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As operating costs of colleges and universities continue to rise, collaborative higher education consortiums can improve efficiency. In this month’s interview, Phillip J. DiChiara, M.Ed. discusses his work as managing director for the Boston Consortium for Higher Education. He also shares his thoughts on higher education collaboration and the professional development opportunities this collaboration provides.
Andrew Hibel, HigherEdJobs: Mr. DiChiara, you are the managing director at the Boston Consortium for Higher Education. Please provide us some background by explaining the role and purpose of the consortium.
Phillip DiChiara, Managing Director, The Boston Consortium of Higher Education: Dating back to the mid-1990’s, the chief financial officers of our founding member schools were concerned that they were missing opportunities to leverage collective scale, reduce redundancy, and enact shared operational best practices unless they worked together more closely. To accomplish that in spite of existing personal workloads, they created and staffed a small organization whose mission it was to uncover, research, develop, and implement programs, all toward a mission of reducing non-academic operating cost. In as much as Boston has a concentration of colleges and universities in relatively close geographic proximity, establishing the Boston Consortium moved forward under the philosophy that genuine collaboration is not an overlay of more work, but a different, more strategic way of doing the essential work of the schools. Accomplishing a shared vision did not require every school to agree to participate in every undertaking, but putting in place, over time, a permanent culture of collaboration transcended the short-term positive impact of adding efficiencies consistent with state-of-the-art best practices.
Hibel: Please briefly explain your professional background and how you became involved with the consortium.
DiChiara: The first twenty-three years of my career were spent in senior administrative roles in healthcare. My retention as managing director was based on the belief that my prior experience with inter-institutional efforts and collaborative methodologies would allow us to proceed more quickly than otherwise. In fact, it became obvious to all that the methods and behaviors necessary for successful collaboration were, among our members, relatively unknown or unpracticed. The first several years were spent working on modest projects to enable the learning necessary to work across a dozen proud and independent schools.
Hibel: The Boston Consortium consists of 17 Boston-area colleges and universities, but there are numerous other higher education consortiums in the United States. What are some examples of collaborations and reasons that institutions should consider partnering on non-academic purposes in their regions?
DiChiara: The Association for Collaborative Leadership has a rather comprehensive listing of Deep Academic and Administrative Collaboration on its website.
Collaborations need first to emerge from extended candid conversations, not because Project A has the highest rate of return, and thus should be undertaken first. This is often the reason new consortia fail, or efforts lapse. Asking for a level of commitment too early in a communal relationship does not provide time for trust to build. Collaborations should start slow, be of modest size, and be of value to at least a simple majority of the participating institutions. At the Boston Consortium the mantra has become “dialog leads to relationships; relationships lead to trust; out of trust comes opportunity.”
Partnering makes sense when the participant institutions recognize that joining together to reduce non-academic costs allows everyone to be a winner. What is unique among schools is the academic experience, not the cost of paper or fuel oil. Collaborations require individual organizations to cede some decisional sovereignty to the collective, and schools that are on the financial precipice are usually reluctant to do so. True collaboration, not to be confused with cooperation, is a skill best learned when times are relatively good. It’s too late to collaborate when lay-offs are underway.
Hibel: What are some key points that academic leaders and administrators have to be willing to do or open to do in order to make a collaboration successful?
DiChiara: Besides grasping the issue of decisional sovereignty, they must actively sponsor and support the project team. As well, they need to engage their potential partners in periodic reviews so that the original vision is updated as the complications of cross-institutional implementation is confronted. Ultimately, collaboration is a skill that can only sharpen when it is tightly woven into management practice. True collaboration is far more than “cooperation,” and compromise in search of common ground is essential.
Hibel: The Boston Consortium offers Communities of Practice, which is “a forum for discussion, support, information sharing, and problem-solving among peers” in various areas of higher education. Please tell us about these forum groups and how they’ve impacted higher education professionals.
DiChiara: Communities of practice have a trained third-party facilitator at each meeting. Communities of managers from multiple institutions would best be characterized as emerging over time as they begin to see variance in practice from one organizational culture to another. Members see where their institution sits along the continuum of practice from average to best or most progressive practice. Relationships grow, and the reticence to undertake collective effort is removed. In fact, the Communities of Practice are often viewed as a career ladder of sorts, as participants present their work to senior administrators of not just their own school, but the others engaged in the project as well.
Hibel: I’m sure you’ve seen some resistance on collaborations between institutions. What are some of the top challenges you’ve seen in terms of getting colleges and/or universities to partner?
DiChiara: Beyond issues of decisional sovereignty, at the core is the undeniable reality that a “one size solution does not fit all.” Consortia must never give up creating the case for individual project collaboration, but neither should they deny that there are often many strong and defendable reasons for members NOT to participate. In some cases, some school cultures can be toxic to a particular joint solution. Over time, every school will eventually find itself more than a single standard deviation from the collective norm or proposed solution. It is this situation which is the greatest challenge for consortium executives: accept resistance but keep open new or other opportunities.
Hibel: What strategies have you seen implemented at institutions to overcome some of these challenges?
DiChiara: Open dialog and a common understanding that as participants come and go as their careers advance the core principles of collaboration endure. Hopefully a permanent culture of collaboration is formed despite changes in school presidents, provosts, and department heads. Of the 120+ consortia in higher education, I’d estimate that fewer than a quarter can say this with confidence. Collaboration can be a fleeting phenomenon with large changes in consortium participation.
Hibel: How do higher education consortiums affect or impact higher education employment?
DiChiara: They educate middle managers and above, into the wide breadth of inter-organizational management behavior and decision-making. This is a sophisticated form of professional development. At the same time, some of the projects undertaken result in fewer line staff required. For those that engage in collaboration, the enhancement to their resume and their ability to grow is heightened.
Hibel: What drives you to stay engaged working with higher education issues?
DiChiara: Most who undertake work in this curious and small corner of higher education are fulfilled by the accomplishment and the camaraderie. At the highest level, we tend to believe that our nation’s democracy is dependent upon an educated electorate. Rising costs of tuition are an obstacle to our nation’s future and continued success.
As the adage says, if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you need to go far, go together.