Page 14 - BusinessWest May 12, 2025

“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.”
If current trends continue, the school could exceed 1,050
students, and perhaps more, for the class entering this Sep-
tember, 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 educa-
tion 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 deter-
mination 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 num-
bers 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 invest-
ment, 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 cam-
pus,” 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 big-
ger factor will the level to which institutions can focus on aca-
demic programs that can provide real jobs, “not just education
for the sake of education.”
He mentioned examples at WNE including the new Bio-
pharmaceutical 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.
“Those are the kinds of things that will matter moving for-
ward,” 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 per-
haps 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 dur-
ing 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.” BW
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14 << EDUCATION >>
MAY 12, 2025
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