Why Humans@Center is key to university transformation

Last week, I attended the World Academic Summit, hosted in Sydney, which brought together a global gathering of university leaders to discuss some of the sector’s greatest challenges. Key topics that generated heated discussion included the need to digitally transform at a time of tightening budgets.

Large, traditional institutions often claim their legacy systems prohibit rapid transformation. So it was interesting to hear from Ben Nelson, the founder of Minerva – just voted the most innovative university in the world for the second consecutive year. Ben recently worked with UAE’s Zayed University, where he helped to rapidly rebuild the undergraduate experience for 10,000 students.

It just goes to show that big institutions can change at pace if transformation is set up and led in the right way.

Inspirational and caring leadership is more important than money

In EY’s session on delivering a distinctive student experience, we built on this idea. What came through loud and clear was that transformation success does not come down to money – it’s all about leadership. Regardless of whether a transformation succeeds or fails, the workforce ranks leadership as the top driver of that result.

When leaders inspire faculty with a purposeful and constant vision, and use technology to drive visible action towards that vision. When they care about psychological safety during major change and provide enough emotional support. That’s when transformation is most likely to be successful.

The big takeaway is that institutions will thrive or die based on the ability of their leaders to adapt to this new reality.?

Both the student and workforce experience are critical

At our EY session, we also heard that increased competitive forces and elevated student expectations mean that universities need to radically transform the student experience now – or risk permanent erosion of market. Soon-to-be-released, widescale global research has found that current student satisfaction is low and universities are struggling to offer a distinctive student experience.

In a world of increasing competitive activity and expanding student choices, universities need a strategy that defines where to play and how to win. This starts with understanding who students are and what they want.

Which isn’t always what universities think.

Many of our delegates were stunned to hear that only 29% of students in our upcoming research choose their university based on reputation. The type of courses offered are much more important to today’s students.

Of course, choosing a course and applying to university are just the first steps in the student experience journey, which also includes the learning experience and what happens when students need support.

At the Summit, we talked about the importance of understanding this entire journey – not just for students, but for faculty. Because, if we overlay the university staff experience across the student journey, both groups have many of the same pain points and friction.

To get the productivity and quality gains to address what students want, institutions also need to improve the experience for faculty and professional staff.

The message is clear. Putting the student and workforce experience at the heart of decision-making – particularly around digital transformation – has never been more critical. Not just in pedagogy, but across the whole university experience.

Get your copy of our upcoming research report as it launches

Many of the insights in our session were from EY’s upcoming primary research report, which provides compelling evidence about student and staff expectations from their university experience. The report draws on data from a survey of more than 3,000 students and focus groups and in-depth interviews with hundreds of faculty and university leaders in eight geographies.

Register here to receive the report as soon as it’s published.

The views reflected in this article are my views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global EY organization or its member firms.