Page 28 - BusinessWest May 27, 2024

“It’s not a just a checklist of how you communicate with students and families whose first language is Spanish. Are we offering all the right supports? Do we understand the cultural nuances of how to serve the Hispanic market, which is very much growing in Western Mass.?.”
enrollment, face uncertain futures, and, in some cases, even close their doors.
Doran said Bay Path has been looking at many growth strate- gies, including acquisition, and had looked at several different institutions.
“We talked to some colleges in the Southeast, we talked to some in the Southwest, we talked to some in the middle of the country, and ultimately, we were very fortunate to find a partner here in Mas- sachusetts,” she said, adding that Cambridge College emerged as the option that made the most sense, for many reasons, especially those shared traits and values, as well as areas of focus — par- ticularly online programs and service to Hispanic students — that would provide Bay Path with avenues for growth. “They had so much of what we were looking for in a partnership. What they have to offer lines up beautifully with what we were looking for.”
Doran said she didn’t know if Cambridge was looking to be acquired, but did know that it was looking to partner, as many schools are in these challenging times. Elaborating, she said Cam- bridge certainly suffered during the pandemic — again, as many schools did — but coming out of COVID, its enrollment has been increasing over the past few years, with much of that growth com- ing in online programs.
And while talks with other potential acquisition candidates pro- gressed to different degrees, Bay Path eventually crossed the finish line with Cambridge College because the ‘fit’ — the word you hear so often in these transactions — was right for both sides, and espe- cially Bay Path.
“It’s one thing to read about mission and culture and values on a website and talk about it with people inside an organization,” Doran said. “But it’s really when the boards sit down, the leaders sit down, and you have a chance to meet with students that you get a true pic- ture. I had the chance to meet with students at Cambridge College, and that is really what convinced me, the board, and others that this is really the right fit.
“And that’s because their students are our students,” she went on. “Half are students of color, half are first-generation students, 60% of their students are in graduate programs, and 60% are online.”
Class Acts
Getting back to the growth-strategy exercises of a year ago and the establishment of a matrix to determine whether a potential part- ner might be right for Bay Path, Doran said several necessary com- mon threads were identified, with shared mission and values being just one.
Others include everything from a strong culture of innovation to an opportunity to “expand our reach,” as she put it; from a com- mitment to workforce development to strong business-to-business partnerships.
When it comes to expanding reach, this is a broad term that covers considerable ground, said Doran, encompassing everything from expansion into new geographic regions to reaching new popu- lations to expansion of online and graduate programs.
Merging with Cambridge College allows the university to do all of that, she said, adding that the acquisition brings with it a number of huge growth opportunities.
As one example, she returned to the Hispanic population and
Bay Path’s desire to better serve — and, yes, capture more of — that market, explaining why this acquisition makes sense for the institution.
“We have here a limited experience in terms of fully serving the Hispanic market,” she explained. “We’ve developed some student supports; we’ve given them some academic supports. If you peruse our website, you’ll see that many of our web pages are now in Span- ish, so we can speak directly to students whose native language is Spanish and to their parents.
“But we knew that we didn’t know enough because there’s a huge cultural component,” she went on. “It’s not a just a checklist of how you communicate with students and families whose first language is Spanish. Are we offering all the right supports? Do we understand the cultural nuances of how to serve the Hispanic mar- ket, which is very much growing in Western Mass.?
“We really wanted to reach into that marketplace because we knew how important it was for Western Mass., and for the nation, for that matter,” she continued. “This is the fastest-growing popula- tion in the country, and as an institution, our job, our mission, is to serve those students with equally robust and dedicated resources.
There are other benefits to be gained from this acquisition, obvi- ously, said Doran, who listed Cambridge College’s portfolio of grad- uate programs as another of them.
Elaborating, she explained that developing new graduate pro- grams and bringing them to market is a costly, very involved pro- cess that can take years, when time is a luxury few institutions have.
“To bring a new program to market can take two to five years,” she explained. “So the opportunity to grow graduate programs by acquiring another college was absolutely essential to what we were thinking about, and with Cambridge, we’re acquiring about 30 new graduate programs.
“So if you think about it, even taking two years to bring a pro- gram to market, it would have taken 60 years,” she went on. “That’s a long time, even for me.”
Grade Expectations
Doran said full integration of Cambridge College into Bay Path will take 18 to 24 months, and over that time, several issues will be settled, including whether — and in what ways — the Cambridge College name will live on.
That name has some value in various markets, she said, adding that she hopes the brand lives on in some form.
Meanwhile, she’s more certain about other aspects of this acqui- sition, especially the part about it being a bold, decisive step at
a time when such actions are required of higher-ed institutions looking to fully emerge from the challenging pandemic and post- pandemic periods in a position to not merely survive, but grow and thrive.
“I will credit our board with being such strong partners,” he said. “They’ve always been bold, they’ve always been strategic — we were the first in the region to have online education — and that kind of support is very critical.”
And it’s yet another example of how a school with a rich past is focused, as Doran put it, on thinking about the future in a transfor- mational way. BW
Recognized nationally. Valued locally.
RETHINK COMMUNITY COLLEGE.
hcc.edu
28 MAY 27, 2024
<< EDUCATION >>
BusinessWest