Sarah Holtan, PhD and Ricardo Azziz, the Director at the Center for Higher Education Mergers & Acquisitions and Principal at the SPH Consulting Group, explore the strategic significance of early action and planning in addressing challenges in higher education, with a particular focus on the complexities of college mergers.

They discuss important aspects, including the financial and cultural considerations involved in merging institutions, and stress the importance of proactive leadership among college administrators.

The episode concludes with practical advice for struggling colleges to stay viable as potential merger partners.

Episode Highlights

10:52 - Once you've actually made the decision to merge and you've made that decision to announce publicly, it is now time to engage everybody to the extent you can, to explain why the process had to be confidential initially, and to really basically create a community effort around this initiative.

12:10 - The second major point of failure in a merger is a failure to implement correctly. You just don't think it through, you don't understand the systems, you don't understand which dominoes have to fall first, what order of things have to be addressed, and so that's a big issue. So, the failure of implementation is a big deal.

20:22 - The best way to preserve heritage and the best way to preserve service to a student and the best way to preserve certain academic programming is actually to make sure that your institution is stable.

23:02 - Growth can be quicker. It can be more rapid if we were to then merge with another institution and now sort of have a number of programs and students that we didn't have before. So, I think that tactic is important.

Sarah Holtan, PhD

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Ricardo Azziz

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