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Maneuvering in Today’s Volatile Climate
Maneuvering in Today’s Volatile Climate
As time has progressed, Mark McCormack’s message earlier this year in EDUCAUSE Review is growing stronger and stronger in the halls of higher education: We Are Not Okay.
“We as leaders need to not only be thinking about and building our own resilience but also supporting and fostering resiliency with our teams.”
McCormack refers to the current educational climate as a “polycrisis” – the phenomenon of several interconnected crises interacting and amplifying each other into an effect greater than the sum of their parts.
Overall volatility and regulatory flux, dramatic funding pressures and constraints, increased scrutiny over outcomes and compliance – all contribute to an uncertain, unstable, and unprecedented environment. So, if we’re not okay, and the climate looks to be volatile for the foreseeable future, as a leader, what can you do?
Control what you can control. Do more with less – but make it count!
Ease the Burden on Your Overwhelmed Staff
The tools in your toolkit need to provide efficient solutions that help reduce and streamline overburdened workloads—not add to them. An effective tactic is to leverage tools that are simple to use, easy to learn, and empower your staff to manage daily workflows without IT intervention. Give them back time and energy to focus on strategy and meeting constituent needs.
Give Your Budget a Break Too
In a resource-constrained environment, your tools need to provide a low total cost of ownership. Time is money, and you need to be efficient, agile, and flexible. This requires tools that streamline your operations and allow you to build solutions that work within your system, not around it. And they should do so at a reasonable price.
Don’t Go It Alone
A constantly changing environment demands that systems stay aligned with evolving policies and needs. To pull this off, you need partners, not vendors—partners who not only understand higher ed, but who support you with high-touch customer service. When time is of the essence, you don’t have time to manage a ticket queue to get the job done. You need a dedicated and collaborative team who has your back.
Why Aptron?
Aptron’s Collēgix student information system provides the benefits higher ed institutions need to maneuver and thrive in today’s chaotic environment. Collēgix is highly intuitive, flexible, and configurable, and backed by responsive, high-touch support—all at an investment that works within a cost-constrained budget.