Trusteeship - November/December 2023 - 29

The task of remaking higher education
is enormous and urgent-the next
decade will be critical-
and it would be foolish to think
that universities could accomplish
the necessary change without
missteps or by going it alone.
every consumer-facing product is designed with
the user experience in mind. And even those of us
well beyond 30 have become accustomed to better
user interfaces. From Uber to Doordash to Netflix
and even banks, services today are designed to be
navigated easily and provide results tailor-made
for consumers. Even if you only care about enrollWe
designed it this way. The reason universities have difficulty
graduating students is because they were designed to make graduation
difficult. For hundreds of years, universities were proud to be
enclaves of learning and research for a very small percentage of the
population. Faculty were at the center of the institution because
they contributed the intellectual capital necessary for the university
to grow in reputation and size. Systems and structures arose
to weed out students deemed incapable, not to encourage wider
attendance and completion. The values system of the old model
still exists and fails to serve students of today.
The approaches of yesterday do not work for today's students.
(Arguably, they didn't work for those of yesteryear either.) Students
whose families don't have a college-going background or who don't
look like the typical college professor are easily put off by this attitude.
So too are adults who increasingly need to reskill to move up
in the workforce, but who oftentimes already have full-time jobs
and family commitments.
Both are groups colleges are going to have to do a better job
of serving if they want to thrive. The traditional 18-22 year-old
population is shrinking.⁴ And for the first time in U.S. history,
low-income students are the majority in public K-12 schools,⁵
which suggests future first-time students will be more likely to
be economically disadvantaged and the first generation in their
families to attend college.⁶ Redesign should specifically target the
needs of students of color and low-income and first-generation
students-those who are least likely to have a robust support network
outside the university.
Such changes are likely to improve the experience and outcomes
for all students. The students of today are the most sensitive
to bad design of any prior generation, and user experience will be
the ultimate decision-making criteria for students in the future.
Today's young adults have grown up in a world in which nearly
SHUTTERSTOCK/ MAREKULIASZ
ment numbers and aren't worried about student outcomes, know
that the most effective offense for your institution is to ensure a
seamless and student-centered design. In the future it will be easy
for students to understand which campuses provide the most userfriendly
experience for students of their specific profile, and that
will be how they make enrollment decisions.
Think Like Amazon
Compare the user experience of those well-known companies to
the experience of the typical college student. Most arrive on campus
with high expectations that the university will direct them to
good outcomes. Yet they soon discover how difficult it is to receive
adequate direction. No one steps forward to answer such questions:
When do you meet with an academic advisor? How do you
reconcile a financial aid hold? How do you know-before it's too
late-if you're on track or off track for graduation? Administrators
with decades of experience in university processes may think the
path is clear, but complex structures and coded language create
barriers for students and make them feel unwelcome.
For students whose parents have college experience and can provide
guidance, this may merely be a frustrating experience. But for
those who are the first in their family, it can completely derail them.
Even when students do make it through the gauntlet, those at
large universities typically have to inform the administration that
they're nearing graduation (or think they are). At that point, the
university confirms whether the student's credits meet all the criteria
for graduation and whether any other barriers-such as an
unpaid library fee from three years ago-stand in the way. If there's
a problem, the student must work to resolve it. When all the barriers
are cleared, students are often asked to pay another administrative
fee to actually graduate. There is nothing user-friendly or
customer-oriented about this process.
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Trusteeship - November/December 2023

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