Strategic Leadership in Context 205
The strategic plans of most colleges and universities include a strategic initiative
or, more aptly, an imperative concerning admissions and enrollment. Since many
private institutions are only several bad years in admissions away from extinction,
and virtually every institution depends heavily on tuition, marketing usually has a
prominent role in collegiate strategic planning reports. As a consequence, its lan-
guage and methods are increasingly in use on campuses, no matter how distasteful
most faculty members find the terminology of markets, brands, and customers.
Based on visits to many campuses David Kirp (2003) reports that the language of
marketing is here to stay, whether we like it or not, both for good and for ill.
Our question is similar to one that he poses: When it comes to the use of
strategic marketing, is it possible to reconcile the values of the academic com-
mons with the marketplace, or will colleges and universities sell their birthrights?
In considering admissions in a strategic context, we have the test case of an issue
that we have examined in several guises, and that, as we have seen, has been
the focus of many studies, including those by Kirp (2003); Bok (2003); Newman,
Couturier, and Scully (2004); and Zemsky, Wegner, and Massy (2005). In general
terms, it concerns the limits of commercialism and market competition in higher
education. In this specific case, the question is focused on the appropriate use of
the terminology and methods of marketing in admissions.
Strategic Leadership and Marketing
We can begin to address this question by examining several basic characteristics
of integral strategic thinking that differentiate it from a discipline of marketing.
In particular, deep strategy requires integrative and systemic forms of thought
and action. What may be invisible at an operational level comes into full view in
strategy. It reveals the connectedness between and among academic and admin-
istrative activities and programs.
Consider what is required to reach virtually any goal in admissions, whether
to increase applications or yield or to attract more students with certain talents,
backgrounds, or levels of family income. The admissions program is simply the
leading edge of a complex and connected strategic system. No matter where
one touches it in such a structure, that point connects to all of the structure’s
major components. A strategic system requires faculty and administrative leaders
throughout the organization to understand its interconnections.
When seen in this light, effective admissions work begins with the integration
of several different forms of knowledge, from narratives to data. The institution’s
story and vision, its distinctive educational characteristics and core competen-
cies, should be woven into virtually every facet of the verbal and visual messages
that an admissions office communicates. These are drawn from a complex set of
beliefs and information about the institution that are both discovered and vali-
dated in a process of deep strategy. Strategic thinking brings a discipline to this
process of integration and makes the creation of the message a differentiated,
authentic, and focused process.