Rural-Serving Institutions: Innovative Lessons for Higher Ed Success

Rural-serving institutions (RSIs) face many more unique challenges than most urban schools and persist, comprising more than 25% of all U.S. colleges and universities. Although inherently different, every higher ed institution can learn from the innovative best practices RSIs have been forced to adopt to help positively impact their enrollment and more.

To understand what RSIs can teach higher ed as a whole, Dr. Drumm McNaughton discusses the misconceptions and essential roles these institutions have in their communities with Executive Director Dr. Andrew Koricich of the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges, a research collaborative and resource hub that has completed the insurmountable task of defining what rural-serving institutions are.

Andrew explains how RSIs’ unique experiences can help:

• Identify the role higher ed should adopt instead of becoming a for-profit organization.
• The types of prospective students higher ed needs to target.
• How board members should be appointed.
• Why higher ed must avoid pursuing growth for the sake of growth.
• How to subset rising costs with remote learning and course selection.
• The type of mindset that boards should look for when appointing a president or chancellor.

#HigherEducation #RuralServingInstitutions #HigherEdPodcast

Podcast Highlights

• RSIs are their communities’ primary or only post-secondary education access point and are their most critical employer by launching businesses and consuming most of their goods and services. Therefore, RSIs are tied to their community’s focused industry and must remain targeted.
• Public RSIs are more dependent on state appropriations but receive fewer appropriations per student because state funding metrics focus on enrollment growth, which is more constrained. In addition, RSIs receive fewer donations and competitive federal grants because reviewers from federal agencies don't understand them.
• Systems or legislatures usually choose to close or merge RSIs because they carry less political weight and serve fewer students even though fewer people are in their community.
• These structural deficits realize that higher ed appoints board members incorrectly. Appointing too many alumni members complicates the board’s ability to view the institution objectively. Meanwhile, political appointees only view their schools as political tools. Boards must also have more financial oversight by alerting presidents or chancellors to financial problems before they reach the legislature.
• Higher ed needs to move away from the mentality of getting the maximum return possible since many RSIs usually can’t meet these conditions because they enroll fewer students.
• RSIs’ mission of providing more accessibility to underserved students proves that higher ed needs to rethink which students they should serve, like underrepresented minorities and adults who never started post-secondary education or who started but dropped out.
• Higher ed cannot adopt the mentality of bigger is better since RSIs are at the mercy of the rise and fall of their populations. Instead, higher ed needs to identify what’s sustainable for each institution rather than penalizing RSIs for something out of their control.
• To help reduce costs, a significant role of boards and administrators includes identifying what programs are no longer by realizing if they align with local industries, for example. But they must stay proactive and transparent. Also, don’t fully disregard liberal arts education since students still need a well-rounded education.
• Boards can’t be proactive if they appoint presidents who view their institution as a stepping stone. Instead, appoint presidents who value their mission, their students, and what they’re capable of.

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About Our Podcast Guest Dr. Andrew Koricich

Dr. Andrew Koricich is the Executive Director of the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges (ARRC) and an Associate Professor of Higher Education at Appalachian State University. Influenced by his experiences growing up in a rural Pennsylvania town, Dr. Koricich’s research interests focus primarily on rural issues in postsecondary education, with a particular emphasis on rural-serving postsecondary institutions and the communities they serve. His work has been published in numerous journal articles, book chapters, and research reports and featured in a range of media outlets, including Politico, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and The Daily Yonder. Dr. Koricich and his team have received generous funding from The Joyce Foundation, Lumina Foundation, and Ascendium Education Group. He recently led a project to develop a data-driven metric for identifying rural-serving institutions (RSIs), and he has been invited to speak by a number of organizations, including the American Association of State Colleges & Universities, National Scholarship Providers Association, and the Oregon Community College Association.

Dr. Koricich earned a Ph.D. in Higher Education and a B.S. in Information Sciences & Technology from Pennsylvania State University, and an M.B.A. from Johns Hopkins University. Before joining the faculty at ASU, he was a faculty member at Texas Tech, and prior to working in academia, Dr. Koricich spent several years as a software development manager at a large insurance company prior to his career in academia.

About Our Podcast Host

Dr. Drumm McNaughton, host, and consultant to higher ed institutions. To learn more about his services and other thought leadership pieces, visit his firm’s website, https://changinghighered.com/.

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