Inviting presidents of smaller colleges and universities to webinars, information and conference sessions on mergers and acquisitions is the equivalent of inviting them to learn more about what amounts to “institutional estate planning.”
“When your school is no longer here, where do you hope your institutional assets will go?”
Even before the most recent decision to increase the oversight of mergers and acquisitions in higher education and to make them even more difficult, it was becoming increasingly clear that this was not a particularly promising path or one worthy of serious exploration.
From a business perspective, there are only a small handful of reasons why a “buy-side” institution would ever consider acquiring a “sell-side” one. In general, these include acquiring something of perceived value that the “sell-side”organization has. That could be a “signature” program or other piece of institutional intellectual property. But more often it’s simply a matter of facilities or space.
The number of smaller institutions that have announced closures over the past several years would seem to support this point of view. Many of these announcements include a statement to the effect that the decision to close came after a series of unsuccessful attempts to find an appropriate partner with whom to move forward.
So, if this is not a productive pathway, what might one look like?
Inter-institutional collaborations, with partners who understand each other and are values-aligned, provide another opportunity.
While inter-institutional collaborations can face some of the same challenges that exist in considerations of mergers and/or acquisitions, the good news is that an effective model will actually recognize and address those challenges at the beginning of the process rather than stumbling upon them after much time, energy, and financial resources have been invested.
If you’d like to continue this conversation, we’d love to hear from you.