Last year, Furman began work with Bain & Company, a leading consulting firm, to create a strategic plan that improves the value of Furman and how it communicates that to prospective students.
The project has three phases: diagnostic, solution design and implementation. Bain has already collected their data, including aggregate survey data from students about what they look for from the university, so the project is currently in phase two of data analysis. Bain’s team is working on designing solutions with several main focus areas, such as enrollment/net tuition revenue, academic portfolio, athletics and support services.
These solutions will be brought before the project’s steering committee, and decisions will be made by the executive sponsors who are President Elizabeth Davis, Vice President for Academic Affairs Beth Pontari and Vice President for Finance and Administration Susan Maddox.
One member of the steering committee, Brandon Inabinet, Professor of Communication Studies, is optimistic about the potential of the project to fine-tune aspects of the University and improve the student experience.
“I’ve felt good as a participant in the process that the review has been thorough,” Inabinet said.
For the first goal of increasing enrollment and maximizing tuition revenue, Furman is seeking to make itself more attractive to prospective students, potentially by catering more to interests that Furman may not be as strong as competitors in. For example, Furman may seek to appeal more to students interested in areas such as finance, entrepreneurship, applied physics and data and decision analytics by bolstering its strength in these areas.
Additionally, the project is seeking to create more personalized, tailored marketing to prospective students based on their academic interests as well as improve the overall admissions process to keep Furman competitive with other universities.
The project comes amidst financial struggles experienced by the university. As reported on by The Paladin last semester, the university is currently on a hiring and bonus freeze due to financial concerns.
According to Inabinet, maximizing revenue is key for resolving lingering budget concerns and ultimately lifting the freeze on faculty and staff pay.
Students may be concerned that revenue maximization threatens financial aid and funding at Furman. According to Inabinet, no changes have been made to aid thus far. However, Bain is likely to suggest changes to financial aid that may include optimizing scholarship offers based on how students fit profiles based on survey response and web search data that predict how much they would be willing to pay for what Furman offers, while leaving need-based considerations intact. Inabinet also emphasized that funding changes will not be made in ways that impact student experience.
“Obviously, if it hurts the student experience, we wouldn’t dare touch it,” Inabinet said.
The project is looking at its goals, especially athletics, not from the lens of what Furman ought to be in those areas, but how to get the most out of what Furman is already doing. This means that discussions of these plans are limited to examining how to maximize revenue rather than changing Furman’s mission.
“If you did this completely democratically, everyone would have a position. So what they’ve done is isolated the people in the room who really know stuff like the economics of athletics, for example, and they look at what can improve revenue and athletics and what won’t rather than ‘who we are.’ What we are doing currently is just ‘if we need to cut expenditures and raise revenue, how do we do that’,” Inabinet said.
Hard choices made down the road that have been determined to contribute to Furman’s appeal and ability to market itself could include cutting programs, changing curriculum, adding majors and name changes, according to Inabinet.
More information about the project’s findings will not be made available to students, but selected plans will be implemented within a few years. Decisions will ultimately be made by weighing the anticipated complexity, cost and impact of each solution.