I made the varsity tennis team as a freshman at Adrian College in 1978. Which might seem odd for a kid who played baseball at a small high school in farm country. It was less about my talent and more about the fact that Adrian was small and marketed a “Personal Approach” that allowed students to participate in sports and other activities. For example, I also was writing for the college paper within weeks of landing on campus. And my tennis career began only after I got cut during baseball tryouts. Adrian College also had declining enrollment, some half-empty dorms and tired academic buildings. Flash forward to 2005 – I was president of the alumni association, the college president was retiring and all of those trends had come home to roost. Enrollment had slipped under 1,000, and there were so few applicants the school’s admission rate was 99 percent. Against that backdrop, the vice president of the association and I were asked to interview two finalists for the president role and give our feedback. The first finalist was straight out of central casting – tweed jacket, scholarly air and some well-reasoned but traditional approaches to making the school more appealing to students. The second candidate was energetic and articulated a compelling, but unconventional strategy: Borrow money, build new sports facilities, and add sports and activities that most small colleges didn’t have at the time: lacrosse, men’s and women’s ice hockey, marching band. Here was the rub: The coaches would have recruiting goals each year and be expected to hit them. As enrollment grew over the first few years, the candidate explained, the money made from additional tuition would be reinvested into academics. It’s no surprise, given my motivations for picking Adrian College, that the second candidate’s philosophy resonated with me. Where else could I have earned four varsity letters and been editor of the school paper in my sophomore year? After the interviews, I turned to the alumni association VP and said, “We need the radical guy, but they’ll probably hire the traditional guy.” I was wrong. The second guy – Jeffrey Docking – got the job and small college business strategies were changed forever. Docking’s approach not only improved Adrian College’s fortunes, but reporting this week by MLive’s Matthew Miller shows that it became a template for small colleges in a highly disrupted American educational landscape. Adrian College offered fewer than 10 men’s sports when I was a student; it now offers 22 varsity and club sports for men alone, including bass fishing, cornhole and esports. There are another 24 sports for women, including dance, figure skating and wrestling. Miller’s reporting points out the nucleus of the strategy that Docking created: “Many students and their families have shown themselves willing to pay thousands of extra dollars a year to attend a private college if it means four more years of competition.” I became close with Docking after he was hired. As a leader in my own disrupted industry – by 2005, I’d already been working in downsizing traditional newspapers for years – we bonded around our passion for innovative strategies, analytics and accountability. We’ve met occasionally over the years to continue those conversations, most recently last month when he hosted me for lunch on campus. We talked about how his strategies have held up and been emulated, but he noted it’s not enough for some schools against larger trends like demographics and online learning. And as other small schools copy Adrian’s playbook, the playing field gets even more competitive. Docking has evolved the strategy into adding instruction into tech fields that are in high demand by American employers right now. He’s built a consortium of small schools across the country to share in the curriculum, and it’s proving to be another enrollment draw. Will these approaches work for all colleges? Miller’s article points out that Finlandia University in the Upper Peninsula launched an ambitious expansion plan in 2014 that began with adding football. The 127-year-old school graduated its final class this spring. But that “pay to play” model worked for me, and our report this week shows how it is still changing the small-college landscape in Michigan and beyond. # # # I received a lot of positive feedback from a column I wrote several weeks ago promoting a Medicare information session that MLive Media Group hosted on Oct. 24. Hundreds of you joined that forum and asked great questions of our expert panelists. For those who couldn’t make that event, MLive has recorded the entire program and added the video to YouTube. You can view it here. | 