Outgoing WNE President Talks About ‘Getting to the Other Side’ of Current Challenges

School of Thought

Western New England University President Robert Johnson

“A shift in the market.”

That’s how Robert Johnson, president of Western New England University, chose to describe the current state of higher education, knowing this is a huge understatement.

Indeed, colleges and universities were already under great amounts of stress due to declining enrollments, rising costs, weaker bottom lines, and mounting questions about the cost and value of a college education. And that was before the Trump administration started what the Boston Globe and others are calling a ‘reign of terror,’ pressuring institutions on matters such as DEI policies and efforts to curb antisemitism with threats involving everything from the cancelation of grants to removal of schools’ tax-exempt status.

“It was already a fairly rapid pace of change, and what’s going on at the federal level is merely accelerating the pace of change, creating high levels of anxiety,” said Johnson. “I don’t think higher ed has ever been through this — I’ve been in higher ed 35 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this.”

But, at the end of the day, and in his opinion, this is just … a shift in the market, or another shift, one of many that higher education institutions have faced over the years, decades, or centuries, depending on how long they’ve been around, said Johnson, who referred early and often to the proverbial ‘other side’ of this current shift.

“I don’t want to call it a ‘new normal,’ because I think we’re creating ‘normal,’ and it’s going to be different,” he said. “What that ‘different’ is … who knows? But I think we must remain agile enough to change with the times. My perspective is simple; when it comes right down to it, places like Western New England University — we started as a branch campus for Northeastern University — are at a place where we’ve come through world wars, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights movement, Jim Crow, the dot-com bubble, the Great Recession … and now this. And we’ll figure this out.

“I don’t want to call it a ‘new normal,’ because I think we’re creating ‘normal,’ and it’s going to be different. What that ‘different’ is … who knows? But I think we must remain agile enough to change with the times.”

“Anyone who says they have a crystal ball and understands what it’s going to look like on the other side is fool’s gold,” he went on. “The best that we can do is be agile and try and manage as best we can given the resources that we have to emerge from this. It’s not going to be fun — this is not the golden age of higher education post World War II — it is a shift in the market, and that has to be our view, and there will be winners and losers.”

These were just some of the thoughts from Johnson in a wide-ranging interview with Johnson that turned out to be an exit interview, if you will. Indeed, he announced, just a few days after he talked with BusinessWest, that he will be stepping down from the university in August.

As he talked about the current landscape, he came back repeatedly to his contention that, to survive this latest shift in the market, schools will have to be agile and proactive in response to the factors that created this paradigm. And WNE is doing exactly that, he said, noting that, through several new strategic initiatives, it has improved its position.

Indeed, the school enrolled the largest entering class in its history in the fall of 2024, just two years after it recorded one if its lowest figures in a quarter century, he said. “Three years ago, we had just over 6,700 applications for our entering class. This year, we’re right on the cusp of 13,000 applications.”

This was accomplished, he said, by stressing brand value and return on investment — “including a 94% job-placement rate, starting salaries higher than 52 of the top-100 universities in the country — 36% higher than any of the other schools in this region.

Robert Johnson says that, through aggressive, targeted marketing, WNE entered its largest class ever in 2024, and is on pace to do the same this September.

“That’s the message that we keep driving home,” he went on. “And it’s showing up in our applications, deposits, campus visits … that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”

Beyond marketing, these increases in applications and enrollment are due to new programs designed to provide a bridge to the workforce, he said, citing the school’s new master’s degree program in Biopharmaceutical Technology, due to launch in September, as just one example.

If current trends continue, the school could exceed 1,050 students, and perhaps more, for the class entering this September, said Johnson, adding that this would be the largest class yet again.

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked with Johnson about the current state of higher education and the many factors that will determine how and to what extent schools can ride out this storm.

Course of Action

Johnson, who arrived at WNE just as COVID did, noted that the pandemic represented a stern test for all institutions of higher education, one that forced them to rethink what they were doing and how, and make often dramatic changes to carry on and continue their missions.

