Success Factors

Three core questions, the answers to which will dictate success or failure:

1. Will students sign up for such a program? This initiative was conceived four years ago.  In that four-year period, I have surveyed countless students. Student opinions point to a resounding “yes”. If the answer is in fact “no” or a milky mix, then we would not have the overwhelming demand that can drive the type of transformation I envision. There is a cost to this program, in particular the travel experiences. But endowments restricted to international experiences are growing, and many students can already afford it. For those who cannot afford it, we must endow the organization to provide for that.

2. Will university administrators and faculty utilize such an approach? I have tested reactions and acceptability of these concepts at the faculty, dean, provost, and presidential levels in nationally-known institutions. There is support for the concept, and I am gaining considerable moral support and written endorsements. There are roadblocks, the most significant of which is the inflexibility of many universities’ curriculum governance. So the right universities must be chosen. Many administrators view the approach as a marketable “program” to attract more and better students. Faculty in general like the virtue of the approach and the desired outcomes. Each raise a considerable number of detailed questions as to how it would work. Most questions from administrators revolve around cost; most question from faculty revolve around transfer credit and acceptability of outside curriculum. In its steady-state form, the approach should be revenue neutral assuming an average class size of 15 at each school.

3. Could it logistically be carried out? All systems, technology, curriculum, and business processes are in place for this to work. There is an issue surrounding widespread visa qualifications of students from certain cultures and countries. 
  

 Other Important Considerations:

1. Online education has matured to the point of being reliable and efficient. And, when organized properly, it has academic and social outcomes that are as good as or better than face-to-face education. Using online learning to connect students from different continents and cultures logistically enables The Initiative. It enables students from many backgrounds and geographic locations to study and socialize together on a far more widespread basis than what traditional foreign exchange programs will allow from a participation rate perspective. Numerous times I have watched students separated by great distances become best friends, business partners, and even spouses as a result of their online studies. I have watched students arrive for an online program-end residency with tears in their eyes as they meet each other, hugging each other like family despite never having ever actually met each other face to face. Properly organized, an online educational experience can be a powerful academic experience and a socially bonding force.

2. The Initiative allows students from different schools to learn together. Forming a consortium geometrically increases the chances of students learning from those in other cultures. One organization by itself will have trouble getting more than a small percentage of its students to interact with a diverse selection of students from all other corners of the world on a consistent, organized basis. Residential education is still very much localized to the students in that country, that region, that city, and that campus. Attracting students from abroad to a school’s campus or sending their students abroad is one solution, but it is expensive, inconvenient at times, and at times simply impossible. Therefore student exchange, while on the rise, will not be the norm for students of any one school. Think instead of a situation where many freshmen at a school have the opportunity to study a curriculum for two years with fourteen students from fourteen different countries, cultures, religions, and political backgrounds. This is what the consortium approach provides. Frankly, this would be a highly marketable program for any school if one assumes that students and their parents would value studying with such a diverse group.

What does the future look like?

Should the initial project work well, it would be appropriate to open up the program to more students. It would also be appropriate to add schools to the consortium, perhaps up to fifteen. Fifteen schools working together would each provide one student to a 15-student cohort, ensuring the maximum variation of backgrounds and locations. Given our initial successes, we strongly believe there will be considerable demand for the approach.  

It is very easy to see how this bachelor’s-level initiative could scale. If each school were to provide the opportunity to twenty students per year, then 300 students per year would “graduate” to their upper-class status with this unique educational experience. Schools with large incoming freshmen classes or schools that choose to market the program as part of their admissions activities to increase enrollments might provide the opportunity to 100 students, bringing the total reach to 1500 students per year. Three-scenario projections yield a mean of the following for year 4:

• 50 schools participating
• 30 students per school
• 100 separate active cohorts
• 1875 students active in the program. 
  

These numbers are only bounded by the resources to initiate new cohorts.  Fundable budgetary models exist that provide for much greater numbers. 

The scope of consortium activity can go well beyond the bachelor’s level. This approach is certainly viable at the high school level, especially preparatory schools. Again, all the value chain elements are there. It just takes someone to organize it. ESL training around the globe is another potential manifestation, with member schools in the consortium sponsoring, together, an outreach program to teach English (or Chinese, or Spanish) to interested students, and in return the schools would have built a pipeline of excellent students to their freshman class. Executive education is also a prime market. There are a handful of schools that do executive education well. The rest struggle to reach appropriate markets. There is no reason that The Initiative could not pool the resources of a consortium and allow them, together, to reach a much wider audience. The possibilities are only constrained by the imagination as to what one could do in these markets from a programming perspective. Fifteen locations to bring executives to; fifteen sets of faculty to deliver it; fifteen schools getting more from a worldwide distribution and awareness than they used to get with paltry budgets aimed at local or, at best, regional attempts to serve those markets. Graduate education, both Masters and Ph.D., are also possibilities. But perhaps those would have to wait for some years until the consortium members have some successes working with each other.
   
Schools that buy into the responsibility of educating leaders capable of balancing the heavy issues in the introduction above will immediately see the opportunity to jointly provide education in any number of areas, not just a core curriculum. In the context of the problems we seek to solve in this Initiative, opportunities abound, including:

1. Business and Management

2. Economics and Finance

3. Political Science, including International Law, Conflict Mediation, and Diplomacy.

These are the areas, at this point, which I believe have the most effect on the challenges noted. They are also areas in which a newly formed organization can find sizable markets and begin to make a mark with the type of education delivered. 
 

  Please continue reading on Page #7, Frequently Asked Questions

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