In this podcast, Dr. Sarah Holtan, the President and Founder of High-level Leadership,  LLC which is a thought engine dedicated to converting today's challenges in higher ed into opportunities, talks about how to make college affordable and accessible as well as how to fortify the ivory tower.

Sarah believes colleges have an ethical imperative to make the college experience more affordable. She hopes to find that sweet spot of overlap between successful business practices, and quality nonprofit higher ed. Like all of you, she has questions that keep her up at night like: what will happen if we do nothing to change higher ed?

Tune in for the next few episodes, as she'll be talking to a search consultant about the cost of an executive search, a CMO who will share her expertise on developing a strong brand, an engineer-turned-academic on ways to improve processes, a C-suite executive on key financial considerations for boards, and a student affairs leader on a new cost model of student services.

Episode Highlights

02:01 - Everything seems so different. The types of information that drives decision making, the approval processes, the pace of decisions, and even the expectations themselves for performance... My hope is for us to find that sweet spot of overlap between successful business practices, and quality nonprofit higher ed.

07:25 - The problem is high college debt leads to bigger societal and economic problems. And when graduates leave college with high debt, they make very different life choices than without that debt. When they have debt, they don't buy a house. They don't get married. They don't have kids, they don't pay off their other debts. They don't build an emergency savings fund. They don't start a business. Essentially, they don't live the American dream.

12:02 - Revenue for the sake of revenue is not my goal. There are no profit seeking stakeholders in this model. Higher education is a noble public good of intellectual growth and excellence. Our society is best when its population is educated.

Contact

Sarah Holtan, PhD

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