This latest shift, one marked by demographic changes and governmental changes alike, and where 40% of private schools in New England are under some form of financial distress, is similar in many ways, but also fundamentally different.

“With COVID, there was a predictability to it — you knew that if you did certain things you would get through it,” he said. “Right now, in this environment we’re in right now, there’s no predictability; that’s what creates the high levels of anxiety we’re seeing right now.”

And this brings him back to that notion that schools will “figure this out.” Or not.

‘There’s something about the human spirit that says, ‘no matter what we’re going through, we’ll come out on the other side,’ and oftentimes, it really does come down to sheer determination with a plan of action that has the ability to pivot as you get different information or new information along the way that enables you to move forward.

“The indelible human spirt says that when a group of people work together toward a common goal, and they’re all rowing in the same direction, you can’t find a time in human history where they did not come out on the other side. And that’s going to be the difference — the institutions that can pull together and have that indelible human spirit that says ‘yes, I can.’ It’s possibility thinking and operating from a perspective of assets and not deficits — ‘I’m not going to focus on what I don’t have and therefore what I can’t do, but what I do have and what we can do with that.”

Elaborating, he said WNE’s success with growing its numbers for applications, deposits, and enrollment, comes down to one word — marketing.

“We’ve been really focused on telling our story,” he explained. “Because if families are going to make the investment, they want to know if I can get a job, a good job. It’s about outcomes, outcomes, outcomes.”

This marketing involves traditional vehicles, but especially social media and digital marketing, he said, but it also involves getting students on the campus.

“Getting them on our campus matters; there’s a higher probability of enrolling a student if they’ve been to the campus,” he said, adding that the school succeeds at being welcoming.

“This is place where, no matter who you are, where you’re from, or what you look like, you’re welcome. “It doesn’t matter what your political persuasion may be. And we don’t engage in highly politicized debate that’s happening in the external world; our heads are down, this is where you come to go to school, where you come to get a job — you don’t have all the drama about what’s going on in the world.”

When asked about how schools will emerge on the other side, and the factors that will determine what will look like when they do, Johnson said financial models and roadmaps that will provide long-term sustainability and growth, where revenues align with expenses, are obviously a key. But the bigger factor will the level to which institutions can focus on academic programs that can provide real jobs, “not just education for the sake of education.”

He mentioned examples at WNE including the new Biopharmaceutical Technology degree program, the Center for Advanced Manufacturing, FinTech program, and the recently opened XR/VR Lab, which provides students with hands-on access to cutting-edge virtual, augmented, and mixed-reality technologies.

“With COVID, there was a predictability to it — you knew that if you did certain things you would get through it. Right now, in this environment we’re in right now, there’s no predictability; that’s what creates the high levels of anxiety we’re seeing right now.”

“Those are the kinds of things that will matter moving forward,” he said. “Part of what will make a winner is programs that are relevant, that enable students to get real jobs … that have innovative and entrepreneurial components in place that become creative in nature and allow students to have hands-on experience and take that experience and go out into the world of work.”

“At the end of the day, each institution will have to decide what’s best for them, and position themselves accordingly,” he went on. ‘For many of them, probably most of them, elements of their plan will work, and for some of them, their plans will not work, and it will be to their own demise.”

Bottom Line

Johnson stressed that neither he, nor anyone else, really, knows just what ‘different will, indeed, look like.

But in these unprecedented times, when there is, as he said earlier, no predictability, schools must be creative and diligent if they are going to get to the other side.

“One of the outcomes of what we’re seeing now is that you’ll see some of the institutions come out of this and evolve and thrive, and there will be others that will contract and perhaps go out of business,” he continued. “I go back to the Great Depression, when the economy was rough, to say the least — which is what we’re starting to potentially see as an outcome of tariffs and uncertainty in the marketplace — some of the greatest companies in the world were started or evolved during that time. And that’s what we’re going to see on the other side of this with higher education — there will be institutions that will be reborn in a different way that will evolve and thrive in an environment in whatever ‘different’ will look like.”