that enough.” She’s right. So on a macro level, that’s Lesson 1. And having a game client certainly didn’t hurt. Paul Freedman, who conceived this experiment, dubbed [Project Capstone]( as the founder of Entangled — and continued to oversee it as a top executive at Guild — readily attributes some of its success to picking “the right institution” from among the dozen that applied. (Initially, Entangled hoped the project would help it win additional, paid consulting gigs but ceased that line of work once it was bought by Guild.) To the degree Freedman is correct, it’s harder to say how much credit goes to the consultants versus the college. It also reinforces one of his criticisms of consultants. “Often,” he told me, “they take the money even if they know the project isn’t set up for success.” Now I know a lot of smart and ethical consultants, so maybe “often” is a bit strong. But even once is unfortunate. So here’s a big Lesson 2: Neither colleges nor consultants should enter into an engagement if they don’t believe the culture of the institution — or of the consultancy — will let them get anywhere good. It will not only waste money, but also undermine trust and distract from other projects that could actually accomplish something. So, what did Fort Lewis accomplish? By all appearances, the public regional college is on a roll. After years of declines, enrollment is up, and this fall it welcomed its largest freshman class (more than 900 students) since 2004. It has received millions in new foundation, state, and federal grants to improve [programs in Indigenous studies]( and [develop new off-campus learning sites]( among other ventures. It’s rolling out new certificate programs and other “stackable credentials” — some offered online — that it plans to embed in its liberal-arts curriculum. And it’s deployed a series of new retention strategies, including a model it calls Circle Back aimed at encouraging students who stop out to re-enroll. Nixon and the college’s president, Tom Stritikus, credit both Guild and a host of college personnel for those developments. The consultants were “a valuable external lens for some of the work we’ve been doing,” the president said, but “the larger part is what our faculty and staff have done.” Offering in-person instruction for the last year and a half also did a lot [to help the college’s fortunes](. I’d hoped to visit the campus more than once, but as it turned out, most of my observations are secondhand. Early on I was a party to discussions, but Covid changed how the parties worked together, and I wasn’t in on any more meetings between the consultants and campus leaders, nor did I see the back and forth on working documents before they were finalized. Nonetheless, I still wanted to follow this unusual project to highlight any useful ideas for other colleges. Notably it produced no grand, new reinvention strategy for rural institutions. But the very absence of a big reveal is telling in itself. As Nixon put it, there was never a moment when the consultants handed over a big binder listing proposed new programs to turn the college around. Instead, they served as extra eyes and ears — and analysts — to point out weaknesses and opportunities along the way. Fort Lewis’s new, more-unified approach to retention is one example. With surveys and interviews, the consultants showed the college that its many counseling services and academic supports appeared “scattered” and confusing to students. “We weren’t articulating it clearly that all these services connected,” said Nixon. Without the consultants, the college “wouldn’t have had the time” to collect the information — and might not have had the perspective — that led to that conclusion, she said. “I don’t think we would have felt the urgency,” she added. But understanding the importance of the survey data and analysis, the college itself came up with the solutions. The lesson there? Any evaluation of student services can benefit from the insights of outsiders’ perspectives and, of course, students themselves. Plans for new certificate programs also owe a lot to the consultants’ showing the college how to assess demand, competition, and institutional capacity. As Freedman put it, colleges shouldn’t be “looking for one-hit wonders, but rather things that cluster.” Fort Lewis took that notion and built on it, deciding that any new programs it created should also work as elements of its existing curricula (for example, a digital-marketing certificate as part of a business degree or a nutritional-studies certificate as part of health-care programs). The lesson? When resources are limited, consider new programs that can bolster existing ones while expanding into new markets. Guild’s work at Fort Lewis formally ended a couple of months ago. But the story of the college’s “turnaround” isn’t over yet — although Stritikus took issue with that term from the get-go. The institution is still struggling to improve graduation rates for the many Native American students it enrolls, though it’s hopeful the new retention strategies will help. A new downtown business incubator, work with local public and tribal schools [developing career pathways for students]( and plans for remote-learning sites are all good starts and could prove to be models for other rural colleges. And from the sale of a property, the institution still has a few million dollars in reserve that it can use to finance a big, new venture, should it find an opportunity. Like Fort Lewis, I learned a lot from this experiment. And while I can no longer argue that work requires me to visit the beautiful Durango region, I do hope to get back there in person sometime, to see for myself what’s next for the college. Our ‘Shark Tank: Edu Edition’ is back live at SXSW EDU. Got an idea or a venture to pitch? I’ll be back in Austin, Tex., on March 8 for our seventh annual pitchfest, with my fellow “sharks” and audience members weighing in on creative ways to improve higher ed. As in [years past]( we’re excited to hear ideas related to academics, business operations, affordability, career advising, faculty life, and more. Will you be there? Or do you have a new company or know of a great new approach for us to showcase? Please email me your pitch (goldie@chronicle.com) to be considered as a contestant. Recommended reading. Here are some education-related stories from other outlets that recently caught my eye. Did I miss a good one? Let me know. - Single mothers in the United States have lower levels of education and lower incomes than other mothers do. And as [EdSurge]( they can face daunting challenges when pursuing a degree that could land them a job with a family-sustaining wage — even when they’re enrolled in programs that offer a host of financial and academic supports. - Some of these 11 trends that “will shape workplace volatility in 2022,” according to [two Gartner HR Practice researchers writing]( in Harvard Business Review, don’t seem so new. They’re still worth pondering. - Overall enrollment trends for private nonprofit colleges looked surprisingly solid in a recent release of data, but when the blogger Phil Hill took a deeper dive, he found that three institutions with huge online operations had shifted the numbers for the whole sector. Without them, [he explains in his PhilOnEdTech blog]( the picture looks a lot less rosy. Got a tip you’d like to share or a question you’d like me to answer? Let me know, at goldie@chronicle.com. If you have been forwarded this newsletter and would like to see past issues, [find them here](. To receive your own copy, free, register [here](. If you want to follow me on Twitter, [@GoldieStandard]( is my handle. Goldie’s Weekly Picks CAMPUS HEALTH [A Covid ‘New Normal’ Is Coming to Campus. Here’s What That Could Look Like.]( By Francie Diep [STORY IMAGE]( Transmission of the coronavirus is so high that colleges’ policies are breaking down. But this wave won’t last forever. 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