Change in community colleges through strategic alliances: a case study

Community College Review, Spring, 2003 by Pamela L. Eddy

An important distinction necessary in understanding change in the College Connection is an apparent dichotomy among the colleges that became obvious when this researcher conducted the interviews. The colleges either resisted membership in the College Connection or viewed the consortium as helping them to survive. Three campuses fall into the category of the survivors: Beta College, Gamma College, and Delta College. These campuses had the smallest enrollments within the group of five, and all three initially worried about countering the threat of closure. They had a vested interest in seeing the College Connection thrive and invested time and energy into making the joint venture successful. The process was not easy, as one vice president noted, "It has been trial by fire." The main problem, according to one respondent, was that "Most of the agents of change came from the outside. There was not a push to involve [internal] people from the beginning." Leaders at the member colleges considered the central system administrators as the prime impetus behind the formation of the College Connection versus themselves.

The resister campuses were Alpha College and Epsilon College. These campuses had the largest enrollments, and participants stated that they would probably have been able to weather the initial difficulties on their own. For the two years prior to this study the resister campuses tried to disassociate their institutions from membership in the alliance. In the summer of 1999, the central office said membership was not optional. One person's metaphor to describe the position of the resisters noted, "Our campus is like the person swimming for shore with the others pulling on the person to be saved." The larger campuses had fewer incentives to participate. According to one vice president, "While the [College Connection] intended to bring departments together as equals, each campus department feels `but, we are better than they are.'" In fact, one member from a resister college commented, "We are penalized when other campuses have too many employees and they won't undertake cuts or when a campus has a utility problem and expects to be subsidized." On the other hand, a president of a survivor campus described the two resister colleges as having "got[ten] a lot of toys and now they [did] not want to play anymore, so they want to take their toys and leave."

For the first time in 10 years there was an enrollment increase among the 5 campus totals. Stability was evident as the plummet in enrollment appeared to have bottomed out. As the president of Beta College described, "We are like a ship in a storm that has gone into a wave. We are not sure if we are going up or going down, but it looks like through the mist we are seeing the sun." Other clear gains were evident in the acquisition of joint grants and support in technical infrastructure. No doubt the best gain--all five campuses were still open.

Applying Kotter's Model

Using Kotter's (1996) eight-stage change model as a framework for the case study provided a mechanism to judge the campuses' effectiveness in their quest for change. The formation of the College Connection sought particular changes, foremost being to increase enrollment and decrease costs. The insistence by Kotter of following steps in sequence for success established a measurement by which to judge the College Connection campuses' planned change. A review of each of the steps follows (see Table 1 for a summary comparison).